One of the nurses helped me change into disposable, maternity-style briefs. As I sat there on the hospital bed, I noticed the red and black silk lace thong I had bought especially for that night. It felt almost ironic—something I had associated with confidence and excitement now just looked meaningless, even ridiculous. I remember thinking how useless it had all been in the end.
Emotionally, I was all over the place. I felt panic, shock, embarrassment, frustration—and at moments, even a strange sense of dark humor about the situation. It didn’t feel real. It didn’t feel like something that should have happened to me.
At one point, I told a nurse again that I didn’t want my parents to know. That fear came from years of hearing my mother’s warnings echo in my head. Growing up in a South Asian household, sex had always been treated as something forbidden, something shameful. My mother would tell me, in Bangla, that men only say what they need to say to get what they want. That they make promises they don’t intend to keep. That once they get sex, they leave.
