If your life could branch into mine, I’d give you my strength, patience, successes and failures to help you get by…
May God give you the strength, wisdom, patience and compassion to carry on.
I love you dearly ya habibi. It weakens me to see you so lifeless and exhausted. I cannot see you so upset and feel no empathy within me. I hope that this entry, along with the previous ones, help you get by, even just for a day. I hope I can help ease your burden through my rants and may you find the determination to carry on with life.
My heart dropped when I heard what had happened to your sis. But from the look of your face, I know it is something not even I can console. No back rub, head massage, fried chicken or anything for that matter could possibly make things any better. Nothing can make it better. Nothing can make it okay. I know that. Your expression said it all very clearly.
I think I have told you before that I was once a victim of domestic sexual abuse. I was very young back then. I dont know how it started. It has been with one cousin, and another cousin, brother, grandfather and uncle. But of course most were one-off encounters and the one that lasted over several ears involved my uncle.
I was the nephew that he utilised as a sexual object and was badly abused. It went on and on and it came to a point where I enjoyed it and asked for more. The word researchers would call it is “hypersexualised”. That was me at a very young age. Even before I went through puberty, I knew of all the pleasures that could derive from sexual encounters.
I wasn’t the only one.
About 2 to 3 years ago, my elder sister came out to me and told me how she had also been sexually abused by that same uncle. There was no sexual intercourse, but abuse did occur. She had told my mother about it but she seemed to have done nothing. We don’t know for sure if she actually kicked my uncle out or something because it is all now nothing but a blur. Even for me, I can hardly recall those moments. I try to keep it alive and real by recalling those events because I fear that one day, it will just be a distant past which I cannot even verify if it actually did occur. It is so hard to recall that sometimes, I feel like I’m making things up to compensate for the lapses in my memory.
My point here is that I got over it and so did my sister. For all I know, all my siblings have been abused by him. But we all got over it. We did. My sister got married, has children and despite the bickering she has with her husband, she is happy with the family she has today. She also went through her life making all sorts of wrong decisions and screwed herself over time and again. But all those were of her own doing; they have nothing to do with what had happened to her. I have mentioned it to you how my abuse had personally affected me. I felt that my abuse episodes made me gay. It’s true. I still think that it has indeed made me develop sexual attraction towards males.
But look here my dear, I am breathing living proof that victims survive. I am alive today to tell you this story, perhaps to help you accept the circumstances and still have the desire to make it out a better and stronger person. My abuse is something I wish had not happened to me sometimes. No, in fact all the time. I wish that I was normal and did not have that baggage behind me. But, it is there. And honestly, it doesn’t hurt me. I moved on. We moved on. Yes, sometimes, when we re-visit the past in our minds, yes, it brings everything back to the surface and sadness looms. The point still stands, we snap back to reality and realise we can get on with life.
I am not belittling what has happened despite your very brief description of things. But that information alone is enough to make me grasp the severity of the situation. It is a horrible thing to be disclosed especially in light of the recent events. It should have been brought to the surface when it had just happened, or be disclosed sometime in the future, just not right now!
But it is here and we have to address it. We cannot plan for when things should happen or when they should not happen. We deal with things as it comes our way. and we persevere. and we take a deep breath with every action. we can only hang on tight until the turmoil is over. We hang on for dear life because we want to be there when things get better.
Things get better my love, believe me they will. Sincerely speaking, my life has gotten better within me despite the situations my family get caught in. I completed my studies, landed a job within 3 months and I am happily attached for the very first time in my life. I am thankful for the ups and downs that I have encountered purely for the fact that I am now more stable, centered and calm as compared to the average person. I feel that at this point, my life has some form of relevance to your situation. I made it our alive my darling, so will you and your family.
Remember what I said about going through difficult moments in life? The real test is what you do in between all that mess. How you react and respond to such conditions will be the things you remember when you are way older. That is the most valuable aspect of all this. It is not the problem solely that is of main concern, it is how you grapple with it, what kinda decisions u make in light of such situations and eventually how you recuperate from it.
Have faith in God, in your family and most importantly, have faith in yourself and your abilities to overcome this. Many years later, you will remember the actions you take to cope with all these issues and you want to be proud of them. You want to be able to look back and say to yourself, “hey, it was tough…damn tough, but I persevered and I made the best decision that I could ever think of at that point in time”.
I love you and I am still here for you ya habibi…
I will not forsake you when you need someone to just stand by you.
I will pray for you and for your happiness. I will pray that you get through this and may God bless you with a sense of calm in your heart despite the storm that is passing.
With warmest support and empathy,
loving you more than ever,
A.
