When I was thirteen I really looked up to my cousin. She frankly was the worst possible role model, and I had to fight so hard for her acceptance. But like everything else you have to fight for when it isn’t just handed to you, it felt good to have it. I always wanted to spend time with her but she was constantly busy, so when she finally asked me to join her for a girl’s night, I begged my parents to let me go with her. At the time I didn’t really understand why they fought so hard against it; now I wish I would have let them win.


It was a mid-summer night after my seventh grade year. Given that it was a girl’s night I got the opportunity to doll myself up then she came and got me. Her mother was taking care of a young boy that was living in a very bad household. She decided that she wanted to go get him so he could join us, so we had to go to Bellevue to pick him up. When we got there he had vanished. We went searching for him and eventually found him, but we missed our movie time. The next time it was showing was a lot later so we decided to stay at his home which even terrified him. The reason we stayed was because it was his older brother’s birthday and her ex-boyfriend that she wasn’t over yet was there.


I walked into a cloud of smoke and was met by a horrifying odor. When I could finally see I understood where it came from. The people there were a good deal older than me and were sitting in the living room drinking, smoking pot, and even shooting heroin. Back then I didn’t know what any of it was. When I got older and was brave enough to finally tell someone, they informed me of the purpose for those funny looking cigarettes and needles.


I just froze. I was a deer in the headlights. When she asked me if I was ok there I should have said no. I should have screamed at the top of my lungs, demanded that she took me home that second. I didn’t. I couldn’t speak up. All I could bring myself to do was lock myself in the bathroom and hide in the bathtub. I didn’t know then that there were two doors to that bathroom: the one in front of me that I locked, and the one to my left that I didn’t. I remember every inch of that disgusting bathroom, and every second I spent in there, in hell.


I wasn’t alone in that bathroom for long. What happened in there I can’t bring myself to even speak of, but I can say that it changed me more than anything else could have. I spent most of the next few years trying like hell to forget it, but every once in a while he comes back to me in the form of a nightmare. I go through every day pretending it never happened; pretending I made her take me home, pretending I let my parents win. I left that night as a pure and beautiful little girl and left something dark, stained, and broken. I trusted her then, and that’s a mistake, I promise you, I never made again.