Child sexual abuse: On healing

"If you desire healing,

Let yourself fall ill,

Let yourself fall ill."

- Rumi

"People are broken, Lin," Ritu was saying. "So they bring their broken selves. It is all that they know. We can't blame them."

Ritu, all pepper and gray hair like a chick owl, held me steady with her calm eyes.

We were talking yesterday afternoon about setting boundaries and how important they were in the healing process. I had described to her my encounter with the founder of a particular NGO. It shocked me that someone in the field of child sexual abuse would still overstep the boundaries, despite knowing my background.

Imagine being abused from the tender age of five or ten. You could never say "no". You had no autonomy as a child. There were no safe havens for you. The person who abused you was able to see you frequently and had easy access to you as your guardians trusted him or her. The only thing that you could possibly control was your intake of food. Many of us became anorexic or bullemic. 

I was anorexic, a walking calorie counter. I found no joy in eating. I remember being on a six-hour train journey once. I was very hungry. We were travelling in a large group, aunts and uncles and noisy cousins. Curry puffs were being passed around; I wanted one badly. But I would punish myself - I denied myself that curry puff.

In adulthood, all the behaviour that I used to engage in as a child - little trust in others, dissociation, repression of feelings - were counter-productive and proved damaging to my relationship with intimate partners and loved ones. As I learned to heal, I was taught to see myself as that ten year old again. I was no Lolita - a ten-year-old could not have seduced a grown man. I was not to blame myself. I can say goodbye to that child now and tell her that I had protected her long enough. It is time for me, my adult self now.

It has not been an easy journey. I thank God that incidents like these, like the one with the NGO chap, have not thrown me back on my healing process. I stand on firm ground now, no longer the floundering ship in rocky waters, like I was in my twenties. I was mercurial - I raged often against my then partner. I had problems with managing my anger, having repressed my feelings for so long. I did not believe in loving fully then - I would not give a hundred per cent of myself, because if things go wrong - I believed then that they will - then I would not have been a fool in love.

I no longer ask why things happen when they did. I have grown to accept what I cannot change, not in resigned fashion, but in the understanding that good things can come out of this. 

I may be the fool now, for being optimistic and happy.

But let me be that fool. For at least, I am now content.

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.