Life’s greatest tragedy is that it has decided to put the tag of a sinner on the one who suffers silently. What is suffering, anyway? Is it scratching your wounded soul till it bleeds, or trying to hide it with a bandage? I can’t play it safe because I constantly find myself doing both. Trust me, sin is written all over my face. I can’t scrub it off, or wear makeup to prevent it from people’s seeing it.

My heart had long forgotten how to feel anything—sorrow or joy, excitement or curiosity. It was there, inside my thoracic cavity, beating only for the purpose of it, making me realise that I had to live the years still to come with the same emptiness. My feet were numb. I refused to walk in what they called the journey of life. Whenever I had to, it was out of compulsion that I crawled. It was as if a pseudopodium appearing out of nowhere would pull me forward, and I walked on blindly, my body refusing to get balanced.

My parents did not know that something had been bothering me since I was seven, that my childhood had been snatched away from me at an age when my friends were free like birds. But I was caged inside my own darkness of shame, fear and guilt. I was a prisoner of someone else’s cruelty.

I spoke out 13 years later, after a team of psychiatrists and psychologists kept me under strict observation for a week.  Flashes of that humid afternoon haunted me every day, but my mind could not come up with the exact particulars of the situation when the doctor asked me to recall it, about what exactly had happened.

It hurt a great deal.

What scared me was that I did not know what had happened with my body. I did not know how to explain it to my mother. I cried for hours and shook with fever on many evenings. It seemed like nobody cared for me. But it was not anybody’s fault. I was a little introverted creature, always hiding inside my safe shell, confusing my family about whether I was happy or sad. It made it harder for them to get closer to me because they knew I would not open up.

So, they did not bother. And I did not let them.

I was uncontrollable inside the white walls of the hospital. My mother tried to stop me, but one of the doctors asked her not to.

The next day, I was all set to meet with a special counselor. He was a bald man with wise eyes. I opened up to him, layer by layer, like an onion.

“Please feel comfortable. Think of me as your best friend who will keep your secrets.”

“Why did it happen to me?”

“I can’t answer that question. I am here to arrange the bits and pieces of your fragmented soul, which right now is like a jigsaw puzzle. “

“Are you sure you’ll be able to do it?”

“I have witnessed miracles in the lives of those who almost gave up.”

“But I will always bleed. I have nurtured a parasite within me that is eating me up inside.”

 “You need the courage to show to the world that you’ve been scarred. It proves that you’ve lived through the worst, and better things are yet to come.”

“You speak well.”

He smiled, and I smiled too.

I told him that my father’s second cousin had sexually abused me as a child. The fact that he was family made it worse. He offered me tika and blessings every Dashain; he would always smile at me and give me a crisp hundred rupee note that I later flushed down the toilet. I washed the red colour off my forehead with soap and water, but his touch would never be washed away.

My village was a great place for vacation because there were many streams and ponds—the green of the spirogyra making them seem like flowing paintings. My father and all his siblings left their children at this huge home owned by my grandparents which could accommodate about 25 people at once. We would be like 12 cousins together, always fighting during meals, quarreling about who got the biggest piece of chicken, and reading for signs of grandma’s love in the portions—we would assume that the one with the largest piece was ultimately her favourite.

My grandparents were harvesting paddy about a kilometre away from their house in the village. My cousins were plucking oranges and keeping them in wooden baskets. I had developed a rash that seemed like an allergy and I had come home to put some ointment on my skin.

He was there, listening to the radio. He was my favourite uncle. Like always, he gave me a bar of Dairy Milk, and asked me to sit on his lap.

The hour that followed was the most painful hour in my entire life.

I screamed.

He placed his palm over my mouth to stop me from screaming.

I shook as I explained it to the counselor, and the temperature of my body increased all of a sudden.

For the next two years, I went to regular counseling sessions and took medication.

I could not believe that I was getting better slowly; that I had accepted what had happened in the past was beyond my control. I excelled in my studies and got a prestigious scholarship to study creative writing in the States.

Suddenly, my parents wanted me to meet him. He was on his deathbed, and it was his dying wish to talk to me.

I refused in the beginning but later went to the hospital.

I did not know what he was going to say to me.

I entered his room and he asked his wife to leave the two of us.

“I know what I did is beyond forgivable, but please consider it.  I want to die without anything heavy on my heart.”

“I have been consoling myself since a few years that I must anyhow forgive you, but then the screams of a little girl echo inside my head, making me nauseated.”

“I am sorry.”

“It would be wrong if I said that it’s okay, because it’s not.”

“At first, I thought you would not come, but God had to send you anyway, to see me rot.”

“I wish you had thought of God years ago, when you decided to leave me wounded for life, and the sad part was I could not even fight for myself. You knew clearly that I was helpless.”

Tears rolled down his cheeks.

I left without saying anything.

His daughter was in the hallway with her mother. I implanted a wet kiss on her cheek and gave her the Dairy Milk that was in my bag.