An ode to Reality.

Nobody considers abuse to be tragic. Not in this day and age. Everyone suffers from it. Just different types. Physical Abuse is such a shame--should've called the cops. Verbal Abuse? Well, that's so---tolerated. Really, not exotic at all anymore.

Then you throw in those three letters in. They're nowhere near each other in the alphabet. Sort of...random, actually, when you think about it. Why does this one small word mean so much or even so little in some people's minds. Three letters that, when I was a kid, I was embarrassed to say. It was a giggling word, to whisper with your buddies, but you would never think it or even attempt to fathom what it meant.. S-E-X. Sexual Abuse is unspoken, it's not there if you don't see it. That is one hundred percent true.

People will sweep it under a thousand dollar faux rug from Kuwait, clap their hands, and completely toss it out of their mind. They'll vacuum it if it starts to re-emerge. As the stains begin to fade, maybe it'll get scrubbed. The cleaning crew will come in and do their job. But it won't erase. Unless it happened to them.

Telling the story isn't so easy. It's the reactions of the audience, I fear. What everyone fears.

Option One: They could think I'm lying--So I seem a deranged attention-seeking freak, I guess. I wish it weren't the truth. I really do. Option Two: They could cry and tell me they're sorry--the compassion would kill me. My skin would burn me alive. If only I were as lucky. I would receive sympathy hugs, mournful frowns, and the melancholy advice. Option Three: They could completely blow it off as society does. No big, I guess. She was only molested by her stepfather for two years straight; only forced and manipulated to be silent, afraid of truth and the ramifications, unable to tell what is right or wrong, and where one stands in-between.

At least she wasn't killed.

No, just completely ruined for life, I guess.

But we move on. Then we become unhappy and take prozac and then we get divorced and die alone. the end.