Ya Allah open the hearts of all those whose hearts I want to live in. May my truth be sufficient enough that my eyes then only shed tears of relief. Provide me the relief my heart yearns for Ya Khuda.
Oh My Lord, therefore open my heart and ease my task for me. Remove the impediment from my speech so that they may understand what I say. Surah Ta-Ha (20:25-28)
بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ
"In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful".
DISCLAIMER
I just want it to be known that I am not looking to attack anyone or go after anyone. I am writing this article for my own recovery and because I feel that I owe it to myself to at least put things in their rightful order and to help anyone that may be going through recovery or may find some help from this post either way. If anything, quite honestly, I have no need to protect my molester(s) any longer than I already have. With that said, again, I am not going after anyone. If anyone is 'uncomfortable' with reading my truth and incapable of showing human decency then you are free to walk away. If any close family members or friends end up reading this and realize they know who I am referring to I am humbly asking that you do not name any names since the purpose of the article isn't the defamation of anyone's character. This article hasn't been written for the purpose of any form of abuse and I am making it clear that I condemn any abuse/ bullying done on my behalf. No names besides my husband Shawn and mine have been mentioned. I have taken some extra precaution to ensure that, except for my abusers, no one else is explicitly addressed in any offensive ways. As far as me addressing my molesters with the term... they called that upon themselves. This is strictly for my own healing. Hasbi Allah wa ni'mal Wakeel ("God is sufficient for me and the best of witnesses.")
Though I have been working on making this blog post for over a year or so, I was reading the stories of all the women who were courageously coming out about their sexual assault after Donald Trump's tape, and so I thought I'd share mine. Generally, many of us associate happy memories when it comes to childhood. However, not all of us are so lucky. Some of us have to block out a lot if not all of our childhood from our once caring minds just so that the pain doesn't overwhelm us from performing daily tasks. For some of us, the memories that provide happiness and a general sense of reassurance become overpowered by dread, nightmares and insecurities. Some will be left to question relationships they never should have had to question. Many of us facing the aftermath of abuse and imposed guilt feel isolated/invalidated and incapable of making amends with our past and never decide to open up.
For me personally, going back into unwelcoming memories was a strenuous process. I started and stopped this post so many times. So. Many. Times. This post was originally going to be featured on an old blog. I had to be patient with myself because some of the [repressed] memories I had only visited once or twice after those actual events took place. Even though none of them were my fault, I still dealt with repeating the same phrase ['it's not my fault'] over and over again affirming myself. My mother picked up on the melancholy of my early days and would ask me irritated, "why are you so sad? What's wrong with you!?" And so I decided to be the opposite and smile instead, leaving my emotions of sorrow in a basket to tuck away, only accessed deep in the night...and so the world came to know a facade of Neelum while my tear stained pillows knew another. Among other reasons that is why I matured emotionally way before my age.
I have had to sit long nights and try to conjure up the courage to remember what happened to me during my childhood. I have had many sleepless nights praying that I could figure out how to heal my broken heart. I had to embrace myself at night because the answers were too overwhelming and left me with little or no reassurance in relationships I should have never had to question. Sometimes, I would cry all night long and would be left to suffer with feelings of bitterness, depression, denial and pain. At one point, I had to listen to my character, my self-respect, my dignity, my upbringing, my mannerisms, and my entire being questioned while my molesters didn't even have to be there to make their case. I was deemed guilty without my whole story even being heard out all by the people who should have ran to my rescue - my parents. I finally allowed myself to express the pain and opened up 3 years ago. The tears started flowing; his first and then mine and my fiance (now husband) realized his Rapunzel had a dark past. I remember the Quran that he held became my only witness beside the stream of tears running down my face and my *Khuda.
I was molested when I was 3-6 years old by two individuals (let's say Mole A/Mole B,) one who was roughly my age and another who was seven years older. Then, from 3-4 and 7-8 by another individual (Mole C) who was also seven years older than me and then again at the age of 11-12 by an individual who was at least twelve years older than me if not more (Mole D.) In total there were four individual molesters. I will point out that each of these time frames consisted of more than one occasion where I was abused and some of them would take place for a week straight. I will not be going into any graphic detail since I am uncomfortable with it. I was molested by 4 'sons' of my family. FOUR.
At this point I would like to add that all my molesters were back home in Pakistan at the times I was molested. And the last incident was when I was 11 to 12 years of age, during a vacation when we went back home after my mother recovered from cancer.
