Conversations With My Mother

When I implied to my mother that I had been sexually abused, she said, “Don’t let it happen again.”
I replied, with my victim mentality, “Right, because it’s always my fault.”
“We’ve all been there,” she responds, “Choose to not let it happen again.”
I vacillate between victim blaming myself, who is in fact a victim, and holding the identity that my choice was stripped away from me.
The idea that I had no part in my interactions with the men who have used my body for their power trip.
It is dangerous water to tread.