Note: this post contains experiences of sexual assault and violation.
I remember a room. I saw that room many times from the age of 3 to 5. It was always dark, the door was always locked, and there was always chatter surrounding it.
There was the chatter of the guest downstairs, where I would occasionally hear my papa’s loud laugh booming up through the carpet as if no structure could ever contain it. There was chatter of the other kids, just two doors down, playing the x-box and fighting over controllers. All around me was chatter; that of an Indian dinner party. The sounds made me feel safe, especially because this room was so quiet.
The only sound in the darkness was that of the game we would play, my friend and I. He was only a few years older, but so much wiser. He had a certain knowledge about him, and thus he gave the instructions every time. With his words, he would make things disappear.
My things.
First my shirt, then my pants, then my diaper ( I was late to be potty trained).
Every time, I took them off willingly. A single doubt did not cross my mind as I showed him what he wanted to see and let him touch what he wanted to touch.
And of all my times in the room, I cannot remember what happened after this instructional phase in our game. My memory is darker than the room in which the game was played, but only the ending stays clear.
I remember my surprise, even irritation, as the door to the dark room opened. He had forgotten to lock it.
The smells and sounds of the house spilled in with the light as if the essence of the party was a part of the air. I smelled shrimp curry, heard the sound of slow Rabindra Sangeet echoing from the living room stereo, and saw my Ma’s terrified face.
I had never seen her cheeks so red or her eyebrows twisted at this angle.
I registered it for only a second before my world was overtaken by the pure rage in her scream, her hands dressing me quickly, her threats to call the cops, the feeling of her chest against mine carrying me away from the light house and the dark room, and finally her kiss on my cheek as she laid me softly on my bed.
That night my eyes stayed open, wondering why the game had been interrupted, but once the sun came up, it was as if everyone, including myself, had forgotten. My parents never talked about it again, his family promptly moved away, and my memory of the room disappeared, much like he had made my things disappear in it.
Even without the continuation of the game, the damage had already been done. My things had been taken, and even without his presence, they continued to be taken, lost to different versions of him.
He was there to take when a boy at my high school called me a prude for being a virgin. He was there in every hand that “slipped” down too during a photo op. He was there in the windows of cars that slowed down on the street beside me and in the deep stares of old men. He was there in the comments section of my Instagram when I posted a photo of me feeling carefree with my friends and got a degrading, sexualizing “complement” in return.
At the start of college, he was there in my first spontaneous sexual encounter since my ex-boyfriend, the person I had lost my virginity to and still the only person in my life that I felt I could fully trust physically. It took me a while to process that this new “spontaneous” encounter was a form of rape.
Though the act was initiated consensually; when the word “STOP” means nothing during sex, when no condom is used despite your many requests, that is rape, no matter how consensual it was at first.
There was nothing I could do to stop it, and in that moment, I lost another one of my things: control.
Amongst all these things that went missing, control was always the hardest to keep track of as it is never something I had consistently. I lose it when life is overwhelming and things seem to be falling apart, and I gain it back surprisingly shortly after when I decide not to let them fall apart forever. And every time I lost, I took back a little more. I learned and I grew only after I wandered and I shrank.
This was, for a large part, my first year of college.
And in my relinquishment and reclaiming of control, I reclaimed and explored other parts of myself as well.
There were times that my body felt full of anger, frustration, loneliness, sadness, and confusion. There were times when my body felt full of nothing at all, just empty. But, I realized that these feelings were a product of a new environment, stressors, and adjustment. I realized that like so many adults I have seen, these feelings can take over who a person is. Their circumstances become who they are. They lose control of who they want to be and become who life makes them.
And who we want to be is one of the few things we have control over, isn’t it?
We don’t hold control over where life takes us or what we go through but we hold control over who we are and who we want to be.
I was done giving up control.
Like many of my things, I found it in an unexpected place: a conversation with one of my first real friends of color at American. Her name is Hope, and she gave me just that as I connected with someone for the first time about what it’s like to feel alone at a rich, white, private school.
