I have many friends who have been raped. I wish this was not the case. The people I have been lucky enough to surround myself with are among the best on the planet, truly wonderful people who deserve nothing but success and happiness all the days of their lives. Life, however, is not about what we deserve, it’s about the random happenstances surrounding us and impacting us, and that makes me infinitely sad.
I actually remember my first brush with the notion of rape. I was just a kid, too young to really understand what sex was, and there was a serial rapist stalking the streets of My Home Town. I seem to remember the name was Harvey Andres, but that may not be the case and a quick googling did not bring anything to light. At any rate, I heard on the radio a mention that a man was wanted in connection with a string of rapes. I asked my mom what that meant, and she told me that it was the most awful thing you could do to a woman. I didn’t understand the rest as intercourse was about a million miles from my Super Friends addled brain, but I got the gist of it. Rape was something a man did to a woman, it was terrible, and it meant the man was bad. I was terrified for the safety of my sister and mother. To me, the city was small and everyone seemed to know my parents, so that meant that my mom and my sister were probably targets. I didn’t realize that my small city had at the time something like half a million people and that my parents were not known by the huge majority of those people. My world was small, what can I say?
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Outside my window I can see a lot of beautiful green trees, mountains, houses, roads, cars, and a few office buildings. These things are amazing to me. What’s more, I don’t need a creator for them to be amazing. I understand these things and they stand on their own two feet without some cosmic force to lend them awe.
