Silence

All my life I have been forced to be silent. Staying silent starting at age five as my body was used for the sexual pleasure of a grown man. He was my own father. He told me that if I ever told anyone then my mum would go away and never come back and that he would go away and never come back and that I would be left all alone and that it would be my fault. Terrified, I kept quiet. I was responsible to keep the family together, he told me. He said that all fathers have to teach their daughters how to be good wives when they grow up otherwise they would never find husbands to love them and stay with them, but nobody talked about it because it was a secret. A five-year-old listens to whatever their parents tell them, because their parents are God at that age.

And so the years passed. A little girl, constantly being silenced into submission and secrecy, so that he could keep using me for his pleasure. Over the next year, I believed everything he said.  I didn’t know anything else. Until he started to hurt me, penetrating me from behind when I was just six or so, not screaming even when the pain was unbearable, on all fours, staring at the flowery wallpaper, looking at the picture of Guru Nanak, wondering what I had done to deserve this punishment, wondering why God was not kind, wondering why my mother wouldn’t protect me. It carried on like this for the next years, until he took my virginity when I was twelve. That was when I learned to leave my physical body, and float up to the ceiling, watching what he was doing below. I would tell myself that if I left my body he couldn’t actually hurt my soul, destroy my essence, and I became really good at detachment. I still am.

Mother was never loving, or available to listen. When I was eight, I went to give her a kiss goodnight and she turned her face away from me, as if she hated the sight of me. It was such a small thing but I still remember it to this day, almost five decades on. It was not until years later that I was convinced she knew, but she stayed in denial. Mother has always been blind to what is happening right in front of her face, ignoring the giant elephant in the room and sweeping it under the rug. She still does it now. I tried to give her little clues, but she never acknowledged or listened. I believe it is also a product of Punjabi culture, not talking about things and pretending everything is alright. Women in our culture get abused by the patriarchy all the time but learn to stay quiet and simply endure. So I continued to stay silent. Once, when I was twelve, there was blood in my panties. I went to Mother who said it was way too early for me to have my period and sent me to the doctor, alone. The doctor confirmed that my hymen was broken but concluded that it must have happened while I was riding my bike. I was too scared to tell her the truth.

Silent, hiding from an intruder in my house, stifling my breath, all the while wanting to scream until my lungs burst so somebody would hear me, so somebody would help me, so somebody would pay attention. But there was nobody who would listen.  I tried to talk with a favorite English teacher at school. She said she would try to help, but nothing came of it and I didn’t bring it up again. Mother would take long trips to America to visit her sister and she would take my only sibling, my little brother, with her. When I would beg and plead for her to take me with her, she would say, “But who will stay behind and take care of your father?” That is when I was most terrified, he really had his fun, for then he was free to do what he wanted and nobody was around to hear me scream and beg him to stop. That was when he really let loose, coming home drunk, whiskey on his breath, forcing me to watch porn films with him and penetrating me with studded condoms, scraping out my insides and leaving me raw and swollen until I could barely walk, his large frame pinning me down, forcing himself into me over and over and over again until he had his fill, and leaving me there on the floor, curled up in a little ball, crying until there were no more tears to shed, until there was nothing left inside and I was empty as a discarded shell.

When I eventually went to the authorities I had just turned sixteen years old. It was the first time I told anyone in detail about what was happening. I was light headed and sobbing so much that the words came out in short gasps and it was like there was no oxygen in the room. The police took pages and pages of testimony. Detective Inspector Brenda Petit, a kind, green eyed young Inspector wrote all my words down…by hand. It took hours and hours, sometimes stopping to shake her head in disbelief and disgust as my whole body trembled with the fear of what would happen to my family because I told and the simultaneous relief that finally somebody was listening after all the years of silence. This was 1985. Sexual abuse within families was very much a taboo subject in those days, not to mention I was accusing a well-respected member of the Punjabi community of unspeakable things. I was made to take a medical exam and the doctor was an Indian lady. After she was done she said, “Your father did this to you? Why didn’t you scream for your mother?” As if it could have been that easy to make it stop. She made me feel guilty that I didn’t tell. She made me feel like I was the one who did something wrong. That was something that would continue throughout my life.

The only place I could share my feelings and thoughts was in my journal. My journal didn’t judge me and it was filled with my confusion and fear and anger as well as my dreams and hopes for a future of freedom and peace.

As the years went by I put all the trauma of my childhood away, into a little compartment in the back of my head and got on with the business of survival. Family members stopped speaking with me because I broke my silence. I went through relationship after relationship, looking for love in the wrong places, trying to fit in where I didn’t belong, always trying to find my place, while feeling out of place. My mother stayed by his side and he has lived a life of relative luxury while I have been discarded, like a rotten apple. Still they call me a liar, still they deny what happened. I suppose the hardest one has been my only brother not speaking with me when I found my voice and started writing about my trauma. It made him uncomfortable I guess and he chooses to continue to support my father, who is now elderly and had a stroke a few years ago. Everyone rallies around him like he is a poor, defenseless little old man who never did these things. He is forgiven. And I am still made to feel like the guilty one.

I only ever wanted acknowledgement from my parents for the pain and suffering that they caused, but still they refuse, and continue to pretend that nothing happened. I tried forgiveness, but I was still forced to remain silent, as if my silence would redeem them and they wouldn’t have to acknowledge me. So I moved far away from their toxic circle, to another continent which suited them just fine as I am no longer there to remind them of how they failed me.

The problem with that is you carry it all around with you until it builds up inside. Still there are nightmares, still I have trouble forming healthy relationships, still I am detached from what really matters, but it is the only way I can survive. If I ever talk about it, I am told I should “turn the page” or “move on” from people that just cannot understand that even decades later I suffer from post-traumatic stress and that it never really goes away. Yesterday I was curled up on the floor, holding onto myself to stop the feeling of falling, being sucked into a vortex, trying to claw my way out, to let go, to be free, but I don’t know if I can ever be free. I still keep everything inside to this day. When my voice was stifled I kept it inside and it became poisonous and I developed breast cancer. When they took that cancerous tumor from my left breast I had a vision that all the silence and toxicity associated with it was leaving my body and that finally I would be free. Truth is, you are never free. Still there are nightmares, still there are unhealthy habits. I drink alcohol, I take drugs in an effort to stay numb so that the pain goes away. But the demons continue to haunt me and some days I just do my best to keep them at bay.

Survivors deserve a voice. For too long we have remained silent while the patriarchy does what it wants. We were afraid to speak out and still are. The ones who do get made to feel guilty as if everything was their fault. 

What nobility is there in losing your voice so that others don't feel uncomfortable? There is none. That is all bullshit. I won’t be silenced anymore. I will not be quiet. I will not just “turn the page” because others do not want to hear it or because my story makes them cringe.

After a lifetime of keeping quiet I have found my voice, and I will not be silenced ever again.