It was amazing through out the past month, watching my 4 year old niece get excited about Christmas.  It is truely beautiful to watch the spirit of a child dance at the mention of Santa, the possibilities of gifts under the tree and all the things that can  be possible.  I realized then, that this very excitement is what makes life so beautiful.  The simple fact that children BELIEVE in something.  To my niece, Santa is real, he exists, he’s out there, he sends her a letter every year and he is the one that leaves her presents under the tree.   He is the fat hairy guy coming through the 2 foot chimney.  We as adults try to encourage this belief when we reveal the gifts, put up the tree and read Santa stories during Christmas.  I see it every year, how easy it is for a child to believe Santa is real.  They don’t have to think too much about it, they just do, Believe.

I had much time to reflect this Holiday season.  I really wanted to know what is it that I believed in and how easy is it to believe that.  What is it exactly that I know to be true?  Something I don’t have to think too much about and doesn’t take much convincing to believe in?  All I realized is that I was not believing in anything positive.  I wasn’t hopeful, excited or enthusiastic.  It got me thinking, is believing a childhood quality that we have only to a certain age and we  spend the rest of our lives trying to capture it?  Or can we as adults believe in something so positive and powerful that would render us happy and excited?  I don’t know and I’m not sure.

Lots of my beliefs are very negative.  Really negative.  I believe I’m not beautiful, physically.  My emotions are not beautiful.  Most of my emotions are of anger and disdain, mostly towards myself.  I believe I am a loser for not having done more with my life.  I believe my dreams won’t come true, because I don’t deserve them and they can’t possibly come true to someone like me.  Those beliefs are exhausting to take with everywhere.  I think at times about the beautiful things I want to believe in, I want to believe I will be happy, successful, in love, beautiful, content, excited about my life, living for and towards something, yet within moments those beliefs dissipate into thin air.  They feel so distant and far away, they feel out of reach, impossible to realize, yet I desperately want to BELIEVE they can become true.

Bustan Worood

I remember the days when I was a child around Christmas when all I thought about was Santa and what could he possibly be bringing me.  I remember the excitement, the anxiousness and the enthusiasm for this old hairy guy.  I absoloutely adored Christmas but as I grew older, this holiday became such a burden.  The burden isn’t financial, its having to be in the spirit of the holidays when I am simply not in the freaken mood.  I never made a Santa list, I never asked for a specific toy, at least as far as I can remember.  All I knew is that I was getting something and thats good by me.  I was watching a movie the other night, couldn’t catch it’s name.  It was about this sales woman whose in her early 40’s and her colleague challenges her to make a list for Santa.  I thought the movie was silly at first, but then I got to thinking, why not make a list for Santa this year?  You can’t be too old for Santa now can you?  I don’t believe so, at least thats what I’m telling myself this season.  So, seriously, what do I want from Santa?  Thinking.  Still Thinking.  Ok I know, here it goes:

My Santa list:

Finish school still sane!
Get an Ipod! finally.
continue to get healthy, LOSE the LAST 50 LBS.
Feel good about my health, and outer appearance, start loving my hair thats been falling flat lately.
Have self-confidence and kick this “unworthy” feeling to the curb.
Make new friends
Move a place I absoloutely adore and adores me:)
Have an awesome apartment(a studio is fine) all to myself.
Own my first dance costume,  dance professionally when the opportunitye knocks.
Have a job I like, colleagues I like and a SALARY I LOVE :).
Be financially safe and secure.  Able to provide my myself 100%.
let go of my fear of intimacy and meet someone I want to get to know, and wants to get to know me.
Evolve as a woman, love being a woman, discover all the parts of me hidden under the pain.
Have a new wardrobe I can’t wait to put on everyday.
write my first, second and third screenplay.  Make my first movie, go to my first screening and win my first Emmy.
Fall in love with life all over again, be excited to be alive, embrace what is and move forward.
Forgive
Go on vacation and clear my mind and feel rejuvinated.
Win $300 million jackpot
Start volunteering
Raise funds for a cause I love.
go on 30 great dates with one great  guy.
plan half of those dates.
Have a long term relationship with this great guy.
Discover what truthfully makes me happy and do it.
Apply for a position at Tyler Perry’s Studios and meet my fave director
Have fun at work, regardless of what it is that I do and make the best of it.
Go to a Kathem El Saher concert and meet him :)  It would be great if he fell in love with me, but I’m not going to push it HEEEHEHEHHE.
Be in a Kathem El Saher video, yeah right, but its worth wishing.
Own lots of “stop staring” dresses, ohhhhhhh, I LOVE those dresses.  Wear them in Kathem’s videos lol.
Own lots of retro dresses, sooooooooooooooooo amazing.
Go to New York, Chicago on Vacation and meet awesome people, let go of the past.
Start a small business.
Be someone’s secret Santa.
Get a pedicure, a massage, a scalp massage, oh hell a full body makeover sounds good.
wear a kick ass Bikini
Workout and get my body looking like a sports model (ok I weigh 220 now, I’m thinking it’ll take a while, but I know its possible
Travel for a while and be inspired
Embrace being an artist
Do my first gallery, paintings, oil, sell out.
Live in a gorgeous loft, decorate it myself.
Fall asleep in the arms of someone I love and feel safe with
Make all of my daydreams come true.
Be a neutral non judgemental woman.
Enjoy turning 30
Believe things will get better
Cook much, create my own recipes, write a food blog about it.
Feel safe being seen and come out of hiding in my shell
Listen to music I love and inspires me to create.
Be creative in everything I do and love doing it.
Feel grounded and safe anywhere I go in everything I do.
Be a woman true to herself, attract friends and loved one’s who are the same.
Be sexy, sensual and proud about it.
Be daring
take chances
Get excited about who I am becoming
Be positively surprised
Get intouch with my independent spirit
recognize lies in my life and bring in my truth in place of the lies.
Get angry when necessary.
Clear the BS out of my life, know my truth and live it out.
BE POWERFUL, FEMININE AND OUTRAGEOUSLY SEXY WITH CLASS OF COURSE.
Attract positive attention and enjoy it.
Speak up, let my voice be heard.

Ok this should keep Santa busy for a while. I’ll update this list as the wishes come true.  Happy Holidays everyone, don’t forget to make your list, and yes its ok to ask for a lot, you already give a lot.

I have been overweight most of my life, all of my childhood pictures are of me chubby flashing a smile.  I don’t remember when I started to gain weight or when it spiraled out of control, but all I know is that it has always been this way.  I remember my mother locking up the fridge when she left the house, afraid I would eat my way through everything in there.  I was a smart child though, I knew how to unlock anydoor and reach for my comfort, food.

It hit me a few years ago that maybe, just maybe my weight issues are related to my past abuse.  I was keeping a big secret.  I was molested, I was violated, hurt and angry.  I had no idea how to handle the scope of this problem; all I knew how to do is to hush those feelings and to pretend they were not there.  The feeling of overstuffing my stomach took over the feeling of being overwhelmed by this secret, and just like an addict, this day’s dose needs to be bigger than yesterday’s.  I was consuming immense amounts of food and going through binges that would last for days.  The more desperate I felt, the hungrier I became.  The more angrier I became, instead of taking it out on something else, like breaking a plate, yelling it out, I took it out on my own body.

So how did I view my body?  I rejected my female body for so long.  To me, it represented a source of pain, the body that attracted pedophiles and I could only feel shame towards it.  I really just looked at my body with utter disdain, I felt disgusted by it, annoyed by it and wanted it to disappear.  Most little girls are excited about their bodies as they develop and grow.  Their curiosity and intrigue about their body is a crucial part of growing up, yet I missed that.  I realy remember just not wanting to have my female body, but didn’t want a male body either.  I wished my body would be invisible and the best way I knew how to do it was to eat myself to over 300 lbs.  I knew this way men wouldn’t pay attention to me, they wouldn’t bother me and that made me I feel really smart growing up.  I evaded being hurt again, not realizing I was in this game of abuse where the sexual abuse has ended, yet I took on the abuse torch and started abusing myself.

So how am I getting out of the game?  I realized a long time ago that as long as I am abusing my body with food, my abusers are winning.  All I knew then is I couldn’t let that happen, but I didn’t know how to stop, and if I did what other behaviors would I adopt instead of over eating and stuffing my emotions silent.  I was and still am determined to break the cycle of abuse, I am determined to win this silent battle and prove to myself that I am worthy of having the healthy body that feels amazing.  I want ot have a body that is a source of inspiration, beauty and just simply positive great feelings. I want to have a body that feels good when touched, that accepts a hug and loves being caressed.  I want a body that when I look it, I admire it and want no other body but this body.  To me my weightloss journey isn’t about skinny, it’s about reclaiming what I thought was taken from me and that is my sense of safety in my female body and its never ending beauty.

