I have striven to remove adjectives and emotions born out of them from my writing on numerous occasions. To try and write without adjectives is an exercise in writing itself. The kind advocated by unfamiliar faces of creative writing professors on Coursera, and by teachers who invested a decade (at the least) in journalism.
I have always hated that rule despite realising over time that there is value in it. It is difficult to write without them. Asking a young, enthusiastic writer to write without adjectives is like asking someone who rides a bicycle to do so without the side wheels. It’s paralysis. But as good writers will tell you, truth does not need a crutch. And adjectives are crutches.
But this piece (at least parts of it) will not find very many adjectives. Stories of molestation don’t need them. For women, an account of assault is understood without the extra words. For the unaffected men, it seems to me after all this time, no number of adjectives will suffice.
I was 9 or 11 or 12. I don’t remember the age. But I am fairly positive it was before I was thirteen. I remember wearing a yellow turtleneck and a denim skirt. I had long, thick black hair. I still do. The kind of hair my mother adored and my father found to be beautiful each time I let it loose.
Memories aren’t supposed to be constant. So there is a good chance this one is shifting from one emotion to the next as I type. But with as much certainty as I can muster, I remember scenes. Everyone remembers scenes and snippets. Be it from movies, so carefully curated, the expression in someone’s eyes when you hurt them or scenes from one’s own past….with oneself as the protagonist.
I remember being kissed on my mouth. I remember the ugly scent from that small home. I remember being made to touch a penis… Much later on I learnt that I was taught how to give a hand-job. For the longest time I associated the mechanical up and down of a hand-pump with a throbbing penis. I remember being touched in between my legs. I had no breasts at twelve (or nine or eleven) so my torso was spared.
Soon after, I watched these HIV/AIDS awareness advertisements on TV. I thought to myself that some touches are bad. Some areas are sectioned off. Just our own. I suppose at twenty six women would call these areas “their own”. Shades of select men would (perhaps) argue that these are “disputed territories”. But those advertisements scared me anyway. I prayed fervently each time I thought of touch and the yellow turtleneck and denim skirt combo– in a classroom, in a playground, in an auto ride back home. I prayed and prayed and prayed.
I have a lurking suspicion that there might have been some pleasure attached to it. Or perhaps it was fear. I cannot distinguish. Most women I know cannot. But to break character, to break away from the story I will say this. I did not know what “rape” or “molestation” was at that age. But supposing I did, I wouldn’t consider going to the police station. Not because of structural oppression or some shade of shame which comes out of the assault. But simply because my first instinct wouldn’t be to seek justice or to punish the perpetrator. My first instinct would be to clean myself, to not feel so sticky, to wash, to hide in the comfort of a room with familiar smells of linen and talcum powder.
Of course women don’t report assault because they fear being believed. They fear a second molestation born out of disbelief from the people semi-listening to them. But I wouldn’t mainly report assault at the moment because I would want to cleanse my body, reclaim those “disputed areas” and just for myself, squash the dispute. It doesn’t matter if I kill the DNA, the remains of the assaulter. I would much rather wash and scrub to just make sure that this body is mine alonẹ. No one else’s.
Coming back to the account, I am unsure what emotions I feel years after. It isn’t an irrelevant memory. Memories become memories only because of their relevance. I can never be detached to this story and yet somehow, I don’t need adjectives to express attachment. I can just give a complete report of the process and put it out for the world to carry with. It is up to them to decide if body are are disputed or a set of properties owned by a single soul. As for the emotions, I feel grief. Anger doesn’t come naturally. But if not for grief, I feel more intelligent for having undergone assault. Somewhat stronger, and far more perceptive.
But perhaps this emotion, this very memory and several like these, is the reason why women at some point or another find themselves wondering if men are expendable. It is not like an account of a person’s assault ends in their childhood. That’s just where it often starts. You then see traces of it in adulthood and find your mind constantly wondering if what you feel is love– a pure, unblemished sentiment or a sense of assurance that the man you love will not dispute your claim to your own body.
Each time I have admitted somewhat solemnly, on occasion cheekily, that I was molested, men tell me that “they don’t know what to say” but women often reply with an “I love you.” After the admission of affection, they descend into a sort of shame for either not having suffered enough or for making a bigger deal of their sexual suffering.
These are the most striking set of opposites: Men share sexual prowess. Women share sexual suffering. Men ask proof. Women willingly wash it off their bodies. Men confess to feeling ashamed for not having succeeded enough. Women… for not having suffered enough.
I am writing this today not because the thought of intimacy freaks me out, although it does at times. I am writing this because I have wanted to hide this story for too long. I have wanted to stop feeling ashamed for not having suffered enough.. because I have. There is certainly to be more suffering, and I will write about it. But if only for a while, the next few pieces I pen, I want it to be outside of me. Someone else’s story, someone else’s dream, an iota of someone else’s relevance. Or even if my writing circumnavigates my emotions, I want it to be the softer, warmer parts of my memories.
Truth doesn’t need adjectives. But somehow without them, it is hard to pin down the exactitude of truth. I have just started writing the truth about this suffering,, about assault and anxiety with intimacy. I am yet to understand it fully and hence understand my self fully. Adjectives are like all the women I love: essential to heal and with each story resembling my own above account, healing follows without the utterance of words.
(Dedicated to an attempt at bravery and to all the women who inspired it.)
asifwordssuffice 