I bought a CD

My mom bought me a new outfit for a friend’s birthday party in 1995. I was proud to fit in for the afternoon in a white, popcorn material shirt with daisies around the collar and a short, blue and white gingham skirt. A bright yellow baggy coat that I hated and my mom insisted on. My hair was permed (also my mom) and halfway grown out. I was 10. We toured the town in a limousine that her grandmother owned and drove. I had $30 to my name. I don’t remember what we ate, but afterward I remember going to Records Off the Wall in the Westwood Plaza. On a shelf made big enough to display just one CD, showcased in defiance, the double-disk beauty that mom had refused to buy me at the mall the weekend prior. My friends stood in line to buy Shaggy and Sheryl Crow. I was spending over $26 on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness… wearing a bright yellow coat. That was the first CD I ever bought myself.

Three years later it was stolen by my best friend. My elementary and middle school years were some of the worst of my life. I didn’t know what boundaries were. Autonomy didn’t mean anything. My body belonged to everyone else. I was taught more than anything to be quiet and stay of out the way. In high school I found my group of people. In my 30s I learned how to teach kids and teens about how to demand respect, and we all learned together. I have been sexually assaulted hundreds of times in my life, and all but a dozen were before I got my first period. I always assumed other girls had the same life growing up. Other boys acted the same way. I think that feeling kept me resilient. I think about what I could have focused on in life if I hadn’t had to focus on being resilient.

It is common to experience SA,

but not at that volume….

but but maybe that’s why I have craved loud music.