WARNING: This story contains details of sexual violence and emotional abuse.

The first time we met, it was magical. 
You had your hands wrapped around me so tightly that I was struggling to breathe, and every time I tried to tell you how I felt, I would shrivel up anxiously from your mere presence and the sinfulness of my own courage would burn in my throat and make me feel like I was suffocating. You saw right through me; how afraid I was-- so you told me to simply be quiet and let you take control. I did.
 
I was contemplating telling you. I hadn't told anyone before and I had every intention of letting it fester and breed under my skin even if it killed me from the inside, but you had convinced me it was okay to be naked in front of you.
"I think I was taken advantage of sometime before we met." 
 
You blinked at me. "What?" 
 
"I mean, maybe I asked for it? I blacked out." I laughed weakly, a fresh band aid over a fresh laceration "Anyway, I woke up in the morning. I didn't know where I was. All I remember is being in a taxi the night before, and then I was in a dark room with someone on top of me." 

I shifted in my seat. "I told him it was painful and resisted. He told me to bear with it because it's supposed to 'hurt the first time'. I guess I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time." You didn't respond for a while. I was scared that I'd said too much. 

For a moment I could not recognize you under the thick mask of disappointment you had plastered on your face.  "You are such a red flag."

I shrank under the bitterness in your voice. 

I looked down. "Every once in a while," I tried to coat my shame in a sugary joke.

Deep down, I knew you were right. It was my fault. Of course, I was asking for what happened, completely unaware of my place as I donned a pair of jeans and a maroon tank top in a nightclub, trying to warm myself up with drinks like I was begging to be used. Hell, who did I think I was trying to have fun in the first place? I carried my red flag around like the scarlet letter you constantly addressed and told me to keep hidden, but I hoped that one day the shade would dissipate into white as a testament of my surrendering pieces of myself to shrink into a form that was more easily held in someone else's arms. 
 
Your eyes said it all when you looked at me--he had ruined the experience of me, for you. I was damaged goods. 
 
I didn't blame you. You were a young man who didn't know how to love, and I was a red flag. As crimson as the drops of blood that studded your knuckles after you slammed your fists against the red brick walls and as merlot as the last glass of wine you placed before me even when I told you I did not want to drink that night, before I blacked out and you took your chance to go through my phone. The vermillion in my cheeks a combination of running and the fear of being chased by you and the embarrassment of I just want him to stop shouting at me in front of all these people, please. 
 
I tried to escape one night. I was lying down beside you, sobbing in your arms. At some point I must've heaved, "I don't want this anymore. I can't do this anymore."  but you had your hands wrapped around me so tightly that I was struggling to breathe, and every time I tried to tell you how I felt, I would shrivel up anxiously from your mere presence and the sinfulness of my own courage would burn in my throat and make me feel like I was suffocating. You saw right through me; how afraid I was-- so you told me to be quiet and let you take control.
 
I did.
 
I would finally tell my father one day, pouring my heart, or what was left of it onto a page and read it to him. He listened, loudly curious and then, quietly shattered.
 
"Pa, I'm sorry," I did not think I had said it out loud, because the words had barely escaped in a whisper. My father looked at me, confused. "I'm sorry that I am not the daughter you hoped that you would have." The words fell out like they had been dangling by the tip of my tongue my whole life. 
 
"You've done nothing but impressive things. Somehow, the universe screwed up and gave me to you and all you got was an old, used up rag for a daughter." I looked down again and a few tears fell to my palms. I muster enough courage to look up at him, and I notice for the first time that he had pulled the car over at some point during my story.  He took a deep breath before he spoke, and then he looked out in front of us.  
 
"Look at that woman,"
 
I turned to face the front, where beyond the windshield, was a woman crossing the street, holding a red handbag across her shoulders. 
 
"If someone were to come right now, and snatch the bag off her shoulders, it is her fault for being on the street today." I follow his gaze as the woman makes her way to her car. "She deserved to get hurt, right?"
 
I look back at my dad. "No," I reply. The woman pulls out of her parking spot and drives away. We were no longer talking about her.
 
He nods slowly. "Because she had every right to be on the street and to carry her bag. The one who took her bag and hurt her, however, did not have any right to. The woman was robbed, and she could not have predicted that it was going to happen to her. There will most definitely be a demographic of people, stupid people, who blame her for not taking the appropriate measures to guard herself, or say she was asking for it. And while it is true that she maybe could have taken some measures to decrease the chances of it happening to her, the odds of her being robbed would have been zero if the robber had just chosen not to rob the woman who had every right to be exactly where she was." 
 
"You were robbed." 

He pulls me in for a hug gently, and I realized three things. One, in my father's arms, I did not feel the need to shrink. Two, that the punishment and shame I expected from him never came. My chain of thoughts was severed by my dad's voice.

"I want you to know that of all the impressive things you believe I have done, my biggest pride is having gotten the chance to have you as my daughter in this life," And thus came the third and final thing as I stared into the sorrowful eyes of my father. In the event that I might cross your mind in the future, I hoped that you remember me just as you labelled me the first night we met-- an excessive and luminous red flag. 
 
I've learned since then that red can mean many things. It can mean danger, passion, anger. 

Strength

I've fantasized about meeting you again. Not to make up for lost time, or to rekindle a flame that should've been extinguished long before it was allowed to spark. In my mind, we meet again in passing. It is the first time that we will see each other since we parted ways, and it will also be the last. Somehow, in some odd, disconnected and supernatural way, you will say the words again. 

"You are such a red flag."

I close my eyes. I may not have always been brave. In fact, most of the time, I would go as far as to call myself a coward. There was the rare occasion, however, where there was a chance that I was so much more. If a red flag is the label I must bear, then red shall be a reminder to me of all my sporadic moments of strength. The once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence in which I am a bright, carmine force to be reckoned with. 

When I open them again, all I will remember is the faint crimson stain on my lips when I finally told you I was leaving—and how afterwards, as I walked away, I knew everything was going to be sanguine. 
 
I reply, "Every once in a while."
 
I do not look down once. 
 
 
 
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