Read through your comments last night before bed. Stopped on this one. Bawled for four minutes straight. Had to go straight to bed afterwards. LOL.

All these years later, it feels so good to have someone acknowledge that I wasn't safe. Someone other than my parents. Because no one did at the time, or afterwards. Not the teachers, not the principal. And that really f-ed up my mind about my own perceptions of reality and my expectations about my body and my boundaries.

Some part of me understands that the "ugly" was to sheild myself - to make myself safe from their attention. But to hear someone else say it, unprompted, even decades later, makes little Yael feel validated.

Thank you.