It's Not Like I Was Raped

It's not like I was raped.

It's not. I told him yes. I let him have sex with me. So, why am I flashing back to that moment and panicking so much I can't even make love to my husband?

I can't breathe; my chest is too tight, my skin is crawling like bugs live underneath it and my throat hurts from trying not to scream.

Razors.
It feels like razors.
Or maybe knives. 
Nails. 
Nails digging into my trachea and trying to crawl from my mouth and spill this scream that's lodged inside.

My body is treacherous.
My mind betrays me.

Why? Why now, why this moment? Why at all?

I can't help it anymore and I pull back, struggling to breathe, even though I'm breathing so much my head begins to float. I shove against him so hard it hurts my wrists and scratch mindlessly at my chest like I can open it up to make the air come easier, only it doesn't.  

I can hear him asking what's wrong, what he's done, what he can do. I can feel him touching me but every time he touches me it hurts. My skin is too sensitive. Or, maybe, it's my nerves that are too sensitive and scraping at my insides when I feel his fingers on me.

It's just too much.

It's not like I was raped.

I gave permission for him to take me on the dirty bathroom floor of a drug house. I said it was OK for my first time to be a 28 year old man right after graduation. I found him thoughtful because he held my head so it wouldn't smack into the heater. 

The voices in my head cover every sound and my body shakes so much my teeth hurt. He asks me to talk, to just please explain and I can hear the terror in his voice. He's afraid he's hurt me.

I just shake my head.

"It's not like I was raped."

"Weren't you?"

I adamantly shake my head watching as tears drip down my cheeks onto the black sheets. I bunch them under my fingers - twist them, pinch, then resort to scratching my arm. I dig my nails in until it's unbearable and scratch the length of my forearm while he wraps himself around me, holding me still, forcing me to stop. 

I struggle. 

"No." My voice breaks in half; the weight of my shame too much to handle. "I was high. I was drunk. I knew better and I did it." I crack; glass breaking from the strength of everything pressing against it, shattering into pieces on our bed. "It was me!" I screech through a voice that's raspy and tear filled. "It's not like I was raped, why is this even here?!"

He grabs me again, calmly running his fingers over my shoulders and I fight the urge to jerk away because I love it, I love him, but it hurts. "You didn't choose that. You didn't choose any of it. It wasn't your fault."

It wasn't my fault?

I submitted myself this man, this child molester. I allowed him to convince me that losing my virginity on top of dirty socks and empty meth bags was a great idea.That was me.

It's not like I was raped.

What Am I Worth?

For the purposes of this quick (long winded) explanation I'm not even touching on the fact that minimum wage is not enough to live on, it has absolutely no baring on what I'm about to say.

What bothers me about this post is that some random person has decided he (she) has the right to deem a person worthy or unworthy. It's literally the phrasing on this stupid meme that makes me cringe not the stupidity of it.

Who has the authority to choose worth in another person? No one does. No one else gets to decide to that I'm unworthy because of anything let alone a simple fucking MISTAKE.

If I forget to put ketchup on my daughter's salad and she cries and pouts until I figure out what mistake I've made am I any less worthy than I was five minutes ago?

No. No one would ever say that a mistake means a person is unworthy.

So why is a McDonalds worker held to a higher standard?

Do you even know how busy of an hour they can have? 2000$ in McDonalds is a lot of fucking food. So this worker who has been doing hamburgers with ketchup all day for the entire four months he's been working here accidently forgets to NOT PUT KETCHUP on your burger and suddenly he's not worth anything? Really? Really?! That's your standard for worth huh?

What if it was his first day?

Do you go the entire day without making a
Single.
Solitary.
Mistake?

Not one single misstep? If so, fucking congrats to you; you might wanna think about presidency.

The money isn't the point. Minimum wage and people being unable to survive isn't the point. A single mother escaping an abusive husband who just needs one single job to live without being beaten everyday isn't the point. A college student also taking care of the family they didn't plan on isn't the point.

The point is that NO ONE gets to determine another person's worth; especially over something as stupid as ketchup on a fucking 1$ burger.