Life Is Not a Fairy Tale by Fantasia (books for students to read .TXT) 📗

a bad kid. The boys at school didn’t think of me as a woman—they thought of me as a “ho.”

I hated having to be in school and hated having to be at class at a certain time. I hated the teachers and I hated not being able to spend all my time with my boyfriend. I thought that I was grown up and that I didn’t need any of this anymore. I felt this even stronger now that I was “in love.” I was frisky at the time, too. As the older women from church used to say, “I was smellin’ myself,” kind of like a female dog in heat. My body was hot all the time. I wanted to wear little clothes and get attention from boys. I remember one skirt that I made where I cut the hem so high up that you could see everything that I should have been keeping sacred.

B. and I continued to see each other every opportunity we had and slowly my thoughts on sex changed from disappointment toneed. I would sneak out every opportunity I got to be with him. I skipped school regularly so we could be together. The misunderstanding at that time was that I thought we were in love with each other and he thought that I was easy.

The next misunderstanding I had to deal with changed me forever. I was raped. I want to share this with you because if I can save one of you from having to go through this, like I did, this story is worth sharing. Girls, I know so many of you have had the same thing happen to you, which makes me so mad, sad, and worried for my daughter, Zion. But as long as I’m telling it all, I may as well be as open and honest as I can be. I don’t want to leave nothin’ out.

One day a popular guy in school gave me more attention than I wanted. I was seeing B., but there was always someone new to flirt with and he was one of the guys I always wanted to notice me. It made me feel good to get attention from the guys. When I was wearing something short, I would make a point to go up to this one particular guy and wave, or brush against him by accident, or drop something in front of him. Finally, he noticed me. He raped me in the auditorium after school. I can barely recall the details. I just know that I shudder to think of how that single act changed me in a way that I didn’t need to be changed. I remember pulling myself together and going down to the girls’ locker room and hiding. I was thinking to myself that I was goin’ crazy. I could hear my own voice saying, “It’s your own fault. You was friskin’ around.” I was shaking like a leaf behind a wall of lockers hiding my face and speaking into my tear-drenched hands. I hid in the locker room until everyone had left the gym and the school. When I finally walked the long road up Montlieu Avenue, I went straight to bed. I didn’t get out of my bed for two days. When my mother asked me why I wouldn’t go to school, I said simply, “I’m not going.” I was too paralyzed to even wash the rape off of me. I feltfilthy.

Finally my mom came to me and said, “Something has happened to you.” I didn’t even have to tell her, she could see it all over my face. I told her exactly what happened. She took me back to school, marched me into the principal’s office, and forced me tell them the name of the boy who raped me. He ended up getting into some trouble, but not the trouble he deserved for stripping me of the little innocence I had left.

I dropped the case with the police, because I was constantly being harassed by the other guys in school who used to taunt me with “I’m going to do the same thing that he did to you.” They were friends of the guy who raped me. I was their joke. They were laughing while I was slowly dying inside.

Being raped was just another reminder that I was losin’ control of myself. All those short skirts and frisky ways were gaining me nothing, and I was losing any pride that I had left. I was so ashamed that rape happened to me. I was so helpless and powerless. At the time, I wondered if it was partially my fault, because of the message that I was sending out, with my actions and dressing that way and being so…frisky. Looking back, now I realize that this was my main misunderstanding in high school: I was trying to be one thing, which I thought was grown up and independent, but other people thought I was something else. I couldn’t bring myself to either side of the misunderstanding, mature like I thought I was or the “ho” that I had portrayed for the boys. I was neither one.

Eventually my family moved to Charlotte. We moved because my father had found a small house and was working with a trucking company. My mother was growing depressed and my father wanted our family to make a new start.

In Charlotte, I started going to a new school, and I was making better grades than I ever made in High Point, although my grades were never really great. I thought I was finally separating myself from my past, forgetting the rape and becoming humble again. I wanted to learn and be smart, for once. But being so focused on school was not enough for my spirit. I had no friends at the new school. I desperately wanted to go back to High Point, because I was lonely. I missed my friends and I missed my boyfriend.

After many family debates, I was allowed to