If I only had a brain..........

I have a brain but at the time I wasn't using it. No....I was using emotion. I've shared with you what happens when we make decisions out of anger, fear, sadness or loneliness. It doesn't allow us to factor all the consequences about to come out of the decision we've made or will make. As for me, at the age where I thought I'd neveeeeeerrrrr have a boyfriend (especially the one I wanted), this wonderful Spanish amazing-ness came along and started to change the way I felt about how boys looked at me. It was a feeling that is inexplicable until you're in the moment and you feel you have no rational thought left.....just what you want. You will do anything to get what you want, especially when you feel like there isn't much left for you to have control over. You remember I told you I was still on the journey to lose weight and to feel good about myself. I was still trying to get over what I looked like in the bathroom mirror let alone what I felt like in clothing. It wasn't this young man's fault that I didn't have a team mindset in the home I was born into. I know others of you out there understand what I am talking about. It isn't that all parents just don't care. It is they don't know where to begin and feel overwhelmed that they have to do it alone. They don't put their trust in the Lord and ask for his gift of peace. It is hard to lay it at the foot of Jesus when he isn't something we see everyday or in the kitchen. I know just how crazy it sounds, but there is so much in crying out to him to give you what you can't achieve as a human on your own. He set it up that way to begin with so we would do everything with this help. I should have asked for that help several weeks before I met Luis in the dance club. Maybe things would have been different. I hadn't learned much in the "sex" category when I was with my first real boyfriend, because we didn't have sex and we barely did anything besides just kiss. I was older now and starting to feel good about myself one day at a time since I did have my own apartment and I was working. I also had this fantastic gym I was a member of and I loved going there after work and just letting the stress of my day go. I met so many people there. I still see so many familiar faces once in a while when I am out all over town. I shouldn't have put so much emphasis on what I looked like, but for so long I didn't feel like myself. I felt trapped in someone else's body. I let it go too far trying to grasp some self awareness by seeing how many guys would give me the time of day. I know everyone is going to be so sad for me at this point but the reality is I see this kind of behavior all day long from all generations of girls and guys. It's a reality folks. We are so lacking in self awareness and self love that we try and fill those voids with other human's thoughts or opinions. It wouldn't be so dangerous if it didn't lead to trouble. I was one of the lucky one's but I know there are many more women out there who haven't been so lucky. I was trying so hard to find that girl inside of me, the one I could identify with and the one I could love that I became so consumed in having men find me attractive that I had made a bad choice that led to losing my virginity against my will. Rape. Red and I had been out at the club with a lot of her friends and we all drove in one car. So when one of the guys at the gym saw me out and about in town instead of my gym clothes he started to pay attention to me. I got giddy and STUPID ALL AT THE SAME TIME. Believe me when I tell you I know what goes on out there in this world and it isn't getting better with all these young adults relying on drugs, pills, or alcohol. I decided to follow him home in my car all by myself at this point and I was feeling pretty confident since I recognized his cousin from our local swimming club. Things would be just fine. I couldn't have been more wrong. I was quickly left at his house to play strip poker by myself and things turned for the worse. His cousin had left the house thinking his older cousin had things he was going to tend to. Well I was in over my head. Virgins are a little slow on the sex part since we haven't gotten past "making out" (totally embarrassing) But it's the truth. He had way too much to drink that night and he was pushing me and pulling at my clothing. I was slowly dying inside as I knew what was going to come next. He managed to show me the house as we walked back to the bedroom he was going to show me the bathroom. I walked out to find him laying on his bed. I told him I had to get going and as I walked back into the hall way he said we could just talk. I WAS AN IDIOT. I SHOULD HAVE LEFT RIGHT THEN AND THERE. I believed him and ultimately wanted this guy to be a nice guy and just respect my wishes. Like all stupid girls do, we put our emotions out there and we want to be talked to. He said the magic words. Telling me he wanted to talk was the point of no return. Once I laid on the bed he decided I had asked for it and began to take my clothing off. I kept telling him I didn't want to have sex and that I should have thought of that before I teased him and had him pick me up for the night. I laid there thinking over and over how things were so innocent at first, but became scary. I didn't fight back. I didn't scream. I didn't try to get away. I didn't cry. I didn't enjoy it. I lost my virginity to a total loser that I had thought was nice just because we went to the same gym. I hadn't even slept with my boyfriend of 2 years. What would have made me have sex with this guy. For one, it is overwhelming when you don't know a damn thing about sex and you are being pushed and undressed against your will. It isn't something you can prepare for without really