‘Never let a boy touch you there’

I was twelve when my mother broke into the bathroom and laid that one on me.

A naive child, weeping softly to the pain of my first period, I needed reassurance, not a lecture. The youngest of seven, and the only girl; I had been daddy’s little princess. Now he was gone; and rather than drawing closer she was pushing us apart.

When I was twenty one I contracted a urinary infection which went undiagnosed and untreated for four years. Denied any further education, I was still living with her, unable to afford a rent of my own. So I spent my last four years in the family home, in agony.

At twenty five I escaped and moved in with friends. Only then was I able to change doctors, get a female doctor, and seek help. I had a hysterectomy on my twenty sixth birthday. As a present my mother disowned me as a spinster, and amazingly a slut.

Barren, I tried to rebuild my life, I had a few boyfriends, but nothing serious. We would discuss the future and when they talked of how many children they wanted, I would withdraw; or they would dump me as frigid. Never having been deflowered I found the pain too much to bare.

So I remained alone, until I met Kim. Immediately I knew it was love, so I adopted her without hesitation. Our life is full of poetry, me and my wonderful, autistic angel.

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