I’m seven, maybe eight, and we’re sitting side by side on my bed upstairs. My room is a reflection of the protective bubble that separates me from the world, and everything is painted the color of innocence. As the sunlight glides gently through the window, it casts a gilded light on your dark face. You don’t have an visceral face, but your eyes are a little too sharp, and your smile is a little to predatory.

You’re older than me, the memory has been buried for so long that I can no longer remember exactly, but I imagine you as being thirteen years old. You call me beautiful and I smile, I’ve never been called that before (at least, not by someone who wasn’t related to me). But I don’t feel beautiful. And your smile is tainted, and your words are tainted, and my room is tainted, and I want you to leave but I don’t know how to ask you to leave without sounding impolite.

Our legs are almost touching. I don't want them to touch, but I think that you want them to touch. (And looking back on it now I think you knew I didn’t want them to touch). But in the end they end up touching, and your arm ends up wrapped around my shoulders, and your hand ends up on my thigh, and we end up pressed together side by side. You lean in and whisper something but i’m too busy focussing on the unwanted contact to hear you. I want to shift away, but I don’t know how to shift away without being impolite.

I realize that the words out of your mouth were I really like you and I say it back because that’s polite thing to do. I’m not looking at you, mostly because I don’t want you to look at me. And I’m wondering if you want to kiss me (because I really don’t want to kiss you). Then my mom calls up to us and says it’s time for you to go home.

My relief is overwhelming all of my senses. But even after you leave, you’re not gone. The color of my room is darker, and the sunlight is tainted, and the walls are tainted, and I am tainted, and it’s all your fault.

You have likely forgotten me, but I will never have the pleasure of erasing you from my memory because you have caused me to question who I am.

Sometimes when she looks at me I feel a rush of emotion so powerful that it becomes physically painful. I love her. I look at her in a way that they tell me is wrong. And all the while there is a voice in the back of my head wondering if I was born into this closet, or if I ran inside of it to escape from you and how dare you?

She hold her arms open to embrace me; warm and welcoming and so much better than I deserve. And even though I am healing, there are still times when I shy away. I will always wonder if I do that because of you and what gave you the right?

Moments come when I feel filthy and worthless and undeserving and tainted and tainted and tainted and is it because of you? Did you do this to me? Who did you think you were?

My parents sometimes mention your family in passing. I see your smile on a christmas card every couple of years, and I try not to imagine what could have happened. And I try not to talk about what did happen. Because it seems so small, it seems like not a big deal, it seems like I’m over-exaggerating the whole situation. Maybe I am… I don’t know. But what I do know, is that you are the earliest memory I have of feeling unsafe, and that’s a fact. But I try not to hate you.

I don’t know if I will forgive you.

But for my own sake I will heal myself because there will come a day when I won’t be scared, a day when I won’t question the authenticity of my love, a day when I will let her arms encircle me and not want to turn away, a day when I will truly be at peace with myself and your memory.

You did not win.
You did not do any irreversible damage.
You did not taint me forever.
I will always be a stronger person because of what you did and almost tried to do.

So maybe, I should thank you; because by tainting me, you taught me how to untaint myself. And I think that maybe that’s a lesson I needed to learn.