Me too.
Me too.
Me too.
These two small words rise like smoke from every woman I have ever met. A whisper at first, then a trembling chorus. A confession we never wanted, a wound we inherited, a hymn of survival that has been stitched into our tongues without our permission. We are a nation of purple hearts, bruised but still beating, carrying the weight of stories that should never have existed in the first place.
People warn little girls about monsters hiding in darkness.
No one warns us about the man with the soft smile.
No one warns us about the friend of the family.
No one warns us about the one who laughs gently and remembers your birthday.
The one who waits for the moment your guard slips.
The one who looks safe until he is not.
And in this world we walk through, some men have forgotten their humanity.
They pursue our daughters before their hairs have grown out.
They look at twelve-year-old children like hunger looks at meat.
A society once joked that "twelve is lunchtime," not knowing that those words slice through innocence like a blade.It sits heavy in me, a grief, a disgust, a shaking I cannot name.
Even our homes have never been holy places.
There are girls who learned fear from the same hands that lifted them as babies.
Uncles.
Fathers.
Cousins.
Boyfriends.
Men who should have been protectors but became shadows that swallowed innocence whole.
Children barely able to hold a bar of soap bathing in small basins behind shacks, their bodies barely big enough to hold breath, yet somehow big enough to be watched by men who feel entitled to everything. Our innocence was never ours for long.
Some blame poverty, but violation is not born from empty pockets.
It is born from empty souls.
And my story, like so many others, begins quietly.
At eight in the morning I went to fetch mail.
At eight in the morning the world shifted beneath my feet.
The post office was supposed to be a place of stamps and dates, yet it became the graveyard where my childhood was buried without a prayer.
At eight in the evening an Uber ride turned into a battlefield I never prepared for.
His hands were iron.
His breath was smoke.
My voice disappeared inside me as if fear had stolen my tongue.
I lay still, feeling my spirit leave my body, floating above the girl who could not move, the girl who felt dirty laying on the dirt she came from before the moment was even over.
And when I tried to rise, another violence waited for me at home.
Silence.
The kind that suffocates.
The kind that chokes.
The kind that says, Protect the family name, even if it means burying your truth.
The kind that tells you to bleed quietly so the neighbours will not talk.
The kind that accepts police bribes, to a missing docket.
At school the story repeated itself with different hands, different words, the same darkness.
A principal in a place meant for learning.
A system that shielded him because his skin was lighter and his power was heavier.
They looked at him with sympathy and looked at me like a problem that needed to disappear.
And society had its list of questions ready.
Did you enjoy it
What were you wearing
Why did you go
Why did you trust him
Why didn't you scream
Why didn't you fight
Why are you still hurt
It is never,
Are you okay
Do you need help
How can we protect you
They forget we are human.
They forget our bodies carry memories like tombstones.
They forget the scars they cannot see are the ones that ache the loudest.
Look at me closely.
See what they tried to erase.
See the sorrow resting beneath my skin.
See the hollowness sitting in my rib cage like an unwanted tenant.
See the young girl who grew up carrying stains that were never hers.
I once lay in a pool of my own blood, begging my spirit to come back.
Some days I feel buried eight feet deeper, as though the earth itself is trying to swallow the pain I cannot carry anymore.
And still I live.
Still I breathe.
Still I ask a question that has echoed in the hearts of girls across generations.
Why me
Why us
Why must we keep surviving what we did not choose
There are no answers yet.
Only the haunting, only the ache, only the echo of a wound that stretches across every woman I know.
When the world asks again,
Why do you hurt like this
I whisper the question every survivor has carried in her chest:
Why me?
I did not deserve this, and no one did.
If it were your mother or your sister, how would you feel?
Why me?