So what other behaviors have I learned instead of overeating?  Blogging :).  Really for now this is all I have going.  Writing is my only outlet, its the only place I can be honest and forward.  I don’t have to hide my feelings and I don’t have to pretend anything, I can just type away and let my thoughts run wild.  This is venting at its best; even running 7 miles an hour couldn’t satisfy my emotional expression as much as blogging can.

I dieted a lot throughout my life, from starvation to liquid diets, yet all of them failed miserably becasue I wasn’t addressing the real reason why I was eating .  To me in this journey facing the abuse factor was 99% of the work and it is the hardest part.  Looking away from the abuse for so long, pretending its not there, and becasue others wouldn’t validate it as a life changing experience, I just needed tp pretend its not there.  Being in denial allowed me to exist in the world on a very basic level, I breathe, I sleep, i eat, I shit and thats it.  I was dead inside with a living body, walking aimlessly in the world, waiting for something great to happen to me to change my life.  That thing never came, I couldn’t find an aim and I wanted to stop breathing.  The denial about my abuse wasn’t just a way for me to cope, it was another way to abuse myself.  Denying myself the right to validate what had happened has become an extention of the abuse.  I felt doomed, I flet like a ship wreck at the bottom of the ocean with no way to the surface.  The validation I was seeking from family and others never came, I knew if I wanted to change my life I would need to do it on my own, just like I have always for years.

In August of 2008 I was diagnosed with PCOS, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.  As far as I have read there isn’t a set criteria for diagnosing it, experts can’t agree on it’s causes and as of today there is no set treatment for it.  It is considered untreatable, yet you can control the symptoms by diet and excercise.  Some experts say that insulin resistance, a symptom of PCOS, is caused by life style choice, including consuming massive amounts of sugar and starch and lack of excercise.  In my case, I have to agree.  When I was diagnosed, I was pissed off to say the least.  All I could think of was ” God, do I really need one more thing on my plate.”  I have never heard of PCOS but I had to know more if I wanted to change my life.

I ordered a few books and started reading, I realized immediately that eating low carb and working out is the best way to get my body out of the rut it was in.  I had done Atkins before, but abandoned it for a couple of years because my emotions got the best of me and I was not ready to face what was happening.  I started doing Atkins and have had great success with it so far.  Since August 2008, I have lost 80 lbs.  I started running on a treadmill, doing weights, even dancing in my room for fun.  Within days, the symptoms that kept me up all night and drained all of my energy were practically gone.  I feel empowered, embracing my destiny to live greatly and have the best life I can possible dream of.

Just to be clear, those 80 lbs didn’t come off easy at all.  I work out numerous hours a week just to see a couple of lbs drop on the scale.  Part of it is my syndrome which makes it super hard to lose the weight, the other part at times I feel is my reluctance to lose the weight.  I feel unsure about what I would do with my life when I finally lose all the weight, how would I feel, how would the world see me, how would I see the world?  I mostly am afraid of having attention from men.  To me being seen by a man is to be singled out as a target to be abused.  I have attracted abuser types men and at this moment I believe those are the only kinds of men who can find their way to me. 
I am still working on this one; how to lose the weight, feel confident about my body, my ability to protect my body and still enjoy having attention from the right kind of men?  I am looking forward to that answer someday, i will gladly share what I find out with you (who ever actually reads this blog).

So if this sounds like you, you are not alone.  The way abuse affects each one of us is different, yet very similar at times.  Please know that the helplessness you feel is a part of the process, it is not a way of living and feeling.  I take it one day at a time, sometimes one hour at a time, but I try to take a step forward everyday, making sure I stay focused and determined.  I want to win my life back and  I am doing it one lost lb at a time.

Good night.

