Trigger warning: mentions sexual assault, rape
I want to try and imagine my life if my parents knew about my abuse. A book I’ve been reading made me think of this because, in it, the victim-survivor-vigilante’s entire ordeal was public. It wasn’t just that her family knew, but the world knew. In a small way, she was like Nirbhaya, in the sense that everyone knew her story, her name. When she survived, the world, her world, knew what she endured, and that she was struggling. There are two hypothetical questions: What would my life have been like if I had told my family when the abuse was happening, so they could have helped stop it, and what would my life have been like if I had told them after everything had ended anyway.
The answers to both the questions are different. I don’t see any positives in informing them afterwards, although maybe then they could understand why I’m so angry at them or why I became distant. Probably, they’d just be overwhelmed by the hurt over not being told earlier, and then I’d have another battle to add to my already long list.
What would my life have looked like if my world had known? I’ve always known that if I had told my parents, they would have helped me in stopping the abuse. After all, the biggest leverage Tushar (my ex-boyfriend) had over me was that he knew that I would never go to my parents. If that was taken away, would any of his other threats have made as much of an impact? Would he threaten to hurt my friends if I had threatened him back with police action?
It isn’t like Delhi police is particularly reliable, and my one experience with them didn’t exactly fill me with a deep sense of safety, but they couldn’t have been as dismissive if I had my parents standing next to me while I told my story. They wouldn’t have been able to bully the child I was, in front of my intimidating father. They wouldn’t have been able to be distracted by his money and power if mine was in play as well.
What would have happened if I had been able to take police action against him? As fucked up as the Indian justice system is, I’m practically salivating at the idea of seeing him arrested, seeing the fear on his face, for a change, as he realises that I had all the power and I was using it against him. Or maybe I’m just fooling myself into believing he would have been scared. Men like him, men with the amount of power and money that he had wouldn’t have gone to jail without a fight, and that fight could have lasted for decades, literally. In the end, would it have been worth it to put myself through it, to put everyone I knew through it? To have all that come up every time someone searched my name, as it did for other victims-survivors-vigilantes? Would I have been able to be anyone but the survivor, had people known?
I don’t know. I don’t think if I like the idea of everyone knowing, because I don’t like the idea of being defined by one thing. Even now, I know that most people who know my story think of me as a creation of the abuse first, and everything else second. I’m strong because of it; I’m a feminist because of it, I hate men because of it, I’m depressed because of it, my future goals are because of it, my sexual orientation and preferences are because of it. I can see it too often—in something I say, a thought I share, an opinion I give, and I can see the “oh, it’s because of what she survived” dots being drawn and then connecting in their heads. Often, it’s true. Often, it’s not. Maybe it’s more often true than it isn’t. But I’m still more than a sum of all that I survived. And often those who know what I’ve survived tend to forget that.
So, if I had told my family, which inevitably means that it would have become more known in general, then I would have been ‘The Victim’, or if I was lucky enough, ‘The Survivor’. That would have become my only identity. Would I, too, have believed it to be my only identity? Would I see myself as more than the creation of abuse, or would I have also thought that that’s all I was, am?
I credit a large portion of my personality today to a consequence of the abuse; there’s no doubt. But I also know that there have been a lot of other influences, I can see all the other events which impacted me as much, or almost as much, as that did. Would I have been able to see that, if I didn’t need to pretend so often that my life didn’t have any abuse or at least that it wasn’t as bad? I suspect it would have been harder. I still have to remind myself sometimes that I’m more than what I survived. Every time I see those people connecting dots which don’t always exist, I have to remind myself that they’re reaching. I have to remind myself not to do the same sometimes as well.
I want to know what the difference in how I dealt with the situation would have been; if I would have been less stoic, less closed off, more able to actually be traumatised, if it hadn’t been such a secret. Could I have cried more? Would I have wanted to? Tears stopped making sense to me a long time ago; all I’d get from crying was a need to either hide or have believable lies ready if I got caught. Would it have been different if people just knew? Would my lack of sleep been more understandable? Would I have been able to talk about my nightmares more? Would I have been able to show the fear which I bury deep inside every time I have one of those nightmares? Would I have been quite as alone as I am? Would I have been quite as comfortable being alone as I am now?
There are good possibilities; there are bad. No one knowing forced me to be stronger than them knowing would have allowed. It helped me learn to enjoy time in my own head, understand that I chose to have people in my life because I wanted it, not because I needed it. I don’t worry about myself anymore; I don’t go looking for someone to protect me, fix me or help me. I have no doubts about my ability to do whatever I need to. I was forced to learn how to accept myself because I was the only one who knew my full story, the only one who ever would. I had to learn to love myself, so I wouldn’t need others to do it.
But there’s so much which had to be buried, so much anger, so much sheer devastation. I don’t say it, I barely even allow myself to think it, but it devastated me… all of it; everything he, they, did, everything I had to force myself to do to survive, how I became the way I am today. I remember all of the struggles. Even learning to be comfortable with myself felt like dragging a train through a deep, thick swamp. I did it, came out of it better, but it truly devastated me to have to do it all. But in the life I’ve created, there isn’t much space for that devastation, so I focus on the good. Would it have been different?
What about anger? Would I have been just as angry if I didn’t have to hide it? I picture my anger as this planet-sized fiery red ball which surrounds the scream I never got to release. I imagine throwing it out there, and it is so loud that the whole planet turns red for as long as the scream lasts. It’s lasted 10 years and counting in my head. But it’s only existed in my head. Maybe it wouldn’t have been quite as large, quite as violent, quite as loud if it had come out in smaller pieces if it didn’t have to be caged inside my mind.
Who would I have been? I think that my parents’ fear for me would have taken centre stage, would have forced its way inside me so that I had their fear and my own to contend with. I don’t think I would have been able to take steps towards the kind of fearlessness in which I live my life now. Perhaps I would have been even more closed off because then I would have had to make sure my parents were okay; they were surviving my survival. Honestly, that’s the most likely scenario; no release of anger, no release of tears, no expression of my own fear, just them, them, and them. And I don’t think who I would have been then would I be as amazing as I am today.