A Stolen Childhood

A Stolen Childhood

Is it possible to undo the mistakes that we made in the past? Obviously, not. Things might get    difficult, it might get rough, and painful. But getting up, and loving ourselves is the unmatched gift that we bestow upon our consciousness after embracing our flaws; no matter how ugly it gets, watching ourselves falling apart, one needs to understand that we need to face it with bravery, and let things go, and begin from the place where we left loving ourselves. We must move on, forgive, and forget, and embrace ourselves, and promise that whenever we look back we will inhale positivity and exhale negativity.

I can still remember that day, as if it was yesterday. It was a bright summer evening laden with positivity; the birds were chirping, and the children were playing around. All of a sudden, one of my friend's dad’s friend came around. She was excited to see him, her childish heart jumped with joy; she had sweet memories of him spoiling her with chocolates. He wanted to take a walk all around the park, and make her recollect childhood memories. They were having fun walking, sharing laughter, and getting nostalgic; until something disturbing happened. It was an unpleasant feeling, triggered by an intuition of danger. Her dearest uncle suddenly tugged her hand, which she could barely move on her will, and coerced it over his phallus. Those five minutes made her heart skip a beat; she was unsure of what was happening around her. He continued to repeat that action, while being perfectly normal. She was perplexed. All of a sudden, she told him that she wanted to go back to her dad; she ran away withdrawing her hand in anguish. Despite of this, he kept calling her back, shouting her name.

A lot of assumptions crossed her mind. Being an inquisitive girl, she tried to divert her mind from the incident by keeping her mind engaged in other thoughts, and asking all kinds of questions from her immediate surrounding but one; about what exactly happened. Back home, she talked about it with me. I made her tell her elder sibling; to which she did not agree initially due to the fear that the knowledge of the incident will contribute to the loss of the steadfast relationship between her father and her uncle. While all these thoughts kept her mind occupied, my sister had a talk with her father, telling him the truth; then things went ugly. Her dad called him; she was scolded for not telling the truth on that very moment. After all this, her stomach might have been empty but still it was difficult to take a single bite in. That night was no less than a nightmare, with thoughts that preoccupied her mind that what if she never told this to anyone? Would things remain the same the way that they used to be, or would it have got worse for her.

Next morning, as she came back from school, she heard her father had ended his friendship on a bad note; things went sideways. Her dad had a physical altercation with him and warned him. She had a feeling things were fine, but thoughts kept provoking her for a long period of time, which she finally confronted and made peace with.

The idea of choosing the right path or the wrong one(to tell the truth or not) might not be an easy choice but, to stand out for oneself and not letting people overpower our emotions is a necessity. Things start getting hard on us when we do not allow our emotions to flow freely. If anything bothers us, we need to find a way out. Suppressing our emotions have never helped anyone of us, neither would it ever. Cloudy days do not stay forever; people around us change, things change and so do the various situations in life. Nobody can bring us back to the conscientious stability until we decide to do the same. Mindsets makes a huge difference, and it is an absolute necessity, no matter how much time it takes.

“The journey is never ending. There’s always gonna be growth, improvement, adversity; you just gotta take it all in and do what’s right, continue to grow, continue to live in the moment.” — Antonio Brown