Lost Girl

Peter Pan's costume got lost backstage. and I was too busy growing up to go looking for it. I was kissing boys, and kissing girls. And learning nothing from the fact that I was hating each kiss. I convinced myself I wanted the taste of someone else's tongue, but really, I wanted to feel someone else's mouth, wet with something other than tears, so that I could forget the dryness of my own empty throat. And while I lent my lips to people who didn't really deserve them, I felt my heart break into tiny, tiny, bits. I came with bright eyes and clean teeth, smooth skin and modesty, wrapped in the cocoon of puberty. I left with wild eyes, that could never reach my smile, and dirty teeth, mixed with other people's saliva and skin cells (I bit down too hard because I didn't want them to leave) and I left with a chin full of pimples and hickeys bruising the left side of my neck. But what I think changed me the most was that I came wearing a shirt, and left wearing none, and somehow, somehow I told my brain "this is okay" I was thirteen, caught up in an eighteen year old's promise. When he called me "pretty," and I heard "important." Now: I mattered, and when he called me "sexy" I heard "you mean something." And then, when he sent me electronic letters of love and detailed the ways he wanted to spread my legs, control my body with his unforgiving hands, and exchange sweat with my underage and innocent self, I heard: "you are worth something, you are worth this perverted love, you are worth touching, even if you hate the way his hands feel." I didn't realize it was wrong. And he stole my first kiss, but I told my brain the sick feeling in my stomach were just fluttery, little butterflies. But I was sick, and this was sick, I was just too naive to know. These were the days I learned the hard way to trust my gut. When it rolls and shifts and sinks, let go, turn away, run in the other direction. Nothing good can come of puking your sanity to accommodate for the second-guesses and insecurities. I was thirteen, and too busy turning seventeen to understand I didn't have to grow up.