09.02.2015,
Bangalore.
She was eight years old when it all began.
She did not know that she was being bullied. At least not initially. She had just moved back from abroad with a thick accent. To make matters worse, she did not know the common language. She was the new kid who did not know the vernacular language. They never let her forget it. Her unique differences made her a pariah.
The thing is, as a child, she always wanted to be accepted. She craved to be welcomed into the folds of their comradeship. She hoped like a fool that one day they would come around and see her for who she was; a child much like themselves. Alas, it was all in vain!
What was perhaps even more unfortunate was that she began to doubt herself. Somewhere, someplace deep down, she was wrongly convinced that she deserved it. The adults in her life did nothing but augment these feelings of worthlessness. They failed to understand and protect a child. That is precisely why she never really came out of her shell and confided in them when she endured years of mental and physical abuse. Her scars are her constant reminder of the price she paid for staying silent; the price she paid for adult apathy.
It broke her. This sense of worthlessness and her seemingly frivolous existence.
She had no self confidence. It was crushed before she could even develop it. Her mere external appearance was mocked and ridiculed. Such was the nature she was supposed to receive her nurture from.
She was lost in her own skin.
She smiled and gracefully accepted all of snide comments which they threw at her. She never let them know how it affected her. She hoped that one day she would fit in; one day she would be relevant. She kept it all bottled inside of her. Until she could handle it no more.
The night she finally lost control, she wrote a suicide note. She had simply given up on life. All this while she was spiraling down a void; a black hole of no return and she was struggling to hold on. Now, she just gave up and let the darkness embrace her. She no longer had the strength this struggle demanded of her.
She was twelve and thinking of ways to end her marred but innocent life.
She woke up the next morning reconsidering this decision. Her family had found the suicide note. A long talk about how religion condemned those who took their own lives to the ever flaming fires of hell followed the discovery. No genuine attempt was made to understand why a twelve-year-old child was writing suicide notes.
She was thirteen when she finally broke down and let all those hidden emotions embrace her.
Eventually, she persuaded her family to relocate. Coerced is a more appropriate word.
She was fourteen when she could finally be a child.
She has worked so hard to be the strong individual she is today. She has fought the incubus of the antecedent years although the fiends continue to plague her in the deepest of her nightmares . The labyrinthine she was once lost in is a place she will never let herself go back to. Never again will she ever let someone drag her back to that vortex she pulled herself out of.
She is nineteen years old now. She is survivor. Her scars speak for themselves.
“Blaming yourself makes it worst. Never give them the satisfaction of turning you against yourself. This too shall pass, just pull through. Wear your scars like they are the greatest accessory you own because they make up something that is extremely special; they make up you. Beautiful, strong, an exceptional survivor… You. ”
-A quote from the Subject’s diary.
