I was that girl again, so full of joy, so full of hopes for a bright future, enjoying the beauty of life and nature and the sweet touch of that almost spring sun on her skin. I remember the exact date, the exact succession of events that turned that girl into what I am now: no longer a child, not daring to be a woman.

Tears fell on my cheeks without my noticing, as I struggled to stop the trembling of my every limb. My eyes wouldn’t close, no matter how much I willed it, and yet they couldn’t see. The present didn’t exist, only the past, only that day, that dreadful day that had started like any other and never really ended.

I remember his face, his smile, his voice. I remember his words and the wicked light in is eyes as he took my clothes off, pushed me on my own bed. “I know you want it” he said. “No means yes, right? With the way you were dressed, you must want it. You were asking for it. Now spread your legs and let me taste you.”

I know I refused. I know, I remember my voice saying “no, I don’t want that, please stop”

But he didn’t stop.

The memory is so vivid, it feels more real than the last few weeks, the last few years even. My hands grip my belly, willing the pain to stop, willing that day to have never happened.

After what felt like a couple of eternities, I finally closed my eyes. It’s just a memory, just a bad dream, it’s long gone. It shouldn’t have happened. I shouldn’t have let it.

The usual litany of everything I had done wrong that day sang in my head, a familiar and distasteful song that played along with the rhythm of the remembered thrusts.

It finally ended, leaving me sick and trembling in the sweet light of dawn, and I crawled out of bed. I needed a smoke, a coffee and to be alone. I needed this to stop happening.

And yet every year, ever since that day, it came back to haunt me. Every year on the same day, like a song stuck on replay.

“Someday” I told myself, “someday I will make it stop. I’m stronger than him, I’m better than that. I will not let him win.”

A coffee and a cigarette in my hands, seated awkwardly for the pain in my midsection at my kitchen table, I watched the sun rise and poured my hopes into it.

Rise, sun, rise and shower the world with your light, dissolve the monsters that come in the dark and reveal the truth to all of us: that we are not without hope, and that together we can ease the pain of each other.