Here are some (not all) things that I found astonishing, horrifying and very very degrading:
All my molesters had sisters. I would sleep next to one of the sisters when her brother would molest me after lights out. He was the eldest of my molesters, at least 12 years older than me.
All my molesters had mothers and fathers.
All my molesters loved their mothers and sisters and protected them. I can't explain how many countless nights I have spent wondering what was so different about me????
All my molesters knew my age and understood that my father had passed away. They understood that I was too young and it was inappropriate.
All my molesters took advantage of my innocence and then fooled my mother into thinking that they cared for me.
All my molesters I called brothers.
All my molesters I treated like older brothers. I was the baby in the family. The youngest.
All my molesters I have seen flip when another man looked at THEIR sisters and mothers .
All my molesters were close family members (cousins) who still walk free with their respect intact because I was too shy, scared, considerate, and just horrified at the consequences of my speaking up.
All my molesters felt that it was OK to abuse me more than once.
All my molesters have yet to apologize to me.
I used to feel ashamed, dirty, used, and impure for so many years. Until I realized that I wasn't even to blame. Eventually, I realized that the worst part of this abuse was that I started hating myself and I still protected my molesters' reputations. I felt mixed emotions. I felt betrayed. I felt abandoned. By my parents. By my *Khuda. I stopped praying *namaaz, reading Quran and stopped trying to connect to Allah because I felt like I didn't deserve His love. How truly wrong I was and my Khuda showed me repeatedly by pulling me out of that hell and placing the right support in my future.
Up until recently I felt like I had to stay in contact with them, not because they deserve it but because loyalty is very important to me. As sick as this sounds I had convinced myself at one point that they really cared for me and that this is how people show love. It is very uneasy for me to admit but I had a crush on one of my molesters and he took advantage of that (research shows that this is quite common sadly.) Hence I was OK with taking up their guilt for them so that they wouldn't have to. That was until I realized how child abuse works and finally became aware of what had happened to me. I realized they fucked up and I am not obliged to stay in contact with my molesters. I am no one's bag of secrets. It's hard to capture in an essay the psychological damage they did. I called them all bhai. The damage they did left me questioning everything about myself. The damage they did left me begging for protection. I prayed so many nights for Allah to send me protection so no one can take advantage of me again. Hence Shawn, the answer to all my prayers.
Thanks to Allah (SWT) I am in a place with a loving partner who is there every step of the way and has supported me through thick and thin. A man of humility and wisdom, Shawn has taught me how to love my body and my soul again. He brought me close to my *Rabb again and made me realize that His love for me has and will never change. He walked me through my most difficult times and I have Allah to thank for sending him my way. I will be talking more about his love for his lord and humility for others (as well as my recovery in his care) in another article since there is too much to cover and I want to do justice to it.
Getting married provided that last and permanent push which I needed to move out of my parents' home which I had attempted three times previously by running away; this after attempting to take my own life twice. With my new life and relationships forming, I felt safer and started to re-examine the reason(s) for my turbulent adolescent years before and finally my painful past which I had buried away. To my surprise a lot of repressed memories began to surface; memories of denial, guilt, shame, greed and so much more. I went through a surge of emotions through this period. During this time I discovered that I had been compromising my health and had unhealthy levels of stress which were causing ridiculous amounts of panic attacks along with many other irregularities with my health. As I continued to reflect on those years, I saw my upbringing for what it really was; constant *gaslighting, denial, neglect, unrealistic and unattainable idealisms and expectations. There was very little encouragement and critical life decisions pertaining solely to my own life were forced upon me without my consent despite my protests. As a result, I gained weight, became depressed and felt isolation/invalidation. I didn't wish to meet people and couldn't express my emotions eloquently if at all. My sleep cycle got interrupted and my emotional radar was also out of whack. ***I understand that I am mentioning a lot of heavy stuff and so I will get more into life at my parents' home in another article as a part of this project.***
Being molested, abused and violated put a drastically large part of my life on pause. One which I was too ashamed to think about and too flustered to bring up even with my parents. My molester not only deprived me of relationships but also gave me unnecessary and unhealthy stress and made me feel like a stranger among friends, I couldn't relate with anyone. Friends who were noticing these changes and getting worried for me. I was in the dilemma of being persistently lost in my own thoughts yet smiling. I doubted myself, I had a very horrible self image (which due to other issues got worse with time), very little confidence and worst of them all, I hated myself because I couldn't understand why it happened to me. Not to mention, I had MAJOR trust issues because my abusers were close family. Due to their actions I was deprived of a normal childhood. As a young woman, I cried countless nights with scattered memories of my childhood that were too painful to pick up.
