I don’t know where to begin
As my mind has been going in circles
What came first? The chicken or the egg?
A circle has no end or beggining
One is connected to the other
Never a period of pause.
Never a moment of respite.
There are stories that people write. About broken jaws and tear filled eyes. How they couldn’t leave even when their ribs were broken one piece at a time. They told me they kept waiting to see them change, that they would one day be able to see, the damage they have made. But empathy isn’t a pair of glasses you can get it in the market. It is rare commodity, ever so slim and ephemeral. I tell them about the futility of their trial, that there is never an end to this longing because one cannot long for something that doesn’t exist. The longing is real but the object of longing is nothing more than whispers of smoke.
Girls ask me where my scars are. Because they want to know, where the source of this big bleeding I keep talking about, comes from. At least the others have their ribs to show. But I, I have nothing but red petals and pearly teeth. What if it isn’t true? What if I am lying to myself? What if I am nothing but an attention seeking whore? The thoughts lash out on me in never ending waves. I shrink underneath a moss covered rock so that I can hide from that shame. The moment of disbelief, the fog of confusion, and the darkness of death – I shrank so hard into something so small that I don’t even recognise myself anymore. How do I tell these girls, yes my pain is real, yes the scars exist, even though they cannot see them. Can I buy them one of those empathy glasses? If only it was that easy.
Maybe one place to go back to is my body. Not the abstract expanse of skin and bones that I fail to dwell in – always floating two inches above – touching but not touching. No, it is not that I can show. It is those numbers on the blood reports, the seemingly small variations, although they have deadly consequences. Perhaps I can show them my Fitbit – the measure of my marathon even while I sit calm, sipping tea, among safe people and friends. Maybe none of them are going to work because there is not enough proof in the material realm. One cannot gather things from the mental and spirit worlds – the worlds that exist only within the individual – the worlds that become real only when one occupies certain bodies under certain spaces and among certain people. So I am going to give up, trying to explain. Because what cannot be understood cannot be explained.
But let me put this in the rational terms of the material world so that some wandering ghosts might find solace in it – I was abused, but I kept smiling. Abuse is a small word for the violation my soul underwent because my spirit got broken. Over and over again. But I will keep that word. Because it helps the worldly people understand it. I was abused, but I kept going back. Here by going back I mean the idea of never believing that there was any other reality outside that one. I was abused, but I was only a child. By child I mean the condition of having a brain that never fully developed while trying to build a relation with a man ten years older to me. I was abused, and I lost my sexuality. Because now I can only jump back in time, occupy the moment of terror, when my body became not mine, when it became nothing more than an object of ravenous, digusting desire, a desire I find hard to separate from the sensual longing of a lover. I was abused, and I lost my inbuilt truth detector. By that I mean my ability to trust myself, evaluate danger where it belongs, and believing in my reality. Now I try to work with a broken one that is no better than a static radio on a rainy day.
So yeah, I hate people who think sexual abuse is the worst. Because sex is just that. Sex. When the rainbow of your emotions get mixed with a huge dark cloud of disgust, you fail to remember who you are, what you love, and how you live. It is always like a journey of going on a rabbit chase on a foggy evening that blurs your vision while the crickets chirp, making it hard to hear anything. Tell me that isn’t scary. For I cannot understand what can be scarier. Let me get my empathy glasses if you want to challenge that.
Manastva 