Ashley talked with me for a couple hours tuesday night. She told me about the first guy she was ever with, how she felt about it and how it is still affecting her to this day and probably always will. Hearing her speak about all these things made me come to some realizations...and it opened my eyes to things I'd put away in the back of my mind because they were too much to acknowledge before.

As she spoke and admitted some things out loud to herself, I felt like I was speaking through her and admitting to the same thing. She spoke about what he did and how she felt...physically and mentally. The need to scream or to move, but you can't move, you can't speak. It's like an out of body experience...it's like you saw the end before the beginning and you already knew it was coming. It's like everything goes hazy and there's a dead weight in your stomach and all you can do is watch, paralyzed in fear it feels like. It was there that I realized what happened and why it's been so hard to look at myself or others in a healthy life afterwards. I know what happened. I need to talk about it. I think I'm ready to talk about it.