This guy appeared in my life by some cosmic dissonance and of course, he is absolutely perfect. He has sensitive woodland eyes, canopies circling his pupils, lines that erupt around his mouth when he smiles (like parentheses of joy), and these sturdy, thick fingers, logs of bone, that he wraps around his pen while he writes letters and meeting minutes and coffee orders. And of course, he has broad shoulders that are framed like a mountain-scape by the wood-panelled window behind his desk.
But I can not (I refuse to, actually) muster up any attraction towards him. Unless my nine a.m. meetings begin drying my eyes out, then I imagine what he might look like putting himself together in the morning: damp-haired/misty-eyed/jaw cracked in a yawn/white shirt/stretching sheer across his back/milky windowpane blurring tattoo lines/ constellating moles/and the ladder of his spine/tie wrapped loosely around his knuckles, and scene.
Instead, I mash all my ugliness into the space he leaves for me to sit in during our lunch hour. I make it unbearable. I don’t really listen to a word he says. But it hurts my feelings to hurt his feelings, so I just rove my eyes all over his face and ruminate. I tug the tag of skin at the corner of my mouth with my teeth, pick apart my sandwich, and then rip it to pieces to swallow it down. I let his words mellow my insides, because one day I want to say, someone beautiful touched me. He talks about his mother. How do I share something about my own mother without saying, I want her to love me anyway, despite what she made me.
A perpetual cloud thunders in my mind. It changes shape all the time, but when I look at him, it more-or-less takes the shape of a hundred thousand dead women. Ancestral women corralled into mud houses, eight children, each conceived with a tank of resentment and animosity and a barely-there husband. Burned alive, buried alive, dead girls walking, sacrificial lambs wailing. Their skeletal remains on the stove, crushed into dust and then rolled into bread to feed their sons so they can become bigger, better jailers. Did you know my mother wanted to be a doctor? Her saddest memory is her big sister’s wedding day. Did you know she wanted real love? But she gave up everything for a man who eats alone now, because he smashed one too many dinner plates in front of his children.
I do exactly what my mother did and all the mothers before her: I refuse decent men. She did not have to teach me to be this way, I learned it by watching her quivering lips and laboured breaths and the blotchy red patches circling her neck. I’ve learned that it’s harder to love a decent man, with a decent laugh and a decent, deliberate way of saying my name that feels like the hot press of a mouth on my sternum. That makes me pulse with anything anything anything.
Why would I settle for a decent man when I owe my life to men who seek to destroy? That’s how I came to be. I would want decency much more if my father lived up to what a father should be, and if there were fewer excuses for volatile men like him. I wish I could meet my grandmother, before she was a married woman at 14, and take her somewhere far, far away, so she would not become a tragedy forever infused in my blood.
I can’t stop thinking about how my father cursed me: one day, when I end up begging on some shit-covered sidewalk, the same men who will spit on me in broad daylight will be the same men who I’ll let spit in my mouth for money when the moon drowns itself in a shadow. God’s omnipotent eye will turn blind to my howling cry. And worse, I will be free, so free, that the universe will slip me by. Because when I die, my gravestone will be void of any marking, because no one will care for who I was.
Reasonably so, I find myself exclusively preoccupied with men three times my age who have three times my strength because I need someone older, someone wiser (not God, not anymore), to teach me how to be anyone but that. To protect me from my fate. I need their capable hands, generous and unrelenting, to teach me how to be. I can’t stop looking at them, the motor oil streaking their hair, their softly pleased smiles, and the weight of their tender hands at the hinge of my jaw: easing it open, open, wide.
I let my ‘wanting’ curdle into shame because it is so revoltingly wrong to need. To crave someone’s touch to prove that I’m real and I can be good and I can make someone feel good. To shape-shift into someone’s fantasy because, for a few moments, I am redeemed through their pleasure. Needing to prove that I can take and take and take it so well, everything that comes my way. Needing to sedate the aches of the myriad of selves buried alive within me. Buried in that burning house.
