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    At What Age Does My Body Belong To Me?: The Memoir Series
    At What Age Does My Body Belong To Me?: The Memoir Series
    At What Age Does My Body Belong To Me?: The Memoir Series
    Ebook142 pages2 hours

    At What Age Does My Body Belong To Me?: The Memoir Series

    By Amanda Tayte-Tait

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    About this ebook

    This is a story of my death by the hands of society but it's also the story of my rebirth. Speaking out in both pain and healing. The pain of rape, abuse, silence, suicide and mental health. How I found myself caged in a psych ward, afraid of what my sexuality meant. This is the story of how we became who we are and ultimately how I found the courage to speak out. This is my story but it's also the story of so many others who came before me and it's a symbol to say that we are no longer afraid.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAmanda Tayte-Tait
    Release dateJan 26, 2021
    ISBN9781779203144
    At What Age Does My Body Belong To Me?: The Memoir Series

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      Book preview

      At What Age Does My Body Belong To Me? - Amanda Tayte-Tait

      Acknowledgements

      When they say it takes a village they aren't kidding. I'd like to thank every single person who read and contributed to this through my journey as I wrote. Takunda for editing. Tanya for the illustration. Carol, Sachi, Nigel, Nadia, Diora, Franklynne, Joy, Matida, Muriel, Mitchel, Ayodolapo, Cinq, Grabiella and the rest of the Feminizing while African community. You guys are the absolute best! Thank you for everyone who has believed and held my hand and encouraged me to tell my story. I love you.

      Foreword

      This story came about as I was reading a book, ‘The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy’ when I saw that statement, I knew that I had to write about it.

      Because at what age does my body belong just to me?

      It started as a journey to talk about how I felt, release my hurt but then I realized that this is our story. All of us are forced to endure the stares and comments day in and day out. The indignant calling out, ’psssst, sister, sister’.

      See as African children our bodies belong to our parents. We are theirs, not until we turn 18 or we turn 21 but for women and girls we are theirs until we get married. We don’t leave the house until we’ve found a man. At this point we are finally adults, deemed old enough to be treated as an adult not because of our age but because we are a Mrs, a Mother. Even then our worth isn’t held by our age or maturity but we are adults because another person has deemed us worthy of adulthood.

      My aunt told me these words at the age of 24 and I'm sure to her, it was good advice. I was staying on my own, I had my own job, paid my own rent and yet she told me that I was my mother’s until I would be my husband’s and since that day, the words keep ringing in my head.

      Welcome to a journey through my ramblings, my pain, and my journey as I try to figure it all out. I have not found the answers yet, but I'm hopeful that one day soon I will.

      Trigger Warnings

      Rape, Abuse, Violence, Mental Health and Suicide

      P A R T  1

      My suicide letter.

      I’m starting this story at the end because maybe if you understand my end then the beginning will make more sense.

      This is it for me.

      I’m tired.

      I’ve screamed and fought for so long that I can  not possibly scream anymore.

      It’s enough.

      You win.

      You, as a society, with all the pressures that I could never live up to.

      You win.

      You as a world that constantly reminded me of how little I was worth.

      You win.

      I’m done!

      I’m tired.

      I tried everything. I even tried to give myself two more weeks. Tried to look for signs.

      But when you know, you know.

      I’ve made the purchase.

      Ready for my cocktail of death.

      If you’re wondering why. It’s because this world is not for me.

      And I’m woman enough to finally admit it.

      I mean I was 6 the first time.

      The first time, I lay down silently crying, defiled and in pain, the first time I became a slave.

      I was 8, the first time I tried to tell.

      The first time I screamed so loud, I couldn’t hear myself speak.

      I was 10, the first time.

      The first time I cried because I felt different, incomplete.

      The first time someone said something mean and I couldn't be mean back.

      The first time I smiled while holding back tears.

      The first time I learned to pretend it was all okay.

      The first time I became the kid in the corner, pretending the world wasn’t all a shade of black.

      I was 12, the first time, I watched my wrists bleed.

      The first time I felt the release that comes with the blade, the reparation that comes with the pain.

      The first time I popped a pill and then another just to try and numb the pain.

      I was 13 the first time I took my first drink.

