All The Things I've Never Said Before - Part 6

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Because I am a girl at the age of 12 I would have been told that if boys pulled our hair or poked us with pencils it meant that they liked us, but we never did like it that much. By the age of 13 we would walk down the street and these bad men looked from our feet to our face. And we would listen as they completely replace our identity from human to an object as they said cringeworthy things to us. We want so badly to run but always end up frozen in place so we continued to walk-in fast paced. Turning on whatever sidewalk was the absolute closest just to get away even if it didn't lead us in the direction we were originally heading in. Because my mom always told me, "if you see a strange man following you make your way to the other side of the street and remember, if they ever grab you, scream." And this is something we as girls had to learn at the age of 13 because we are just young children. We were spanked by the boys at our school, but it was cool because it had only meant that we had nice bodies. And when they rated our bodies on a scale from 1-10 if you were a ten, you would learn to spend your days hearing the whistles, purring, and the word "damn girl" out loud. Because if you were in the category of a damn girl then that only meant one thing you weren't a damn girl at all because you were just a toy labelled 'do whatever you want to me,' even though I never agreed. And so we were forced to watch what we wore because if it was too much shoulder showing then that meant we had to change our clothes because it distracted the boys in class from their learning. So, the only thing we seemed to be learning were the tips and tricks to tie up our shirt so that it never hung too low because that would show the guys that we wanted it. Because wearing shorts, tank stops and ripped jeans meant that we were flaunting. So, when we finally turned 16, we screamed because the men that followed us down the street and onto those sidewalks they had finally caught up to us. We quietly spoke, 'please don't touch us there." We know we're asking for it by those high heels we were wearing. We were just some of the 68% of victims that will never ever tell a soul. So we will go home and take a few showers and hope to god that we would get some sleep tonight. By the morning light we'll pick the outfit that is the absolute most discreet because we want to make sure that no other man from the other side of the street thinks we look sweet enough to want a taste. We as girls want to make sure that we are covered up as much as possible so that our identities are not replaced with what you would call walking candy. And we as girls will sit at the back of the class where nobody will ask how our weekend was because if they ask us we might just burst into tears with no clue what to do. So we will continue to live in fear. We will run home as quickly as we can so that we never see the same men again that wait for us to be alone. They went from little boys poking us to men provoking us. They went from little boys pulling our ponytails to watching the trail of tears fall down our pillow every night because we knew that once we fell asleep, we would see the man in our dreams that caught up to us on that sidewalk that night and left us bare. We went from playing with our toys to being toys ourselves. So these boys will be boys, and us women will never tell