having a team at home to go over how this can affect you. It isn't easy when it is someone you have romanticized for months and then get an opportunity to be shown attention by them. It is a very dangerous situation when your brain isn't set up to protect you against this kind of decision making. Chances are he doesn't even remember that night. I wouldn't give him satisfaction that it was the night he took my virginity from me. I didn't have the guts to admit to myself that I had put myself in that situation that was dangerous. I didn't die, I didn't get cuts or bruises, I didn't get beaten, an STD, a pregnancy or even talked about. It was like it never happened as far as the world was concerned. I left shortly after he was finished and felt like the biggest piece of crap that ever did live. WHY DIDN'T I FIGHT BACK???? WHY DIDN'T I SCREAM????? WHY DIDN'T I CRY???? I have asked myself that a hundred times over the last 14 years. In one lonely night just by myself I lost the one thing I had to hold onto until it was my decision to lose it. Once you lose it, it's much harder to rationalize why not to continue on that path. I guess since I never told anyone until many many years later that it happened. I just wanted it to go away. I never wanted anyone to know that I had messed up so badly and that person that I knew from the gym just disappeared. I made sure of it. I never put myself near him again. I wanted him to think I didn't approve.....You understand? I wanted him to think he was just foul and I wasn't interested. Plus I was scared shitless I would be hurt again. I wanted to toughen up, really I did. If I could go back and change what happen, I would. I made a mistake and I was sure I wasn't going to do it again. Not all guys operate under the same pretenses. It wasn't long before I was making another mistake. It had been just a few weeks, maybe 2 months, and I was making mistake number 2. I had acquired more male interests than I knew at my gym. It seemed the more my body changed the more came out of the wood work. I had always had a lot of friends I would text with but nothing serious. Just friend stuff, or so I thought. One night I was at home and I got a text that a friend from Hbg was down my way to see a friend and he knew I lived near by. He wanted to stop in and give me a visit. No harm in that right??? I mean we know each other, we hang out with groups of friends down town and we workout together. Not a big deal. I mean I did have my own place and this is the type of things friends do, right??? Maybe it would have been different if he wasn't drunk. Once again your youth has a way of creeping up on you when you don't factor in alcohol and what it does to you. He came in all weird like to my living room. He started kissing on me and I tried to push him off of me. He was feeling the drinks and my neighbors were gonna start hearing me telling him no. I didn't want anything to happen, we were friends. He was nice to me, there was no reason for this to happen. He didn't seem to want to listen at all to me. He kept telling me I was so nice and pretty and funny and he really liked me. I told him that was fine, but he needed to leave. He wasn't having it. He was a very tall, very big man. He decided to take things into his own hands and pick me up. He carried me back to the bedroom and tried to have sex with me. I kept fighting him. He actually broke my bed because he kept trying to pin me down. It was scary thinking how this man keeps pushing himself on me. TWICE IN 2 MONTHS. WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON?????? I had had my virginity my whole life up until this saga of men just doing what they want. Or was I letting them get too close??? It's a combination of both. No matter who you're with, if they can't respect no....then there is going to be a problem. I can honestly say he left and I didn't see him again like that one on one from there on out. I don't think he would remember that night like that anyway because alcohol has a way of clouding your judgement. These could very well be decent enough guys, but what I experienced with them will forever stain my memories with bad blood. Two very similar encounters and one virginity lost. When along comes this man that I'm finally interested in and like. I wanted this guy to like me so badly that I was afraid if I told him that someone raped me and tried to rape me, he would leave. I hadn't even told my parents. If I had shared something so intimate like that with the whole family (at the time) I would have been so damaged by what they thought I did to get into a situation like that. I couldn't handle any more scrutiny from them. I lived through it and began to share it with my girlfriends. Things were looking up. I forgave myself which is the most important part of this whole thing. I then forgave the men for being idiots and hurting me emotionally and physically. I didn't hold a grudge on either one of them. I understand what I did in the situation to lead to that outcome. I was a long time ago now and it still hurts to remember the girl who felt so low about herself that she would keep a secret about how she lost her virginity. I've never kept it from my husband now. He's a gem and cried for me because of the way those men treated me. It lead me to the moment where I was falling for Luis and wanted this young boy to be attracted to me. That phone call I took in the restaurant was the beginning. Once I left the place I got in my car and called him back. We talked for hours and had a blast laughing at how he spoke vs. the way I did. He loved that I always laugh and carry on. He used to say...."crazy girl". He seemed to like the way I saw life and that was refreshing to me. Maybe he wouldn't care about the sex thing.........