no one else was in
the room where it happened.

■

37.

37 girls came forward after Peggy did.

Thomas was being charged with 37 counts of rape.

37.

His trial was short. His lawyer was stumped. He was trapped.

Peggy told her story with a strong voice, looking Thomas straight in the eye.

He knew that she was the one to start all of this. And she wanted to bathe in his helplessness as he was sentenced. She wanted to watch his life be ripped out from under him, just as he had forcibly taken her life from her.

She cried that night.

It wasn't a cry that was heard, nor one that had to be. She cried in the silence of her borrowed room, watching the stars glisten in the sky above her.

She could hear Alex and John talking in the living room and she smiled softly at the sound of their voices. A tear slid down her cheek.

Thomas was gone. He was locked up. She did it.

But she still had a long way to go.

She had to stop Maria's constant calls and threats. She had to end her family's connections to forget what they had done to her. She was looking into support groups for victims of sexual assault and therapists for her other mental health issues.

She was taking charge of her life again, and she couldn't wait to be back in control of the wheel.

She spent many nights thinking. And in doing that, she realized that all of this running, all of this trying to forget the things that happened to her, weren't getting her anywhere.

To heal, she realized, she needed to confront the things that had hurt her. She needed to admit that they happened. She needed to prove that although it was a horrid path to take, it was one that built her to be stronger than she had been before.

She needed to forgive.

She could try to forgive her dad for hitting her, she could try to forgive her sisters for their years of constant bullying and abandonment, she could try to forgive Maria for using her for her own benefits. But she didn't have to.

The person she needed to forgive was herself.

She needed to forgive the self destructive actions she had committed on herself. She needed to forgive the intrusive thoughts that haunted her from time to time. She needed to realize that it wasn't her fault, none of it was, and all of those days of blaming herself for everything was where she had made the mistake.

She was going to forgive herself, and that was a start.

(448 words)