It’s the first day of fall today and my favourite time of year. Lindsay and I were sitting outside at lunch today and commenting on the amazing smell in the air. It’s the kind of day where it’s summer in the sun and fall in the shade, and there is a golden shimmer cast upon everything in sight. It’s stunning.
I’m always relieved when fall comes around. I’m not a person that is very comfortable with summer. I love the warmth and the sunshine but I find the summer to be very unpredictable and it makes me anxious. We are always out of our routine in the summer and something in the air seems to flip the world upside down. Most people seem to desperately long for the reprieve from the cold weather whereas I just consider it a season to be survived. It’s as though I hold my breath and just pray that I make it out alive. So far I have.
I’ve never entered into the month of September as the girl that raves about months spent at the beach or on patios. Instead, I’m the girl eager to wear all my new fall clothes even if it’s still thirty degrees out! With the exception of the summer that I got engaged and the summer that I got married, I don’t generally remember summers fondly. I’m usually chomping at the bit for it to be over so I can enter into a safer and more familiar time of year. Odd, I know but it wasn’t always this way.
Growing up, I used to spend the better part of my summers out a ranch just outside of town. I would spend my days swimming, camping and best of all, riding. My Mother always worked so hard each year to be able to send me and every year, I couldn’t wait to be back. It’s actually kind of strange because I was never very comfortable in groups. I was intimidated very easily and large groups (especially of girls) made me feel overwhelmed and scared. But I loved the horses and I did love my summers spent with them. I made new friends, got out of the city and gave my Mom some space from the confines of being a single parent.
My favourite memories of the ranch were getting up really early in the morning to round up the horses from the fields. Anyone who knows me well knows that I am not a morning person in the least but, I could never resist the opportunity to wake up to the early morning air and walk out into the fields that were lightly covered in dew as the horses stood in the distance. Together, we would watch the sun come up. It was so quiet and peaceful at that time of day and although I was young, the staff always let me go out and start bringing in the horses for breakfast. It was gorgeous to watch them first thing in the morning and I always got the impression that they talked about me when I wasn’t looking!
I went to the ranch for a long time and because I essentially grew up there and had such a strong understanding of the horses, I was offered the opportunity to work there at a fairly young age. Of course, I jumped at the opportunity to be paid for doing something that I loved but there were challenges that I would have no way of anticipating or dealing with.
Being younger than everyone else was hard. As a teenager, the two year difference between my peers and I was significant. The other girls spent most of their time chasing boys and getting excited about make-up (yes, even at camp!), and I just wasn’t there yet nor did I care to be. Our differences were obvious and it became a reason for them to dislike me. To add insult to injury, those same boys that were being chased became my friends and started to spend more time with me. I wasn’t completely naïve though. Even at sixteen I understood that my long legs and teenage waist contributed to their motives but in the end, we were friends and continued to be for many years. But these friendships didn’t go over well with the girls that I had to share a tent with all summer. In fact, it just fueled their dislike towards me and eventually I just found myself going home on days off crying and pleading with my Mom not to make me go back.
Late August, the summer that I turned sixteen, I was on site duty in the girl’s area for the night. We were deep in the woods but still close enough that I could see the lights from the chalet in the distance. Most of the girls in the area were under the age of ten and had been asleep for a couple of hours already. As eleven o’clock rolled around, I sat at the picnic table with my flashlight and a book. I heard the sound of someone approaching in the woods and when I pointed my flashlight in their direction, I noticed that it was one of the off-duty guys coming to check up on me. He and his sister were new to the ranch that year and we had become fast friends two months earlier. He was a calm and gentle person, as was his younger sister, and like me, he wanted to “belong”. He was a year older than me and his family had recently moved to the region, leaving behind all the friends and family that he and his sister had ever known. Sending the two of them to the ranch was their way of letting them make new friends while their parents settled into their new home and routine.
