By: Areebah Huq
TRIGGER WARNING: RAPE MENTION
I got out of the shower and wrapped myself with the towel. I looked at the mirror momentarily as the light rays reflected on it and fell on my eyes. And just like that, in a fraction of a second, I was taken back to that day. Forgetting is difficult, but remembering is much, much worse. The scars on my body have started to fade. How long has it been? Two months? Or three? I no longer remember, and I no longer care. No matter how long it has been, I still can’t look in the mirror and recognize the person looking back at me. Because looking at myself, makes it all a hundred times more real. Some wounds, time never heals.
I see the protests, I hear the voices, I see the millions of people who stand with us and I smile. And then, all of a sudden, I can’t breathe. Maybe I will get justice, maybe those millions of girls, women, and infants like me will get justice. Maybe our assaulters will be held accountable, maybe they will be hanged. But what about us? What about me? I’m the one who has to live with it every second of every day. I’m the one who will visit that day a million times every time I look at myself. How do I kill what’s inside my head? How do I let go of the memory? How do I stop feeling like I’m gasping for one last breath, and my whole existence is a rock tied to my ankle that’s pulling me further into the deep, dark ocean?
Was it my fault? Is it my existence that’s made me vulnerable to be touched against my consent? Is that the cost of being a girl? Is that the cost of being told as a child that heaven lies at my feet, because if it does, then what kind of a monster would make a girl feel like her whole existence is worse than the deepest pits of hell itself? I start shaking violently as I hold the corners of my bed trying to calm myself. I take a deep breath and muster the courage to look in the mirror. My eyes meet their reflection and suddenly, I’m no longer me. Suddenly I’m the fourteen-year-old girl who was assaulted on her way back from school. I’m the seventy-year-old woman who was raped on her way to perform wudu. I’m the five-year-old child who just wanted to play past sunset. And I am those millions of women whose eyes say all the words, their lips could never say. And then I’m me. I wipe my tear-stricken face and rub my eyes. I’m alive. And as long as I’m breathing, I can do something to make sure another girl never has to be ashamed to look at herself in the mirror. What happened to me wasn’t worse than death itself, but thinking that it is, believing that my experience has made me incapable of living, that’s what’s worse than death itself. I open the drapes of my window and let the sun rays flood my dark and desolate life. And for the first time in months, I smile with all my heart. I am a rape victim, but I am also a survivor.
(Image from here.)
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