I cut the ribbon from my medal

Dear Delyara, I won the state championship in the 800 metres today. My mother cried in the stands, my teammates lifted me, and the coach told the local newspaper I was the hardest-working athlete he had ever trained. Nobody saw him corner me in the equipment room two months ago. Nobody knows he put his hand under my shirt and then told me I had misunderstood because I was emotional before a race. I have been training under him since I was thirteen. He knows my injuries, my split times, my family, the way I panic before the starting gun. When he placed the medal around my neck today, his fingers touched the back of my neck, and I nearly threw up on the track. In every photograph, I am smiling. At home, I removed the medal and cut the blue ribbon with kitchen scissors. My mother heard the sound and asked what I was doing. I told her the ribbon was uncomfortable. The medal is on my desk now, separate from the thing he used to place it on my body. I do not know whether I earned it, whether he ruined it, or whether those two truths can exist together without destroying each other.