I have been circling this write up for the last for days. This is an attempt in freewriting it and hopefully it finds it's way home.
As cases of gender based violence soar globally thanks to the ongoing pandemic, I am among the many women and men who have managed to slip through it's revolving cycle. Also among the few with half cooked courage capable of saying, I have lived its horrific experience.
Exactly twelve years ago yesterday 17th of June 2008 on a certain Tuesday afternoon, I had enough of being abused by an abusive man I had the audacity of living with for a clean decade. I remember nervously packing my minimal belongings at around 2pm and hitting the door in search of peace.
'Nervously' because if he dared return, hell would've have found it's way into my world.
I moved to a three dollar small room. It had serious gaps between its rustic walls which made sleeping there feel more like sleeping outside. The neighbours were the noisest I have ever lived next to and we shared it with tons of ants but still it felt like a palace. Peaceful.
The stay lasted three months and I found myself moving for place to place in search of greener pastures. This led me to a certain village where I found food stability for a bit but also had my first two taken away from me.
To make things saltier, it is here that imprisonment took place.
Three years of personal freedom were shrouded fast by eighteen months away and with it I sank into depression. Ghosts from a hurriedly buried painful past came calling and my OCD did the rest. I was back to the deeps I had cheated my way out of. Time and supportive souls is what dragged me out.
Though I am yet to fully forgive myself for 'allowing' humiliating and demeaning things happen to me, I am proud of the strides that I have made in the last twelve years.
I have grown as a woman and a mother.
I tell people I have been to two prisons in my life. One that I walked in myself and one that I was forced into. The first one was those ten years of domestic abuse. It was worse than the physical one.
No fear beats that one of expecting a potential beating to present itself at any goddamn moment. The thinking that you deserve such for some reason is what I am still trying to break down and try to digest even if I thought I did.
To be continued some other time.
I take it very slow on the digging as much as I want to share. It's been a rough ride to get to where I am especially emotionally but hey, I am here typing twelve years later...