Child sexual abuse: On forgiveness
It is a funny thing, pride. It creates safe harbours of illusions, pandering to one’s need for security.
It was with a jolt that I realised during a rare lull today, sipping a cold chocolate frappuccino at Starbucks - a favourite refuge in the chaos that is the market near the gym that I frequent - that the reason for my dread of returning home is that I cannot forgive my parents.
I am still angry at them for what happened in my childhood.
They bear no role in what actually took place, but I cannot forgive them all the same.
But I have come to realise, as survivors of child sexual abuse come to me, one by one, entrusting me with their precious stories, and as I listen to their voices of hurt and long suffering, voices which break from time to time, from the pain of long ago memories and that need to be heard and to be loved as a child should have been, that I cannot continue to speak of letting go and forgiveness, and moving on, with time, if I myself cannot do the same.
I have long forgiven the perpetrator; it no longer hurts when I speak of him and what he did to me. He has long since passed away. There are hardly any memories of those terrible incidents; suppressed I think by my mind for I can only remember three. How ironic that I can forgive him and not my own parents, but I suppose the extent to which one is prepared to forgive would correlate to how close one is to the one who needs to be forgiven.
I told myself that I have moved on, tried to assure my mother that she did no wrong in her not knowing but my stubborn refusal to engage my parents must hurt. It has been some five years since I told my mother.
She sent me a WhatsApp message recently, “Don’t you miss us, Padmé?”
My mother once said that I have a certain coldness. My anger means I am remote, aloof. It must be confusing for my family. My six-year-old nephew has taken to sending me emails almost everyday: “We miss you, Aunty. When are you coming home?”
We know how healing it is to forgive and to move on. I do not understand why I need to punish them. Truth be told, I am only punishing myself.
That age-old British Telecom ad bears a wise adage: “It’s good to talk.”
The question is when.