Child Abuse —Talk woman, talk!!!

I’ve always believed that childhood is the best time of one’s life. Lately, I came across so many people who think otherwise, so many people who have different stories to tell. So many people who have had a good time alright but when they start talking about their reality, the world seems like this dark and dingy place. A very close friend started to pour her heart out and I felt compelled to write about it. The article is in first person because it is about her and not me –

I was touched when I was young. Too young to even understand what it actually meant, too young to know my breasts from my stomach and my vagina from my legs. I was too young to even acknowledge that I was just another kid. I was so young that now when I think of it, it makes me wonder what made the guy even think about me in a sexual way.

Yes, I know a lot of men and women go through it, many of them choose never to speak about it and most of them are silenced by their confidants, but I beg to differ. I want to be heard, I want to say it out loud. I wish every human, who has faced this, could say it out loud. We all fight the society for the injustice it does with women but what about the injustice so many girls have to go through at home? We say men rape women but what about men who are raped every single day? What about the kids who don’t even know what is being done to them and worse still, what if they have to face the person doing it, every single day?

I was told that I had been touched inappropriately, several times, by the person himself. The person came to me to confess because he was finding it difficult to live with the guilt. He wanted forgiveness and more than anything else, he wanted to let it out of his system, but what about me? How do I get it out of my system? Where do I go and vent my frustration? Will I ever be able to forgive and forget? What about the myriad unanswered questions I have in my head?

At that point I chose to remain silent, to not tell anybody, to writhe in my pain, today I feel I was an idiot. I could have helped other people if I had been vocal enough, I could have helped my little sister who might have gone through the same and was terrified to tell anybody anything. I could have helped my neighbor who stopped going to her friend’s house because the friend’s father was a pedophile. I could have been the voice of a million girls who didn’t know who was doing what to them.

We may be feminists and we may be vocal about all the things one can think about but there are times when we do the greatest injustice with ourselves and I don’t wish to be a victim of that. I may still be clueless about what to do and how to do it, but I am on my way to finding the vent. Probably writing and talking about it is the best way possible, probably we all need to muster the courage to rant about it publicly.

I shuddered when I saw the reality,
the facade that had been carried throughout.
Nothing was going to be the same again,
and the guilty had himself poured his heart out.
I grew up suddenly that night,
it was like a flooded area got hit by drought.
Words were deserting me,
and I was crying my eyes out.
People came and asked me what happened,
but I couldn’t even give a hint what it was about.
I knew I would have to live with it,
till the day my heart finds a way to shout.

Image courtesy : Colorlines and pemed.org