Dark to Light

Hormones

I'm deciding to jump ahead in my story by a few years.
Let's land at age thirteen.
We're in middle school, eighth grade.
Nearly everyone is a walking hormone and attached at the face nearly every hallway you're walking past.
At this point, I've done nothing signaling promiscuity with a boy and didn't really plan on it either.
Why was everyone all over each other?
I wished to just carry out the school year with cool friends and pushing myself to try to get through learning Algebra.
Not the case.
Of course puberty had to happen and my body started to b l o s s o m.
With that became the start of heavy male attention.
Now, I don't say this to be highly conceited.
But it felt like the boys were ravenous for girls and I was trying to keep them at bay as long as I could.
I had crushes, yes.
But I didn't have any intentions of having a boyfriend, after all, my dad was a Deputy Sheriff and he had zero time for boys sniffing around our house.
It feels like every boy knew that, but many tried to push the boundaries.
I thought that if I just did a little teasing and flirting here and there, I could stay relevant and it would just be e n o u g h.
But if you've ever been in middle school, you know eventually, they will want more.
So there came boy after boy asking me to be their "girlfriend"... if they were cute and within our friend circle, I said yes.
But looking back now, there had to be some kind of bet to see who can go furthest with me because within 2-3 days, if I wasn't full on making out with them, they would make up some excuse to dump me.
Then there was this boy, we'll call him "C". Now I had been crushing on this particular boy since about the third grade. So to my disbelief when he asked me out, I of course said yes.
After school, me, C and our friends were hanging out at the school near our house, when all of a sudden the topic of kissing came up.
One friend asked me "have you ever kissed anyone before?" And I shyly, said "No".
Basically after that, everyone thought that the situation needed to be rectified and they set me and "C" up in another area with some privacy so he could give me my *first kiss*.
Oh my gosh when I tell you I was nervous.
But quickly, he kissed me and I swear I feel like I was holding my breath and after that brief moment I finally let it out.
Oddly, I was proud of myself for getting that over with and thought maybe now that would be just enough to keep a boyfriend.
Sure enough, within a couple days, he dumped me. I'm pretty sure he was into this other blonde girl and honestly I didn't take it personally.
Surprise, surprise, another eligible boy asked me out and we made it two weeks! He was very nice and let me just give him a kiss before class, but our relationship felt more platonic.
We broke up, got back together another two weeks, he cheated on me with his ex because she would make out with him and I decided we should just end it shortly after.
I carried on this routine into ninth grade.
But it still would not be enough.
Girls were starting to go even further with boys and I refused to compete with that.
I wanted to make out with my boyfriend and be just like the other girls, but personally I'm just not an assertive person in that way and oh my gosh attempting that was so nerve wracking too.
But sure enough, I'm dumped because I was thought to be a prude.
I always wondered how girls gave themselves so freely, yet I had such a stronghold over my body and what someone can do with it.

This would be the start of the trauma from my molestation manifesting itself. I didn't know that at the time.

Come Sophomore year is when things really start to pick up.
Since sixth grade, there was this boy in a grade ahead that was actively pursuing me,  but in a weird way. I would just be sitting in the bleachers during P.E and he would come and sit next to me saying "How's my girlfriend?"... I would just stay quiet and be so shocked by his attention. It led me to start crushing on him and one fateful night at a party that my best friend was throwing, he decided that that was the night he wanted to kiss me and not just a sweet peck, but full fledge stick his tongue in my mouth. Now up until now, I hadn't gone that far.
So the whole experience was foreign to me and I just did my best to go with it.
On her front porch, he literally just kissed me and kept going tongue and all.
He released me and said "See, that wasn't so bad".
Um... what?!
After that, I was repulsed by him and never wanted to make out ever again.
He called me over and over again and I would just avoid him until one day I finally picked up and he just explained that he didn't know that it was my first time kissing like that.
Absolutely mortified!
But it wouldn't be long until my experience would move even further.