He came and sat with me at the picnic table and asked about my night. It had been a couple of days since I had last seen him and we found ourselves catching up on the recent happenings of our lives in the woods! It was no secret that, given the opportunity, he would have happily welcomed the idea of becoming more than just friends and more so, it had sort of become a running joke among staff throughout the summer. For all of his great qualities though, a summer love simply wasn’t part of what I was looking for and the closer we came to going home, the more I encouraged him to set his sights elsewhere.
Part way through our conversation, I asked him if he would watch the area for me while I went to go and grab a drink. I turned around to head to the chalet and somewhere between blinking, breathing and thinking…I was on the ground. He had come up from behind me and had pinned me on the ground. His face was right next to mine and I remember asking him what he was doing but as the words came out of my mouth, I already knew. I begged him to get off of me but he was heavy and I had never felt so small and tiny in my entire life. He was determined; If I wasn't going to give myself to him, he was going to take me...one way or another.
I don’t know how much time passed but I heard my name. Someone was calling my name and he heard it too. He froze in a panic, looked me dead in the eyes and made me swear not to tell anyone what had happened. He got up and stood behind a nearby tree in the darkness. At that same moment, a girl came bursting through the woods, grabbed me by the wrist and started walking with me on the dirt road towards the chalet. She kept asking me over and over again, before I could even answer, “Are you okay?”
As we walked in the cold night air, I could feel the dampness beginning to form. The trees were quiet and peaceful, all sounds had been made silent and as this girl marched with an air of intention, I followed like a lost little girl desperately searching for my parents. I kept looking over my shoulder for the shadow that I knew was behind me somewhere and each time I did, my breathing just lingered in the air until I turned my head and saw the lights again. Eventually, I just stopped in my tracks. I stood standing in the night, staring at this girl…dirt in my hair, my clothes torn, my body scratched and once again she asked “are you okay?”
She knew.
Just then the silence broke as footsteps ran through the woods. I, too, broke at that moment. As my senses finally began to realize what had just occurred, I threw my self on the ground in fear and tears overwhelmed me. The girl guided me up and we ran through the night again until we reached the safety of light. In my sobbing, I kept asking her how she knew and she kept telling me to keep moving and that she would explain later. So that’s what we did. Leaves rustled, branches broke, breaths quickened and the innocence of summer had disappeared forever.
It was later explained to me that my friend had been “persuaded” to do it. The other girls that disliked me so much had promised him unconditional friendship…but there was a price to pay; Me. Acceptance and popularity was the game and I was the pawn. He was asked to prove him self to them by surpassing his feelings for me. Adolescent loneliness can do crazy things to people.
As it turns out though, one girl’s morals ran deeper than her desire to belong and she came for me. She pulled me from the wreckage and carried me home. I don’t really remember anything after making it to the chalet. I remember writing everything down. I remember waking up the next morning to the snickers and grins of girls who felt they had conquered in the end. I remember refusing to press charges and I remember packing my things to go home. I remember telling my Mom about it over dinner one night as calmly and with as little detail as possible. I remember fall coming and I remember never going back to the ranch ever again.
A few months later, I got a letter from him. He told me how sorry he was and how terrible he felt. He told me that he had been going to counseling and he hoped that I would one day be able to forgive him. It was a nice letter…a sincere letter. Truth be told, I don’t ever remember being afraid of him. I was, most certainly, terrified of what was happening but I don’t remember being afraid of him personally. He kept saying my name and somehow, it made me feel like he didn’t want to be hurting me. There was pain in his eyes and even to this day, I sometimes wonder if that night hurt him more than it hurt me. Of course, everything about it left its mark; For a long time I was terrified of large groups and its only been recently that I’ve been able to be comfortable having trusting friendships with other people. I still get very nervous when people are behind me and I haven’t quite grown comfortable of the dark again. Mostly though, I miss the summer. I miss looking forward to the summer and yearning for its warm sunshine. I miss feeling the excitement of its unexpectedness and I miss breathing deeply the first time I feel its warm breeze over my face without a pain of anxiety filling my body.
While I have learned to manage and accept my feelings towards the summer that I turned sixteen, I still find myself wishing sometimes that I could live in a world only of fall.