I realized that I felt suppressed. That I had dulled down my opinions and identity as a person of color in order to fit in with a group of people that had never made an effort to understand who I was and what I felt. People that talk of liberal ideas such as privilege but never check their own, who subconsciously only respect the white voices in the room, and who can’t be there for me when I am assaulted on a street corner (blog post coming someday) but CAN be there when a white woman is looked at the wrong way.
I realized that for all the things he had taken from me, I had taken many of my own things away as well. I had taken my identity and scattered it on my dorm room floor, looking to pick up the pieces that were the most “fun” for college and leaving behind so much of who I am because I wasn’t sure if it was “too much”.
And it was too much. It was too much of myself that I had neglected and locked away. It was, in fact, so much that I was overwhelmed, falling apart, and that’s when I found control again, this time through a new thing: intentionality.
I began to replace my negative feelings with intention. The intention to be kind, bold, expressive, empathetic, and all else I had strived to be before I left for DC plus some new additions from what I learned this year.
These were all things that I lost when I lost intention. And for months instead of searching for intention, I searched for direction. Any direction, in any way that felt good, but without intent, no way ever felt right.
Then with it, finally something did. Intention directed me to understand. I found an understanding with myself about the mistakes I had made in the year, and finally now, as I write this, closure as I move forward onto the next thing.
My next thing has been self-worth. Something that I lost a long time ago, first to him in the dark room, and then to every him who exoticized, disrespected, or othered me since; only building on a Eurocentric culture that has always done the same.
It’s been difficult to find worth in a body that felt like an empty vessel in some places.
Things that were missing were not only the things that had been taken but the things I had given away. Knowing this, I had to learn to stop blaming myself for so much that I was not responsible for, and take responsibility for that which I was so I could begin to take back what I had given away.
I found my self-worth as I learned to give thanks to myself and my body for all it has done for me, something I am still learning how to do.
I am finally feeling like my body is my own. That it is full of wildflowers, making me sneeze and stop and think and wonder. That it is full of bees, pollinating these flowers in the buzz of anxiety and fear and possibility. That it is full of change in ways I never expected, and love that I never knew I would find.
I did not grow up feeling this way about myself. Wildflowers did not always grow in the places of my doubts. I grew up never really feeling like my body was my own. Subconsciously, I was always looking for what was missing; trying to fill those hollow spaces that lacked intention and worth.
But I never looked in the right places for what to fill them with.
Rather than mending what was inside, I looked only outward for a long time. Looking to find something that was lost inside through a fixation on outside appearance. I looked and waited and tried for things to change.
I hated the shape of my nose and wished for straighter. I hated the size of my breasts and wished for bigger. Amongst the Western beauty standards I had been exposed to my whole life, whether I was in the USA, India, or anywhere, I could not find the non-Eurocentric parts of me beautiful.
I did not feel attractive and I did not feel worthy of many things that I deserved. I settled for the men who exoticized me. I settled for him who took from me. And it was the reintroduction of this wrongful acceptance, this feeling that reminded a high school me of the dark room that had impacted me in so many ways, but that I had consciously suppressed.
This memory made me feel dirty. So dirty that remembering it ten years later, I showered and scrubbed and cried for hours. Ten years later it still somehow felt like my fault even though I knew toddler me was absolutely not responsible. And this is when I first began learning how to forgive myself. And then from there, grow, make mistakes, and forgive again.
And from forgiving again to gaining.
Gaining back the things that I lost and gave away. Not linearly, not all at once, but in the same way that control comes and goes and eventually grows for me. And as I take back my hold, I take it from him, and all the “hims” who had any at all.
And at first it is difficult and I must pry my things from the grasps of the people and things I left them with, but then it becomes simple. As I find more of myself, as I feel fuller, I feel stronger. And with growing strength, it is easy to pry my things from hands growing in weakness.
Their grip weakens as I realize that I never truly lost my things.
I may lose intention and forget where they are. I may even forget what they are, temporarily. But my things are always there.
They wait for me to claim them, to foster them into stronger and greater pieces of my character. No one can help find them for me, just like no one can truly take them away.
My things may be scattered, but they will always be mine.
fine heart thief 
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