The start.

I don’t even know where I should begin, it was only ten minutes ago that I was weeping under my bedsheets so much that my chest ached. And now I’m here. I find myself in this position more often than I’m proud of.  So, here’s all of the details.

Around the age of 6-7, I was sexually abused by my mum’s brother. He’d come to our house, sometimes my parents would have to run errands and leave him to look after my brother and me. Often remember grabbing onto my mum’s foot, not allowing her to leave, begging her to take me with them. But, she’d always shake me off and say that my uncle was there until they got back, I could never say anything in response to that because he’d have been in close earshot. To this day, I honestly wonder whether you’d refer to it technically as sexual abuse. He didn’t exactly rape me but, he’d find a way to get me alone (whether I’d already be alone or shout at me in front of my family members and send me to a room to sit by myself) and then he’d put me on his lap facing him and touch me and make me touch him. And every single time, before he was finished, he’d remind me of the consequences if I were to tell anyone. He abused physically and verbally as it was in front of my family; I didn’t want to imagine what else he was capable of so, I kept quiet. 

It’s been 11 years and the memories still remain painfully vivid. He’s moved since then and has been a distant memory but he comes back to visit every so often and it sickens my stomach to think it was all swept under the rug and I’m still in my room crying my eyes out over something that happened when I was a child.

To exacerbate the situation,  I was bullied relentlessly throughout my childhood and teenage years, pretty much until I turned 16 years old. I was poorly dressed, dark-skinned, chubby and lacked either charisma or the innate ability to make friends easily. I was the easy target. During secondary school, both guys and girls would call me ugly, that I looked like Mougli, had greasy hair, bad skin etc. A group of people spread rumours about me and handed my number and contact details to strange men. It was only up until last year that I got those calls to go away and this happened in 2009.  

I’ve lived 18 years of my life trying to make myself beautiful, trying to be on trend, trying to make my peers like me, trying to be sociable but it never happened. I’d always be the loser sat in her room, crying, wishing to be like other teenagers her age.

When I was nine years old, my mother discovered that my father had been having an affair and impregnated her younger sister. Due to the fiscal benefits of married life, she remained married to him but swore that he was dead to her; and shares a passionate hatred that won’t ever die. You can only imagine the atmosphere in the house. From the age of eight, I’ve witnessed the most violent of fights happen between members of my family (mostly mum and dad ) whatever time of day whether midnight or midafternoon, arguments were an everyday occurrence. Bloodshed and broken objects were a part of the furniture. The arguments aren’t as frequent but my mum spews hatred every chance possible. Watch an episode of Eastenders and the amount of remarks she can make within thirty minutes could be nominated for a world record. The atmosphere is genuinely sharp enough to break through glass. It’s something you’d have to experience to truly feel.

But the worst, is the outcome. I’m constantly treated like a bastard child who is the produce of the Shaytaan himself and it makes my heart quiver and ache. My dad is the precipitate to the problem but my mum has prolonged the healing of the wounds. She kept him in our lives and allowed us to take the fall. She brought me up with patriarchal values where men are allowed to walk all over women; women were born to serve their needs and I am still being taught this. I try to make her happy, got accepted to a good university to make her proud of me but nothing ever works, I’m still a disappointment in her eyes. She sees me nothing else as the child who  her money was wasted on. And I feel so helpless. I stay in my room all day and block any kind of interaction with my family possible because I can’t bear it anymore. 

 At the moment, this is what I can get out in one night. I feel so sick to look in the mirror on some days. My makeup collection speaks for itself. I feel like I have no family and there’s no one there to comfort me when the tears storm. A family that doesn’t exist. I don’t know why I’m like this, I don’t know why I always feel the way I do and I’m clinging on to the hope of dear enlightenment but it hasn’t made its appearance yet.

And if I’m being completely honest, the only reason I haven’t committed suicide yet, is the fear of possibly going to Hell if I do so, afterwards. 

I apologise if too much was written in terms of length, I don’t know if I should elaborate.

Y.