And that was a glimpse into how it was going to be for the rest of my life. My mother managed to integrate back into the real world with some level of ease. I supposed because she’d had some experience with it before she got married to him. The divorce went through, and she moved in with Andrew, the man who would become my stepfather. She decided not to marry him, a radical choice, but one I respected. She was finally living her life the way she wanted to.
But me? I couldn’t let go of things that easily. I wished I could have moved on the way she did, but he was still in my head. He had permanent residency there, it seemed, percolated into something even stronger than he had been before. I hated it. I hated that I couldn’t shake him from my brain. I hated, even more, the feelings that were beginning to grow inside of me as I turned from a girl into a woman.
Being a teenager and having these messages zooming around and around my head was so painful, I could hardly describe it. I wanted to go out and have fun, cut loose, but I knew that my brain was never going to let that happen without piling me with guilt and fear and the certainty that he had been right all this time and that giving myself over to someone would take away from all the value I had been trying so hard to cling to.
No matter how many times I tried to convince myself it was irrational, it just took hold further. By the time I was sixteen, I had started going back to church of my own accord, punishing myself for any untoward thoughts with hours on my knees, trying to pray my guilt away. Everything he had told me seemed to be coming true around me--all those women I saw sleeping with their boyfriends ended up with their hearts broken. Yes, maybe it was just because high school boys were assholes, or maybe it was because they didn’t see any worth in these women any longer now that they had taken what they wanted from them.
By graduation, everyone around me was excited about leaving for college, about seeing a dating scene outside of our small town. I was already planning on how to deflect those questions from my family so I could stay at home. It was safe there, I was sure of it. Nobody wanted to go after a virgin who still lived with her family. I knew the rules here.
Or, at least, I thought I did.
"You need to get out of the house sooner or later," my mother had told me gently when I was about to turn nineteen. "I know it’s a lot to take in out there, but ..."
"I don’t want to go," I told her. "I’m not ready. You really want to get rid of me already?”
"I don’t want rid of you," she soothed. "We love having you around, you know that. Andrew and I are worried you’re missing out on experiences you should be having at this age."
I knew what she was saying. Everyone else was dating, partying, having fun, while I was doing Bible study in my room until late at night. I wasn’t even sure I believed any of it anymore, but it was safe, a reminder of everything I would lose if I … well, if I lost it. The few friends I did have from high school seemed to drift away, more focused on their adult lives than coming back to check out my childish one. And that was about the point I felt myself losing grip on reality.
I knew it was crazy, but I couldn’t let go of this part of my past. I had grown up being told that to give myself to a man would be to lose everything that made me valuable. I couldn’t do that. Why would I want to do that to myself? I would see clearly-happy couples walking down the street and be angry at them, angry at them for daring to be happy in my vicinity, angry that they got to enjoy themselves and each other and I didn’t.
Those feelings inside me, the ones I had done everything to ignore, they were beginning to reach a boiling point. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could push them down. I would lie awake at night and feel something between my legs screaming out for attention. I felt like I was constantly trying to ignore the voices inside my own head telling me to give in to what I needed so badly. I knew they were trying to lead me astray, but that was hard to believe when all I wanted to do was listen.
I couldn’t allow myself to be stripped of the only thing that gave me worth. That meant my only option was doing everything I could to get rid of the feelings filling me every moment of every day. I knew where they came from. I had been forced, beetroot-red, to sit through sex education like everyone else in my class. I understood there was a center of pleasure that this grew from.
So, the solution was simple: I needed to get rid of it.
"What the hell is this?” my mother shrieked when she came across the search terms on our shared computer. She had offered to get me one of my own, but I didn’t trust myself not to look up work of a sinful nature and had turned her down.
"It was just some research--"
"Clitoris numbing surgery?” she exclaimed. "You have to be kidding me, right? I mean, I know you have your hang-ups, but this ..." she trailed off.
I knew I was in trouble. She had been getting more and more frustrated with my inability to leave the house and now this.
"You need to get out of here," she told me. "Your father, he’s gotten inside your head. You’re not going to be able to shake him until you put some distance between yourself and everything else ..."
And with that, she started to plan. I tried to protest, but she told me that this was the way things had to be. She wasn’t going to let me mutilate myself because my father had told me that something so natural was wrong. I felt like I was going to cease to exist with sheer embarrassment at the sounds of those words coming out of her mouth, but I did my best to keep that off my face. Before I knew it, she had booked a trip for me across the country to stay with the Morgans.
"The Morgans!” I couldn’t think of a worse family to go stay with while I was trying to overcome everything that was happening. Talk about throwing me in at the deep end.
Thom Morgan was a divorced dad with full custody of his daughter, Donna. He was pretty much known around town for being a man-slut. We had spent a couple of summers lodging not far from their place, and Donna and I had grown close enough that she had let me know her father was bringing back a different woman practically every night to the house they lived in together. The thought of it intrigued me, but it also made me feel a little ill. I felt sorry for Donna, having to put up with that. Though, maybe some part of me wanted to be one of the women he brought back to his place ...
And now, Andrew, my stepfather, was currently driving me cross-country to stay with them for a while. I still couldn’t quite believe it was actually happening. Some kids got shipped off to military camp, and I got turned over to a family with looser morals in the hopes of opening me up a little.
"It’ll be good for you to spend time with a girl your age," Mom remarked.
I knew what she was trying to say: a normal girl my age. Which I was apparently not. I couldn’t stop thinking about the surgery I had been researching, how good it could have been for me. The relief I would have found making it impossible for me to feel that part of my body ever again. It was almost a fantasy, a thrill. I loved the very idea of it. I wanted it, more than anything, to feel that freedom, that release.
But now, it was never going to happen. My mother had sent me away to make sure I would never be able to do that to myself. She was hoping that a few weeks with the Morgans would be enough to scrub me back to a factory reset and save me from the mess going on inside my head and my body.