Prose Challenge of the Month #1: Write about losing your innocence. Fifteen entries will be featured in a Prose Original Book of the Month, whereby each winner will take 5% lifetime royalties. You must purchase the book to discover its authors, who will be determined by objective data (reads, likes, reposts, comments) and by team vote to ensure reader satisfaction. When sharing to social media, please use the hashtags “itslit,” “getlit,” and “ProseChallenge.”

Language Barrier

English isn't my first language. Knowing that, I raise some eyebrows when people discover I chose to major in it. I have a grasp on it now that prompted the steady loss of my native language, a loss I only comprehend when I hear the way I anglicize my r's, my d's, my s's, and z's in my native language. But before I could no longer roll my tongue and speak line after line of fluent foreign words, I had a narrow vocabulary and pounced at the idea of learning new words. The only person there to help with that was Mom.

Mom, what's that in English? Ant.

Ant? Five-year-old me could deal with that.

Cat? Clock? Newspaper? Denim?

My second and third grade teachers read and reinforced and I clung onto tendrils and snippets and murmured conversation that maybe I shouldn't have heard.

(As a side note, it didn't take long to learn what vaccine and immunization meant when I read it on a sign at the doctor's clinic.)

The learning continued for years as I tightened my hold on the English language and simultaneously loosened my proficiency with my mother tongue. When I was eight: Mommy, what's a genre? Mommy, what's a chandelier? Mommy, what's a thumb tack and how is it different from a push pin?

I started watching the news more frequently when I was nine, flipping between small town evening reports and 24/7 politically-fueled anchors repeating and rereading the same stories. I learned to change the channel when they warned "graphic content" (normally followed by an image-collage of dead bodies and bleeding people) or "advisory warning" (when pictures of flooded houses, burned down buildings, hurricane damage, and tornado carnage flickered a slideshow on-screen). When I was nine I learned to just keep changing channels. The first few times, I evaded temptation and spared myself the perturbing revelations of "grown-up" news. Yet, I simultaneously learned to keep watching regardless of warnings and "not suitable for younger viewers" flashing across the screen for long enough that a combined sense of dread and thrill danced through my chest. At nine years old, I became desensitized.

When I was ten I asked "Mommy, what's pornography?"

At eleven: Mommy, what's rape?

At thirteen: Mommy, what's making love?

Mom answered every question as well as she could. Apparently, "cat", "denim", and "thumb tack" weren't enough for me anymore. I needed to know everything and anything, despite how unprepared I was to learn it or my mental inability to understand the implications these words carried. I made my mother define them no matter how ugly and foreign they felt in my mouth. At ten and eleven, I could not fathom the history behind social taboo, dehumanization, and objectification. I could not predict the horror and disgust those words would bring me during my adolescent years, when I learned and watched and read more than I would have thought possible.

At fourteen: Mommy, what does it mean to hurt yourself?

As it turns out, I didn't need anyone to teach me about that one. I learned on my own.