Hell
9 out of 10 girls face sexual harassment. This is not a stat from a research paper. Those 10 girls are the people I know. This had been a disturbing fact but most of the girls, even these days, face such experiences.
This had been disturbing me, but I held back from writing it thinking I might not do enough justice to the story if I don’t write it good. The part I missed is the fact that I was doing injustice not writing about it in the first place; and the story kept nibbling within, forcing to get out of me.
Before I start, I would like to make some points clear. One, not in a million years can I write it the way a woman can cause I have’t been through the pain; I am trying to put everything I’ve heard into words as best as I could. Two, I can’t and won’t share any of the stories I’ve heard; those are private and I have no intention to hurt anyone by making them public. Three, this blog hopefully makes everyone realise we are here to help in a world of hell.
Let’s repeat what I said. 9 out of 10 girls around us were hurt physically so bad, they are living in fear to a degree. None of this can be detected just from looking at their expressions, having a casual talk with them or even being their best friend. That one story where a guy mishandled a girl is deep within them, that room in their heart is dark and stale from not letting out any part of sadness. I’ve heard one by one only after they chose to break the walls of that room. I could see how hard it was to bring it out, but they realised it had to be shared with someone for them to get relieved from the burden.
Almost all of those stories were from their childhood. That’s worse. Woman are hurt when they were in their most vulnerable and are made to carry the weight their whole life. From forcing a girl when she was alone at home, blackmailing her not to share it with anyone, the weight gradually increases every year until someone has to show enough care to break it out.
I never thought this to be a problem in my lifetime. I always thought these to be once-upon-a-time issues. The truth, it’s higher now than before. More educated the people, more rebellious the actions. And the worst of it all, it will be even higher in coming years. Social media unlocked no freedom; on the contrary, it unlocked fear. None of the problems are solved by posting them; it only gives the spotlight on the person. Either the victim or the culprit gets the full light, not the freaking problem. It’s as simple as “Like this post if you support woman safety”, where we like that post and move on. That Like counts to the post and the Instagram channel, nothing towards the problem your closest friend face when she had to walk home limping cause a senior took advantage of the innocence.
It’s horrible, sad, scary but none of the emotions count in the moment. We are to open up our emotional space to broken woman, only then they break open the rotten story out into us.
Even woman number 10 might be having a story which didn’t come out yet. Maybe every single girl is harassed to some degree at some point. Maybe this world is 0% safe and 100% cruel. But it isn’t 100% deaf. We all can hear those stories from girls around us and bear the weight along.