The Calm Before the Storm…

Harbingers…

Her life was perfect… Or as perfect as high school could get.Popular, teacher’s pet, over achiever- she was miles ahead of other kids her age. Math was her favorite… except that she was always considered a pretty little doll at home. Pretty but dumb. Her family used to tease her mercilessly. It didn’t matter that she always did well in class, it didn’t matter that she topped her tests…at home when it came to math, she messed up and was teased… how bad she was at calculations, how her brother was so much more better, how math was the only subject that actually gauged intelligence. She started believing that she did well only because she learnt by rote… She started obsessing over her studies.Gradually, inch by painful inch, her sense of self started to fade.

Everything was so effortless for brother-always the topper, never had to take time to read for a test, never bothered about his grades and yet out-shined everyone else.He was always better than her, and noone ever let her forget it. Better disposition, more intelligent, better read, more articulate- he never seemed to have to work to measure up to anyone’s standards. She was forever left wondering why she was never as good. Never good enough…

Then it started, the series of events that would determine the course of her life for the next 10 years. Everyone dismissed it normal, mundane- what high-schooler isn’t worried about grades, doing well, especially when the test would determine her career, especially when she had always been an over-achiever.

It started small- moments of anxiety during exams, thought block over the same math she had practised countless times, the fear of not measuring up, the fear of people finding out that she wasn’t nearly as smart as they thought she was.It wasn’t long before she started panicking before tests- she couldn’t think, anything she wrote came from a spinal level, it wsa as if her cerebral cortex had completely shut down, then came the palpitations, the tremors , the hyperventilation. But through it all ( and that might have been the worst part of her ordeal) she did well- worse in math in comparison to other subjects but still average. But that was never acceptable- not to herself nor her father. Her teachers couldn’t understand why she would make dumb mistakes during tests when she would easily out-perform her peers in class. Her parents thought she just wasn’t putting in the effort and she kept wondering how long it would be till people found out her secret.

And then started the obsession- she was so scared of failure that she couldn’t sleep the day before exams- constantly running through the same material over and over. People laughed it off – after all, it was normal for girls to be a little high-strung.And so it started, a seemingly insignificant little snowflake making it way down, slowly but steadily gathering momentum till it morphed into an avalanche that would take over her life…

The Beginning

Once upon a time , in a place not so far away,there lived a little girl. She had everything- a loving home, sweet parents, a brother she adored…she didn’t want for anything in life. She was happy in her own world with her make-believe friends and the world she had created; black and white, good always triumphing over evil, where she was loved and cared for and had friends as loyal to her as she was to them. And she was happy, content till the multitude of gray hues entered her blissful world.

Nothing tragic had happened to her , you see… She spent her time lost in books, in her own whimsies.She wanted to do everything, be everything. She painted, she sang, she danced, she swam, she learnt. Her family, her teachers adored her and she blossomed into a teen – with all the tantrums that came with it.

But she hid a secret from the whole world, something she hadn’t told a single soul. that he used to come, drag her away from her barbies, sit her on his lap, undress her pretty lil frock- her favourite , orange with white polka dots, touch her barely developing body and force his tongue down her throat. Now, she was too young to know what an erection was, or what a penis was for that matter, but she knew something didn’t feel right while she squirmed in his lap trying to get back to her dolls and her play house.

Now, i know what you are thinking- sure it was abuse, tainting an innocent soul, corrupting her, sure it might have happened a couple of times over the years, sure her parents thought she was a brat for misbehaving with a guest- but is it actually so bad? After all, which girl in this day and age hasnt experienced some form of harrassment? And she ought to be grateful that that was all that happened…she could have been raped or worse. And its true, all of it is true- from reluctance to cause any trouble by telling to dismissing it as the uncle ” who just watched too many hollywood flicks” to self loathing and disgust for being weak and not speaking up and finally acceptance that it had happened and never to let one incident mar the rest of her life- she grew up and she let it go. Buried it in the deepest darkest corner of her mind, hidden away from everything, including herself. She healed.. or at least she thought she had