Nanditha’s story: The Song Of a Broken Wing

While there are many contenders on the worst feelings in the world, I would wager my bets on going to sleep every night without knowing if your private space might be intruded. It’s been a few years since I’ve had to be so alert all the time, but the feeling just doesn’t pass away. My first encounter with sexual abuse was when I was Seven years old.
Yes, Seven years old. I didn’t even know the abuse inflicted upon me was something out of the ordinary. Until a few weeks of repeated abuse, when it start to hurt. It started to hurt me mentally and physically. I started having panic attacks. The small girl in me did not know that i had to open up to my parents. The small girl in me didn’t know that it’s not appropriate to kneel down and be hit, and be subjected to violation. But I just didn’t know!
When I was thirteen, I saw the same pattern happen again. This time, it was with someone I knew. Second round of abuse? happening only to me? Well then of course it’s my fault. It just has to be. How can I rationalize this? where is the logic in this? Most of my teenage years were lost in trying to understand the mechanism of this horror. The only conclusion I could come to was to completely eradicate it from my memory. A clockwork orange situation, if you will. And I did it!I could really shut that part out of my mind. I would survive this. This seemed to be the only way.

Except it was not.

It was the worst solution.I now relive the hurt of the abuse with an intensity I cannot even fathom. Looking back, I realize how every decision made or not made, how everyday I starved myself to attain control and perfection in a life otherwise gone so awry, every night I cried myself to sleep just hoping that something in my life would be okay, that I would be smarter,that I would be thinner, that I would be prettier, has all been influenced by being in a place of submission. By being in a place of hurt, freight and everything in between.
But there is a light. I know I will survive. I am built for success, just like every other woman and man, and I will build myself every time I fall down. Years of hiding a secret has made me resilient and has made me strong.
To my sexual abusers,
I will survive and I will thrive