I’m always relieved when fall comes around. I’m not a person that is very comfortable with summer. I love the warmth and the sunshine but I find the summer to be very unpredictable and it makes me anxious. We are always out of our routine in the summer and something in the air seems to flip the world upside down. Most people seem to desperately long for the reprieve from the cold weather whereas I just consider it a season to be survived. It’s as though I hold my breath and just pray that I make it out alive. So far I have.
I’ve never entered into the month of September as the girl that raves about months spent at the beach or on patios. Instead, I’m the girl eager to wear all my new fall clothes even if it’s still thirty degrees out! With the exception of the summer that I got engaged and the summer that I got married, I don’t generally remember summers fondly. I’m usually chomping at the bit for it to be over so I can enter into a safer and more familiar time of year. Odd, I know but it wasn’t always this way.
Growing up, I used to spend the better part of my summers out a ranch just outside of town. I would spend my days swimming, camping and best of all, riding. My Mother always worked so hard each year to be able to send me and every year, I couldn’t wait to be back. It’s actually kind of strange because I was never very comfortable in groups. I was intimidated very easily and large groups (especially of girls) made me feel overwhelmed and scared. But I loved the horses and I did love my summers spent with them. I made new friends, got out of the city and gave my Mom some space from the confines of being a single parent.
My favourite memories of the ranch were getting up really early in the morning to round up the horses from the fields. Anyone who knows me well knows that I am not a morning person in the least but, I could never resist the opportunity to wake up to the early morning air and walk out into the fields that were lightly covered in dew as the horses stood in the distance. Together, we would watch the sun come up. It was so quiet and peaceful at that time of day and although I was young, the staff always let me go out and start bringing in the horses for breakfast. It was gorgeous to watch them first thing in the morning and I always got the impression that they talked about me when I wasn’t looking!
I went to the ranch for a long time and because I essentially grew up there and had such a strong understanding of the horses, I was offered the opportunity to work there at a fairly young age. Of course, I jumped at the opportunity to be paid for doing something that I loved but there were challenges that I would have no way of anticipating or dealing with.
Being younger than everyone else was hard. As a teenager, the two year difference between my peers and I was significant. The other girls spent most of their time chasing boys and getting excited about make-up (yes, even at camp!), and I just wasn’t there yet nor did I care to be. Our differences were obvious and it became a reason for them to dislike me. To add insult to injury, those same boys that were being chased became my friends and started to spend more time with me. I wasn’t completely naïve though. Even at sixteen I understood that my long legs and teenage waist contributed to their motives but in the end, we were friends and continued to be for many years. But these friendships didn’t go over well with the girls that I had to share a tent with all summer. In fact, it just fueled their dislike towards me and eventually I just found myself going home on days off crying and pleading with my Mom not to make me go back.
Late August, the summer that I turned sixteen, I was on site duty in the girl’s area for the night. We were deep in the woods but still close enough that I could see the lights from the chalet in the distance. Most of the girls in the area were under the age of ten and had been asleep for a couple of hours already. As eleven o’clock rolled around, I sat at the picnic table with my flashlight and a book. I heard the sound of someone approaching in the woods and when I pointed my flashlight in their direction, I noticed that it was one of the off-duty guys coming to check up on me. He and his sister were new to the ranch that year and we had become fast friends two months earlier. He was a calm and gentle person, as was his younger sister, and like me, he wanted to “belong”. He was a year older than me and his family had recently moved to the region, leaving behind all the friends and family that he and his sister had ever known. Sending the two of them to the ranch was their way of letting them make new friends while their parents settled into their new home and routine.
He came and sat with me at the picnic table and asked about my night. It had been a couple of days since I had last seen him and we found ourselves catching up on the recent happenings of our lives in the woods! It was no secret that, given the opportunity, he would have happily welcomed the idea of becoming more than just friends and more so, it had sort of become a running joke among staff throughout the summer. For all of his great qualities though, a summer love simply wasn’t part of what I was looking for and the closer we came to going home, the more I encouraged him to set his sights elsewhere.
