The worst part was how I couldn’t talk about it with anybody. My siblings are much older than I am and I could never really get along with them very well. Friends and teachers were out of the question. Who else was I supposed to talk to? The maid? The driver? Even the slightest hint in that direction would earn me a “Little kids don’t talk that way”. I was all on my own. Then came a time when I grew too big, both for the bed and as a problem.

I was in the seventh standard when I was sent permanently to my older siblings’ room. There were several walls between us now, but my mind was always in my parents’ bedroom, haunted for reassurance of mom’s safety. As I grew up, I realized that the activity is known as “sex” was a normal part of marriage. I had to acknowledge that it was all a regular thing and nothing out of the ordinary. But the first-hand information that I had kept resurfacing in my mind. For a long time I thought –

Sometimes, I still do. A few months back, I was having a conversation with my sister. We were both worried about my mother. Of late, my father wasn’t giving her enough time. In the course of that conversation, my sibling disclosed something to me. When I was not yet born, our family used to live with my grand parents. Those were the days when dad used to come home drunk almost every night and used to force my mom into having sex with him. It did not seem to matter to him that she wasn’t willing. He had no care for how she was feeling. All he wanted was to satisfy his desires. She also told me that my mother used to end up crying but all in all, she was just helpless… I understood. I knew her helplessness. I had felt it. I had seen it.

As a family, we have come a long way from there. Now, it is all in the past. But sooner or later, my father is going to ask me to get married. I don’t know how I would ever respond to him then. You see, I know everything sounds great on a sheet of paper. But I’ve seen it between the sheets. I know the fine print and I’m still not fine with it. What I saw in my childhood has given me the phobia, phobia of getting married.”

Source: AkkarBakkar