Even though I'm slowly working my way through forgiving them there are still days where even the mention of their names will throw me off. If somebody says something nice about them I will have to smile forcibly and continue the conversation. With time I realized that it is unhealthy for me to pretend like I am OK with it and any decent human being would understand if I didn't want them mentioned at all. I do believe that I am a good person I haven't given myself very many reasons to not like myself and so I try my best to forgive them and move on for the good in me. For myself I will heal.
For a large chunk of my life, I lived in fear and I will not let it continue. I feared not living up to my parents expectations which I now realize were unrealistic. With time however, I am realizing that a certain distance is best kept and that after the damage that they did I can't afford to try to maintain a healthy relationship with my molesters. They were the ones who ruined the image of a healthy relationship for me. I feared losing my uncles and aunts and other cousins over this because I thought I wasn't myself a worthy enough reason for them to stay. My fear of disappointing family and relatives led me to be disappointed by far too many.
Loyalty is very important to me and sadly it is the one trait in me that got tested the most throughout my life repeatedly. And I'm proud to say that I have chosen to keep it. For the first time in my life I'm focusing on myself and myself only. Finally, I'm showing myself the loyalty that I always wanted from others. The one I was hoping to find in another relationships. To my surprise every relationship that was in-charge of teaching me the meaning of loyalty either died or missed the train by a mile or just refused to own up.
Being molested, abused and violated by my cousins also ruined the concept of calling cousins "brothers and sisters." I am an only child and my need for siblings was always strong. I feel that my need to have siblings was preyed upon and its lasting effects were detrimental. My older cousins who were responsible for my protection and who I frequently called my brothers completely ruined the concept of siblings for me and showed me that I was better alone. These men just acted like my brothers but they might as well have never called me sister because they treated me like a toy and never considered to think that I was one of their own. As a little girl with no siblings and no father primarily in her life, I treated these men like my own brothers. Considering them my protection. I idolized them. The day I found out what molestation was I came home and jumped into the shower and scrub myself for an hour and cried. I felt the most impure and used. Due to the conditions at home I couldn't really mention anything until much later, which unfortunately for me didn't really make a difference.
Child molestation is a crime and needs to be stopped. Child molestation is a crime against humanity. It frightens me that one of them actually has children of their own now. And I genuinely hope that they fear God and changed. They ruined one child's life and I pray to God that I was there only victim. I can't even begin to thank God I am no longer in those conditions anymore. When I first moved out after my marriage to Shawn, I had to take a few years off of school and work just so I can continue to heal properly. My desire for vanity vanished and I became consumed with guilt and feelings of embarrassment and didn't know how to face my husband. It wasn't that he didn't know everything, but the mere fact that I thought I wasn't pure. There was a moment when one of my molesters actually told me that I was too fat and needed to lose weight and I was so weak that I couldn't even stop them. I just laughed it off. Later when Shawn realized what had happened, he made me realize that none of this was my fault and the fact that I even thought something like that was so ridiculous. Understandable, but ridiculous. Thanks to Shawn and a lot of soul searching, I was able to do a lot of healing and still continue to strive for a more balanced life daily. After speaking with many close friends and well-wishers, I realized that this was a topic that I shouldn't be ashamed to bring up considering how common it is. Unfortunately I also found that it was more common than I thought.
In the upcoming articles, I will be going more into depth about my molestation and life at home. My next posts will break down each case and how they stole my chance at an innocent childhood because once a child is molested NOTHING is ever the same again. In my posts, pay particular attention to how the family treated the incident and unknowingly rewarded the molester with rights to further continue the abuse. I sincerely hope from my case parents can learn something and prevent more cases from forming at all.
Footnotes:
Terms:
Khuda/Allah (SWT) subhanahu wa ta'ala: God/God (the Exalted & Sublime)
Namaaz: The muslim ritual prayer
Bhai: Brother
Gaslighting: is a form of psychological abuse in which a victim is manipulated into doubting their own memory, perception, and sanity. (Oxford Dictionary)
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