Part way through our conversation, I asked him if he would watch the area for me while I went to go and grab a drink. I turned around to head to the chalet and somewhere between blinking, breathing and thinking…I was on the ground. He had come up from behind me and had pinned me on the ground. His face was right next to mine and I remember asking him what he was doing but as the words came out of my mouth, I already knew. I begged him to get off of me but he was heavy and I had never felt so small and tiny in my entire life. He was determined; If I wasn't going to give myself to him, he was going to take me...one way or another.
I don’t know how much time passed but I heard my name. Someone was calling my name and he heard it too. He froze in a panic, looked me dead in the eyes and made me swear not to tell anyone what had happened. He got up and stood behind a nearby tree in the darkness. At that same moment, a girl came bursting through the woods, grabbed me by the wrist and started walking with me on the dirt road towards the chalet. She kept asking me over and over again, before I could even answer, “Are you okay?”
As we walked in the cold night air, I could feel the dampness beginning to form. The trees were quiet and peaceful, all sounds had been made silent and as this girl marched with an air of intention, I followed like a lost little girl desperately searching for my parents. I kept looking over my shoulder for the shadow that I knew was behind me somewhere and each time I did, my breathing just lingered in the air until I turned my head and saw the lights again. Eventually, I just stopped in my tracks. I stood standing in the night, staring at this girl…dirt in my hair, my clothes torn, my body scratched and once again she asked “are you okay?”
She knew.
Just then the silence broke as footsteps ran through the woods. I, too, broke at that moment. As my senses finally began to realize what had just occurred, I threw my self on the ground in fear and tears overwhelmed me. The girl guided me up and we ran through the night again until we reached the safety of light. In my sobbing, I kept asking her how she knew and she kept telling me to keep moving and that she would explain later. So that’s what we did. Leaves rustled, branches broke, breaths quickened and the innocence of summer had disappeared forever.
It was later explained to me that my friend had been “persuaded” to do it. The other girls that disliked me so much had promised him unconditional friendship…but there was a price to pay; Me. Acceptance and popularity was the game and I was the pawn. He was asked to prove him self to them by surpassing his feelings for me. Adolescent loneliness can do crazy things to people.
As it turns out though, one girl’s morals ran deeper than her desire to belong and she came for me. She pulled me from the wreckage and carried me home. I don’t really remember anything after making it to the chalet. I remember writing everything down. I remember waking up the next morning to the snickers and grins of girls who felt they had conquered in the end. I remember refusing to press charges and I remember packing my things to go home. I remember telling my Mom about it over dinner one night as calmly and with as little detail as possible. I remember fall coming and I remember never going back to the ranch ever again.
A few months later, I got a letter from him. He told me how sorry he was and how terrible he felt. He told me that he had been going to counseling and he hoped that I would one day be able to forgive him. It was a nice letter…a sincere letter. Truth be told, I don’t ever remember being afraid of him. I was, most certainly, terrified of what was happening but I don’t remember being afraid of him personally. He kept saying my name and somehow, it made me feel like he didn’t want to be hurting me. There was pain in his eyes and even to this day, I sometimes wonder if that night hurt him more than it hurt me. Of course, everything about it left its mark; For a long time I was terrified of large groups and its only been recently that I’ve been able to be comfortable having trusting friendships with other people. I still get very nervous when people are behind me and I haven’t quite grown comfortable of the dark again. Mostly though, I miss the summer. I miss looking forward to the summer and yearning for its warm sunshine. I miss feeling the excitement of its unexpectedness and I miss breathing deeply the first time I feel its warm breeze over my face without a pain of anxiety filling my body.
While I have learned to manage and accept my feelings towards the summer that I turned sixteen, I still find myself wishing sometimes that I could live in a world only of fall.
1 comment:
Gen...I was just doing some catching up on your blogs and came across this.....Wow you are so brave for putting your emotions out there for the world to see and for putting words to something so personal. I'm so sorry you had to experience something like this. I hope with time you have been able to heal both mentally and physically. No one should ever have to feel so violated. I admire your forgiveness, I'm not sure I would have been able to handle it with the same grace that you did. ~ Kelly
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