bra and panty

so i am here holding the garments which cover the things i am supposed to hold sacred

my heart and my womanhood.......

However, as i look at them i am filled with sadness because i didn't do a

very good job of holding either one sacred

my heart, i kept it so out of reach that when it was time for me to love,

time for me to show tenderness, warmth, and affection i didn't know how to

so

i gave of my body instead...shared my womanhood with people

who didn't respect me, let along care about me

but in my mind i was loving...

i was giving them my heart by letting them violate the essence of who i was

i remember my first time...

i was darn near raped...and in the sense of what rape is,

i was.

i was eighteen and a freshmen in college

i was so wet behind the ears. I remember that right before i came to college,

my 14 year old cousin showed me one of her mother's porno so that i could understand

how a man and a woman actually had sex.

i understood that a man had a penis and a woman had a vagina and that the two

were supposed to go together some kind of way, but i just couldn't get the picture quite

right. so, my cousin showed me the porno

and i was in awe. and scared.

so now i am in college watching porn all of the times with my gurls and some freaky

negros; but i still wasn't comfortable with the images i was seeing.

yeah, i fantasized about doing it with my best friend probably becuz

i loved him and that's how i felt i could show him how much i loved him

so my first real boyfriend, i guess. i didn't like him really.

i was more in love with his little brother and sister than he and his crazy mama

i spent more time looking after them then being with him which was fine by me

all he did was lie about stupid stuff.

he once told me that he was a part of the Fab 5 that came out in Michigan

yeah you know the year...when weber and his crew played...he told me that i never saw

him on t.v. when they played because he always get ejected for fighting

sad thing was he really believed he played with them because he told everyone this.

and he wasn't joking...he thought someone would believe it or

one of his other pathetic lies

so you can see why i didn't like him; yet i stayed with him because ...

i don't know....but i do know that i didn't love him or even like him like that...

something to do...everyone else had somebody so i figured i should too

esp. before going away to school

so i used to talk to his mama everyday while i was away at school until one day

the calls stopped and i grew concerned... so i called her house and was told that she had

died. and i was devastated. she was the first person i had actually watched die.

before i left for school, i used to go visit her everyday and take her and the kids

something to eat because she was always too weak to cook, but never too weak to try

and hustle me out of my money.

so i went home without even telling my parents. hadn't talked to them since they dropped me off at my school's doorstep.

i stayed with my boyfriend for two nights. the first night he just cried and cried

talking about how he missed his mama and how he could see her

the next day, we went to his grandma's house to learn of the funeral arrangements

and also to learn what would happen to his youngest brother and sister

it was there we found out that his grandfather wasn't going to go to the funeral, he didn't want to see his daughter like that ...and it was there that we found out that his grandma wasn't

going to allow me to go the funeral.

she didn't want no darky at the funeral...go figure, she was darker than me...

while in her time in mourning, she felt compelled by her grief to tell my boyfriend

"thought i told you never to bring home nothing darker than you"

then she said that the kids would be shipped to another state where they knew noone because

they had their mother's trashy ways. they were 4 and 8 at the time

the grandfather must of had enough because he stood up and said

"that gurl is going to the funeral and that's final. she came all the way back to go to it and if i have to come sit outside the funeral home to make sure she is allowed in, i will...and if them kids got their mama's trashy's ways, then they got your ways, cuz they mama got her ways from you!"

that night i cried myself asleep, feeling sorry for the younger kids, wishing i could take them back with me

wishing i could protect them from the madness. now understanding their

mother's choice of not telling her family she had cancer.

i was awaken to pressure around by womanhood.

i looked down and there was my boyfriend trying to force himself into me while i was

sleeping. he had cut off my panties.

i was terrified but too tired to care.

i asked him what he was doing and he said that he just needed to feel loved and close to me

i told him there was no way in hell that he was going to enter me without anything

so he gets dress and runs down to the gas station and buys some condoms and comes back

he gets undress and i ask about why his pubic hair is gone

he tells me that he always cuts it off in the summertime

he asks me if i really want to to do it and i tell him no

but he says i can still go it though right? and i tell him to go ahead

he lifts my legs over my head and enters me like that

we will not discuss the level of pain i was in...

when it was over, i got up and got dressed, we would be leaving soon for the funeral and then i had a plane to catch

it wasn't until three days later that i discovered the real reason my boyfriend had shaved his hair. he had given me CRABS which i was about to return to him in a plastic bag until

one of my chi-town gurls told me to let it go....to be the bigger person

so we called his house pretending to be a doctor telling his uncle that he needed to come

back to the clinic as soon as possible to be treated for the four STDs that he tested positive for

his uncle put him out shortly after...something about not wanting someone

who was nasty like that living under his roof.

i told you, a sista always get even

but that experience defined how i freely gave of myself even when i didn't want to later on in my life...which is why i have decided to try and abstain from sex until i truly

know what it means to love

without giving of my womanhood.