I am terrified that someone will split me open and see me for what I am and decide that none of it is worth it. I am waiting for the day I don’t dread myself.
I don’t know how to funnel this depravity out of my system. I feel so dirty, diluting my blood with someone else’s so there is no room for me to exist. I want to abstain but God, I am starving for absolution. None of it makes me feel special, or sustained, anymore. Fingers hooked into my mouth hurt. Teeth hooked on my shoulder hurt. The splintered ends of my hair suffer in the grip of some cruel man’s hands, and then in mine.
I don’t even want anything perfect. I just want someone decent. I don’t want love like a fist. I don’t want to be crushed, or gutted, or beat. I want a love that cools down my tongue. I want to marry someone who makes me wish they would marry me again, and again, and again. I don’t want to pretend that nothing bad ever happened to me. I need someone to know these things were real and not be disgusted by them. It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate. Sometimes love can be, “Can you read that for me? I’m not wearing my glasses.” I want someone who will build me a wrap-around porch and won’t want anything from me, except to share a glass of lemonade. I want someone who makes me want to go home. I want a love that feels like stove-top flames soothing my fingers on a May morning. I want someone with gentle eyes. A boyish smile that feels like a hotel pool and a fresh towel and vanilla ice cream – all smooth peaks, ridges of sugar and pure. I want someone who works with their hands and has hair coloured by their hometown’s sun and a laugh that makes the back of my neck warm. I want someone who makes me feel like I was missed before I was even theirs.
No women before me were privileged to any of that. So I keep bolting down every door that opens for me. I twitch just hearing a doorknob turn, because I don’t know how to be good enough to deserve something good. I think about how I deserve someone kinder, who loves me tender like a mouth to a bleeding wound. Someone who won’t treat me like some starved dog, who will do tricks for affection, because I was taught love is only given to those who are useful. Most of all, I wish for a touch that does not make me sick.
If you or someone you know is experiencing any form of violence, abuse or harm, please seek help using the following support services:
NSW Police: 000
The National Sexual Assault, Family & Domestic Violence Counselling Line: 1800 373 732 or www.1800respect.org
NSW Domestic Violence Line: 1800 656 463
Relationships Australia: 1300 364 277
eSafetyWomen: esafety.gov.au/women
If you require support due to the confronting content of this article, please access help using the following resources:
If you are an onshore UTS student, you can access the UTS counselling service for confidential support. Find out more details including contact information here: https://www.uts.edu.au/current-students/support/health-and-wellbeing/counselling-service-and-self-help/contact-us
Lifeline national crisis helpline: 13 11 14
Kids Helpline (free, confidential service for people aged up to 25): 1800 55 1800
References
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18.3% of girls in Pakistan are married before their 18th birthday and 3.6% are married before the age of 15.
Karmaliani, R., Asad, N., Khan, K., Bawani, S., Saeed, T., Jones, N., Gupta, T., Allana, A.,
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Those who were emotionally abused or neglected by their main caregivers in childhood developed more fear of being rejected and abandoned in adulthood, leading to a tendency of being preoccupied with close relationships or, in contrast, having difficulties building trust and intimacy in adult relationships.
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Over 90% of Pakistani women have faced domestic violence in their lifetime.
Stubbs, A., & Szoeke, C. (2022). The Effect of Intimate Partner Violence on the Physical Health and Health-Related Behaviors of Women: A Systematic Review of the Literature. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 23(4), 1157-1172. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524838020985541/.
Women who have experienced violence and abuse are at significantly increased risk of poor health outcomes including worsened symptoms of menopause and increased risk of developing diabetes, contracting sexually transmitted infections, engaging in risk-taking behaviors including the abuse of drugs and alcohol, and developing chronic diseases and pain.
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The positive association between the quantity of father involvement and behavior problems was stronger in adolescents who were physically abused by their father.