Chapter 89

How can I recall these things and feel like I asked for them? I didn’t ask for them. I didn’t ask Ray to try to rape me, but deep down, that child is nodding at me somewhere inside, and she’s saying, “Yes, Emma, yes, you did. Why else would these men, one after the other, try to touch you? Try to take you? You must have done something, Emma. Your own mother believed it.”

It’s the guilt I forever shy away from, the shame and misery of my internal battle. It’s what she programmed me to accept.

Is this what I do to Jake? Do I make him want to push things further between us? Like those men, will he take what he wants, then leave me broken on the floor, the way my mother was left. The way I was left.

Jake isn’t capable of such things, but I must be doing something for it to turn out this way.

What has Jake done to me? Why is he doing this to me now?

My mind is a messy scramble of thoughts and emotions, half of which make no sense, and I’m dying inside.