      The first time I lay in the dark waiting, searching for a smile at the bottom of a bottle.

      I was 14 the first time I felt the misguided ’love' of a boy.

      The first time I learned of the word rape.

      The second time I learned that my body was not my own.

      The first time I lay there crying feeling like a kid again.

      Helpless, alone, and silent but screaming on the inside.

      I was 16 the first time I couldn't take it anymore, couldn't breathe, couldn't think, my world was fading and I needed it to disappear.

      I was 16 the first time I tried to end it all, tired of faking, tired of living.

      Yet this is not that time. This dear reader is the very last time I try.

      Why am I writing this?

      Because I want you to know.

      I want you to know that you killed me.

      You and your rules.

      You who have deemed me unworthy.

      You who have deemed me impure but yet stripped that very purity from my clenching bones.

      You who have watched silently as I fought this war and yet felt no cause to find me a reprieve.

      I want you to know that you killed me.

      Killed me with your whispers.

      Killed me with your silence.

      Because I was never just my own person.

      Always owned.

      And there's one thing that could have saved me.

      One question I need to be answered, at what age does my body belong just to me?

      Chapter 1

      No one will marry you if you’re not a virgin.

      When my boyfriend said these words to me, at 15, it wasn’t something I expected to ever hear from him.

      See, he had been my confidant, my friend, and here he was spitting my worst fears right back at me.

      To understand, I must begin this story from an earlier point in my life. This started as I sat at lunch around my friends who were talking about marriage and one-day meeting Mr. Right.

      The conversation went a little like this.

      Girl 1: Did you hear what Bea did?

      Girl 2: I actually saw her buy condoms in OK. The girl has no shame

      Girl 3: I heard she sneaks out to her house during lunch to have sex with different people

      Girl 2: Shem, the boys will just use her but no one will want to marry her

      Girl 1: Vele, no boy wants to marry a girl who's not a virgin...

      In that moment I didn’t care to listen to anything else that came after because I had heard enough. And those last words stuck with me. It wasn’t the first time I had heard them and it wouldn’t be the last. Whether it was from family or from young school girls who didn’t know better. I wasn’t a virgin so therefore no one would want me. I would die alone.

      The only problem is, losing my virginity was never a choice I made. That choice was taken away from me, twice. Often when we talk about speaking out about abuse, we don’t remember all the little things that we grow up instilling in our children. All the little times we tell little girls that their body is not their own. That they are being raised to be wives, good wives, wives that do not disappoint their husbands. All the times I had been corrected with, ‘If you can’t cook who do you think will marry you.’ ‘No black man, will tolerate such clothing.’ ‘Men don’t want women who are too smart.’

      This one was the nail in the coffin. It was official, I would never be worthy.

      As I sat there, in that room, looking at the boy I thought I loved; as he uttered those words, he added one last thing, ‘No one will marry you because you’re not a virgin, except for me, I’m the only one who will ever love you.’

      I dried the tears on my face standing up from my position on the floor. Grabbing my shirt tightly trying to make sense of all the voices in my head.

      From the second he had started kissing me, touching me. The first time I said no and he answered with, ‘Don’t you love me?’

      The second time I said no as he pinned me down so I couldn’t fight and took off my pants.

      The way I froze, lay there numb, unable to move, unable to scream, unable to feel.

      The way I couldn’t feel any part of my body because, for the second time in my life, my body was not my own.

      He helped me up and told me it would get better, that I would enjoy it, that if I loved him, I had to learn to like it because he was the only person that would ever love me. Marry me. Want me. I fought with my brain, unsure of what was true and what wasn’t.

      I had said no, I had tried to fight him, had tried to push him off me but he loved me, he was the only one who could love me. So, he couldn’t have hurt me, right?

      Maybe he didn’t hear me, because if he had, he would have stopped.

      I picked up my stuff and ran out the door; out into the world and I called my friend. I wanted to scream, to say how much it hurt, but instead I asked the one question that mattered.

      ‘Do people have sex with the people they love?’

      ‘Well, yes, why?’ He replied.

      ‘I think I just had sex.’

      Looking back, it’s this one lie that changed the way the rest of my life would go.

      This lie that would haunt me for the next 10

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