Child sexual abuse: On love and matchmaking

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.” 

- T S Eliot

I was back home for a sum total of three days last week. It has been a little over a year since I had last seen my family.

My mother tapped her fingers on the kitchen table, her worried eyes trained on me. "Are you sure that you've got completely over what had happened?"

She meant my child sexual abuse. 

I nodded. "Well, I'm healing, Mama. And to be honest, I consider myself lucky that I've not been revictimised. Many adult survivors I meet were revictimised by various people whom they've met: boyfriends, and even business partners."

Mama looked aghast.

I'm not sure when the subject changed, but later that afternoon, my mother said in suspiciously jaunty fashion: "Padmé, would you like to meet a preacher?"

I groaned inwardly. My mother is the local version of Jane Austen's Emma. Good-natured, but forever meddling in the affairs of the heart. 

I had often thanked my lucky stars that the furthest she had got with me - I had set her and her garrulous sisters the sufficiently impossible task of finding a suitable boy who had been educated overseas in a good field - was to try to matchmake me with an anaesthetist who had been trained in Scotland. I dismissed the proposal outright - I did not even bother to learn his name.

Now on the wrong side of my thirties, I'm slightly flattered that my family has not given up hopes of me finding my match in holy matrimony. I vacillate from day to day on the subject: some days I don't think I need to get married; other days, I wish I could come home to my own family. (And obviously one could raise one's own family without having to get married but I think I would be officially disowned should I tread down this path.)

I smiled and feigned interest. Mama saw right through me.

"This is not just any preacher. He has a gift of the gab, can debate. Even your brother was quite impressed."

Great, even my brothers are in on this. Jon, my youngest brother, produced his new Samsung phone, and showed me the man's Facebook page. His every entry garners hundreds of likes. Pictures of him travelling and eating, all in the company of men. He seemed to like seafood, in particular.

"The man's pretty chilled," Jon proclaimed.

I demurred.

"He'll be the next big thing, I am sure of it," Jon continued.

I crashed my nephew's racing car. Little Irwin, said owner, whooped with delight.

I have a penchant for choosing emotionally unavailable men. This has got to stop. I'm aware that this is not uncommon for survivors of child sexual abuse, but still, it is no excuse. I get angry with myself for my own self-sabotage tendencies sometimes.

The preacher is out of the question. But who knows, perhaps I may yet learn to pick someone suitable, for a change. 

I deserve to be loved. 

A lesson I need to get into my head.

Read part nine here.

Read part eight here.

Read part seven here.

Read part six here.

Read part five here.

Read part four here.

Read part three here.

Read part two here.

Read part one here.