I don't know how to sit. I don't know where to look. I don't know how to stop shaking. I don't even know how to breathe consistently anymore. Short, dreadful flashbacks run through my head in random order.

I don't know if I want to live anymore.

Three weeks earlier, while mum and our cook, Mrs. Patterson, were out shifting through the aisles finally doing the messages* to finally fill the press* for the weeks to come, dad was caught in the traffic on Bóthar Ailesbury*, unsure of what time he’d be home. Dad’s business partner, a tall, bullnecked, muscle-bound man sat in the living room awaiting dads arrival due to their previously scheduled meeting.

It happened only after a few minutes. Once he realized my parents weren’t going to be home for much longer, he forced me onto the couch where I felt paralysed, stripped of my dignity, treated like a piece of meat. Every part of my body was pinned down right to the second he threatened me to not ever speak of this incident. Ever.

I now sit here in my bedroom, with my head filled with traumatizing flashbacks from that night, my right hand holding grasping onto the leg of my bed and my left hand holding exactly thirteen pregnancy tests; half revealing two faint red lines, and the others exhibiting a deep red smiley face.

How could God allow such a thing to happen? I am a seventeen-year-old, catholic, straight A year 11 student who now has nothing left to strive for, my ambitions are as good as dead and my adulthood come much too early than expected. Thoughts of abortion filled my mind like a whirlpool of traumatic feelings all spiraling down into a plughole opening and never to be remembered again. But aborting this child is not an option. My home country of Ireland would not allow it. I heard of Savita Halappanavar, and her denial to abortion in this country.

I did not ask for this! God has enabled this barbarian take away my virginity, my innocence, my purity; and to make it worse, he created a child that was not planned, hoped for or wanted. There is nowhere for me to turn. I want this evil to be removed. An illegal abortion will not only destroy this fetus, but will take away my life too.

Keeping the baby or waiting to deliver it in order to put it up for adoption is no alternative. My father would not, for a second, believe I was raped by one of his trusted, life long family friends - he would abandon me, send me away or even disown me completely. I cannot begin to imagine how I would tell my parents, let alone my father’s reaction. Keeping this a secret to myself wouldn't last for much longer as my stomach will find its way to expand as the weeks go on.

Who do I turn to? Not my parents, not my country, not even God. Turning to the guards* would only cause not only cause shame to my family and evidently