The Girl, The Woman, and The Man

When the girl was first treated like a woman it alarmed her, but she took it as a necessary rite of passage that could only take place with the compliance of the man. She only felt like a woman in relation to the man. When she was not with the man she felt like a girl again. This change in feeling came so naturally that for quite awhile it was imperceptible to her. It's hard to say what being a woman felt like to her, as opposed to being a girl. It wasn't just the loss of innocence that made her feel like a woman with the man, perhaps because she never lost her innocence for good. She was perpetually losing her innocence with the man, or rather, she was always discovering that she knew more than she thought she did. So then she realized that it was not innocence, but ignorance.

The girl started to suffer because she believed ignorance to be more blameworthy than innocence. She started to use the man as an antidote. The man didn't seem to mind. Regret always comes too late. She sought him out with the urgency of one distressed.

But when the man was not with her, she reverted back to her old world. She somehow merged back with its familiarity, and remained cocooned there until the man coaxed her out again as a woman. But after her encounters with the man, there was always the inevitable retreat.