From the day I was wrapped in my new born baby blanket I was daddy’s baby girl. I would cry if anybody else held me, wouldn’t even let my mom hold me long enough to feed me, leaving her with no choice but to let my dad bottle-feed me at five months, thus beginning our close knit relationship. Fast forward sixteen years and we are not speaking to each other.

I grew up in a very loving family who are also very religious. We would go to church every Sunday, participate in all the events and have traditional values pounded into our head from every adult we greeted in the pews. Sex before marriage was frowned upon and even the word itself was never to be spoken out-loud for it might bring unholy ideas into the minds of the innocent. By age fifteen, I had never yet kissed a boy, and desired to save that as long as many other things such as my first dance, my virginity, and my cuddling experiences for my one and only. When and how I was to meet him was all in Gods hands, and the minute I saw him, I would know he was “the one”.

I guess you could say I was living in a sort of disoriented fairytale world and was unprepared for the real world. At sixteen I met my fist boy outside of church who really seemed to like me, and trying to keep it that way I went along when he offered we go back to his place. That was the day I realized that boys only want one thing. Unfortunately I realized this a little too late, and that night I got raped.

Falling into a state of depression I set out on a mission to destroy boys. I hated them, hated them all. My plan was to make them fall in love with me, use them for sex then leave them dirty and broken as I was. Six months into my new routine, my mother finds a pregnancy test in my room. It was negative, but now my parents knew. That was the first time I ever saw my daddy cry. After that, either he couldn’t forgive himself for not protecting me or he was to ashamed of me, but that was the day I was no longer his baby girl and we stopped talking for there was nothing to say. They would watch boy after boy come through the house. My dad would threaten some, beat up others, but I kept on finding boys to destroy.

Then one day I met a boy. Seemed to me just like any other boy. Somebody to use and break. But he kept coming around the house, talking with my parents, which I hated about him. He played with my brothers, had long conversations with my sister, and pretty soon my family had a soft spot for him. Everybody but me that is, until the day my dad looked at me, like I was his baby girl again, innocent as before, and said to me “I like him”. My daddy talked to me. Actually said something with meaning behind it instead of the required “how was your day?” “good” conversation we carried on to please my mom. My daddy actually said something to me. I decided this boy must not be so bad and maybe I should try to be a good girlfriend to him.

After two years of hating boys and simply using them to hurt them, that became who I was, and it turns out that changing is not easy. Being a good girlfriend seemed impossible. A second chance was not enough for me, neither was a third, or forth for that matter. But he never gave up on me, knowing somewhere deep inside that I was the perfect girl for him and strongly believing that one day I would stop this madness and be all his. I had cheated on him countless times, and tried pushing him away to save him from my self-destruction, but he stayed firm and close as the backbone I didn’t have.

Little by little I started to realize how much he really did love me, and how much I needed him. He gave me the strength and the courage I needed to let go of my past, to forgive. But most importantly he had faith in me that I could change, he saw the girl in me that I thought no longer existed. My dad and I are working on restoring our relationship and it’s a slow process but I know we will get there someday. I am happy to announce that my boyfriend and I are together, going on a year and four months now. I have to admit, the past does creep up and scare me, reminding me that I do not deserve him and I start to distance myself, trying to get him to find a good pure girl that will give him everything I could not. It is an ongoing battle believing that he loves me and will not leave. But somehow we get through those bad days.

A heart like that is hard to find but a heart like that is what makes the world a better place. Nobody asked him to stick around and especially to help, he did it out of love. I believe that if not for this whole experience I would not be the girl I am today. Even if the rape didn’t happen, I would most likely have grown up to be a pessimistic self-absorbed snot who wouldn’t have given a second thought about other people and their problems. So do I believe in second chances? You bet. Second and third and fourth and the list never ends. Anybody and everybody can change when given the proper care with love and faith in that persons ability to change.