Marred

I believe that without really needing to be told, most children catch hold of the idea that boys and girls are different on purpose. At least I did. I knew that, except for Jesus’ case, it takes a mommy and a daddy to make a baby. And though most children don’t understand the exact how, they do have a very vague idea. It’s innate. After all, shouldn’t the simplest of all needs for humanity’s survival come instinctually? I suppose that’s a rather brash way of putting it, but it is as simple as that from what I know.

            As a little girl, I knew my brother and I were not the same. I was a girl, he was a boy. God made us that way. In fact, I knew that girls were supposed to fall in love with boys. No one told me. My first crush was on a boy in my first grade class.

            Maybe it was just perchance that my so innocent perception of something God created to be beautiful became skewed, but either way, it did.

            I often wondered if I was the only girl in the church to have her view of sex become so horribly marred, but as I’ve grown, I know I’m not alone.

            When I was in fourth grade, I really loved horses and began to take lessons. Over the summer, one of my best friends and I went to a summer day camp for horseback riding. We loved it. But at the end of the camp, while we were waiting to go home, we were left unattended with the foals. When the camp director noticed us, she pulled us back to be with her. However, she was breeding her horses that day and by the time it dawned on her that we were just nine-year-olds, we’d already seen enough.

            That incident never really bothered me. But we moved at the end of that summer and later, the winter of the same year, I met a girl about a year older than me who was my first friend in the new town we moved to. Her story was rather tragic, though I hadn’t the faintest idea until years later.

            I really should I known. If I said something, she might have gotten help sooner, and I wouldn’t have been as scarred as I was.

            She was such a sweet girl when I met her, a bit of a tomboy, but for my girly-girlishness, we still had fun. But as we got to know one another, the things we talked about and incorporated into our playing changed.

            When I’d know her just under a year, she started making slight comments about sex. She was rather grossed out by it, but preoccupied at the same time. She was adopted at age three, and later on, someone told me she might have witnessed her birth mother doing things no little girl ought to. So, she knew quite a bit for her age.

As time passed, when we would play together, and if any of our toys were to want children, she would act it out between them, all the while, a disgusted look on her face.

About a year and a half after I met her, she did tell me she’d once walked in on her adoptive parents. I giggled and blushed like any young girl, but I began to come around to her perception of what God made special. It breaks my heart now.

When I’d known her about two years, it was discovered that her adoptive father had been molesting her all that time. My dad told me after school one day. He called me out of school and we sat in the car together. I was in sixth grade then. We sat quiet for a time. My breath caught in my chest. What could I say? I should have know? In a soft voice, I told my dad that when we played together, she would often talk about sex. He didn’t seem very surprised. But I didn’t reveal much more. I was embarrassed to say anything else.

How I thought about sex was different after I met her. In fact, the way I thought about it was much like the way she did. It was gross and fascinating all at the same time. I used to think about it a lot, but never as something God made. Sure, it was how babies were made. And I really didn’t understand how some people saw it as a temptation. It didn’t sound so appealing as that.

It was years later, when I was a sophomore in high school that another piece of the puzzle fit into place. This one really hurt.

I very well might have been in some state of depression at the end of my sophomore year. When I was in eighth grade, I discovered Christian romance novels. So when I became discouraged while trying to share my faith with my best friend, I began to read and write fiction obsessively. I always needed something new to read because I would finish a book in a day or two and then be out of material. When I finished a book, I scour the shelves for something new.

My aunt lived near to us. I think I knew she standards for reading material were a little lower that my mom’s and mine. But one day I found a book at our house that I’m certain was hers. My friends would have called it “fluff” or a “dime novel.”

Reading that book opened my eyes in the worst sort of way. I wish they were things I would have learned on my wedding night, but now I knew why people fell into temptation over sex. I found out all about the appeal of it. And once you know, it’s very hard to forget.

I was far too shy to meet a boy and loose anything to him. God is so good. But I read that book over and over again because I could get almost everything a boy could give me from some of the chapters because I had a rather imaginative mind.

Down, down, down. I sank into a spiral and it wasn’t pretty. I discovered there were even more books, free for the reading, online. But the more I read, the farther from God I drifted.

When I showed up for church on Sundays, I felt like I was leading a double life. No one knew just how polluted my mind had become. I wanted to keep it that way. I was scared of what they might think of me.

In my junior year, I met a girl who had found herself sneaking out to be with boys and just couldn’t stop herself any more. I admired her willingness to admit her sin to me. But honestly, I felt as if I were the filthier of us two.

Little by little, I tried to reveal myself to her. It took months for me to come out and say it to her. I struggled with a word I didn’t even like the sound of on my tongue. So I only said it once. She listened quietly. We prayed together.

When I rode my bike home later, I felt so relieved. Like a weight had been lifted. By that time, I’d been able to keep myself away from the books for a few weeks and I was rather proud… rather like drug addict who’s been clean a whole month.

Sadly… that “clean” state never seemed to last for me. I’d succeed for a time only to fall back into the same habits. It was a wretched cycle and I felt filthy.

When I left for college, I though things might change for me. A new setting, a fresh start… maybe I could get away this time. After all… That first book I picked up? In my Junior year, I pulled it out from the very back of my bookshelf and tore it apart from its cover and then ripped every page in half over the trashcan. But that was another false hope. When I felt pressure, I slipped up again. By this time, I suppose I was extremely good at hiding it.

I hope and pray to get out from under it. When I keep to reading my Bible and praying every day, I stand a better chance, but it doesn’t change the fact that its hard. What hurts the most it knowing that every time I read one of those fluff novels, I get a distorted picture of what God intended and that makes my heart ache in the aftermath.

That’s my history and my prayer for the future.