Isn't that something most of us have experienced in our childhood? Things that we repress for so long that they feel like a figment of our imagination? And that come back to us one day as we dwell and dwell on an incident of the past for no apparent reason?
I have been through abuse quite a few times in my growing-up years, and those times were pretty traumatic. They were all by complete strangers; in time i learnt to treat each as just another episode in life, and move on. These experiences are not something i am proud of because they have taught me something, yet i think about them from time-to-time as a third person would about a friend who's been through it. It was during one of these sessions that it came to me that i had experienced one such incident in all its severity when i was...oh, a toddler maybe. Around 3 or 4 years old. And my neighbour had put me through it.
The funny thing is, i never told my parents about it. Because it didn't feel like abuse then. I wasn't even old enough to think such thoughts. We moved out of that house and i met the guy 12 years later at another neighbour's wedding. Let's just say he completely avoided me, and by then i knew why. Even then, i never told my parents about it. What was the point then?
I was reading a book - Listening Now. I don't quite know how to describe it, but it's full of thoughts of female characters who play different roles - mother, wife, lover, daughter, daughter-in-law, sister... and the funny thing is, each one of them has been through some form of abuse or the other. All, in their formative years. Some, after they have turned into full-blown women. I think that's when it's the worst - because you feel the shame, the pain, the hurt and the desolation in full force. It's not something you can talk about then, because you will be held responsible for everything that happened to you. As a child, it's easier to deal with these things because these emotions are not fully formed then, and yet those incidents have an uncanny ability to taint your perspective about certain things forever. Like a dear, dear friend of mine was telling me.
She's been through some in her childhood, and she never realised these things had happened to her till she was in her late teens. They came back to her in her sleep. The night it struck me, she said, i cried till morning. After all those years, i couldn't remember anything except that this man took me to his room and the lights were switched off. I guess i understand now why i hate being touched. The good thing is, those scars have been blunted by the passing years, and she's been able to carry on with life.
Not so with another friend who seems to have had it very, very bad and refuses to talk about it. What rankles about him is his attitude - 'I have been through so much, i have seen so much' - a sort of justification for everything he does. Or doesn't do. To him i have just one thing to say - Buddy, move on. The severity of our experiences might be different, but when it comes to feeling violated, torn and dirty, we all sail the same hole-infested boat. We just chose to swim when the time came to get out of the flotsam. You should too.
Us abused but moved-on-in-life ones still have mechanisms to avoid further incidents - mechanisms that i shared with a friend yesterday, and discovered - to my amusement - that they were quite common. Like spotting a man walking the other way on the footpath, and moving as far away as possible; or slowing down to let the man behind you pass up to get ahead. Little, comforting security measures. My young cousin had one too. She'd just begun to feel the weight of womanhood upon her slender shoulders. When she walked, it was like she would cave in to stop people from staring at her sprouting chest. It distressed me, because she was letting the world get to her - a man's world, a world created by society, by everything her elders held sacrosanct. So i did to her what a man i completely love to this day did to me - told her on the face in all frankness that she coulcn't help what was happening to her, or what she had. So why not be proud about it? I remember it worked wonders for me, and i think it did for her too - i've never seen her slouch after that. I'm hoping that this incident sort-of broke the ice for her to come and talk to me whenever she feels like something wrong's happening to her. And that it helped her feel better about being a woman.
I do have plenty of other growing-up cousins too, many of them girls. And i constantly live in the fear that something might happen to them some day, and they might not be able to talk about it. I constantly worry about what i can do to make it easier for them, how i can watch them always without intruding on their privacy or their life, protect them. And then i think, i'm being a parent already. And i understand, for once, why there are so many rules and regulations garrotting a baby girl's growth into a woman.
P.S: I'm okay with talking about incidents from my life because i'm able to distance myself from them. They are extremely personal, yes. But they are used in this piece in an effort to reach out to all those who've experienced things of this sort, and to tell them, you're not alone.
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