I had a long night tonight.  Didn’t do much, but as usual watched TV, worked out, made dinner then watched more TV.  I was flipping the channels looking for something interesting and came across The Sex addicts show hosted by Dr. Drew.  I thought it was great and as usual with reality TV,very dramatic.  While watching the show, the participants went to this studio for Art therapy, where they got to break things, throw things and just get angry.  Just watching that teared me up.  I feel like that a lot of times, where I just want to start breaking things up, smash things up and SAY THINGS OUTLOUD.  I was sobbing the whole entire time, I didn’t have any flashbacks, no icky feelings, but I just cried becasue I never had anyone to share this experience with and I always wished I had.  I wished someone would just take a bulk of this pressure and weight off me, even for a few hours so I can take a break from carrying this around, this big fucking secret thats just eating me upinside ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLl the fucking goddamn time.  I wished my parents knew the extent of what happened, so at least they know.  I wished they would know so they can comfort me, assure me that I am ok and my life somehow would turn out Ok.  I wished I could sit down and tell them about my feelings, how hurt  and fucking tired I am.  How much I thinnk about what happened and how it affected me.  How insane I feel sometimes because I just can’t believe it happened to me.  The vibrant, vivacious little girl who everyone thought would amount to greatness.  I wish I can just pour my heart out, talk about anything and everything, no holding back, so I can just let some of this go. 

I didn’t realize how big of a burden or heavy of a weight this was until I really thought about it tonight.  For 23 years I had to take care of all of my emotions and issues on my own.  I had to process my own feelings, understand my own thoguht process, without letting anyone know I was “going throgh anything”.  I just had to exist, breathe and function on my own.  Dealing with this abuse has been very exhausting and draining, I simply wished tonight I had some help.  I wish I had someone to talk to, someone to look at me as a little girl and tell me I am still great and I am still going to be OK.  This burden of having to hide the secret, to act and behave as if nothing happened.  To carry on a life where everything is great and this is a big fucking happy world is something I still do.  I know it took me along while to admit to myself that the abuse happened, because things were always supposedly shiny in my world.

Its such a huge weight lifting off of me.  I don’t have to pretend I never need help, when at my core I always wished I had some help.  I wished as a child someone would hold my hand as I navigated through life with all these feelings of being dirty and bad.  All those feelings that I had done something wrong and I had a part to do with it, that I caused it and it was my fault.  Iwished someone would have explained to me that the disdain I feel for my body and myself is not a natural part of growing up and being girl, and there is a way to change those feelings.  Now as an adult woman, who is about to turn thirty, I still wish someone wouuld tell me I am going to be Ok and still I have the potential to be great.  I wish I can just know that I don’t have to worry about having all of my dreams come true, because I burried them so deep inside, protecting them, I actually can’t get to them.  I wish I can just not worry about finding love, and having a man know me and not be JUDGED about what happened.  Not have to worry about being a non virgin, about fear of intimacy, fears of being touched and fears of intercourse.  I wish all of those worries would just go away, to have somone there hold my hand as I navigate through those feelings would just be fucking wonderful, but lets face it, who the hell would that be?  I sometimes feel that I am asking for too much, if my own family have absoloutely no clue on how to be there for me, then who the hell would?  I feel sharing those emotions, as much as I am despereate to, is wrong.  Its not Ok to say these things outloud.  I should never speak of them and god forbid someone from the family would know, then they would hold it against me and punish me for it.  Gosh, that feeling of sharing those feelings and those experiences with someone would ease the pain.  It would make life easier, gentler and more bearable.  I guess it might be time to get therapy, I wondered why people always go to therapy, maybe becasue they’re like me, surrounded with family, yet they have no one to talk to.

I came across this and thought it was simply interesting…

Arab woman’s burden of proof

A new “virginity device” sold from China and marketed to Muslims in Egypt and elsewhere has conservative clerics up in arms. But what should be discussed is the hypocrisy that burdens women with proof of virginity while the men involved are ignored. Because of this, thousands of widows, divorcees and rape victims in countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are forced to live lives at the very margins of social acceptability.  

Rafia Zakaria

Conservative clerics in Egypt are in a conundrum. A new device sold by a Chinese company threatens to make every Egyptian woman who uses it, a virgin. The “Artificial Virginity Hymen Kit” distributed by Gigimo costs about $30.00 is intended to help newly married women fool their husbands into believing that they are virgins by producing a small amount of blood like substance during intercourse.

The controversy began when a reporter from a Dutch radio station broadcast an Arabic translation of the Chinese advertisement for the product. Conservative members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt’s Parliament have since asked for a ban on the device. Prominent Egyptian scholar Abdel Moati Bayoumi said anyone who imports the device should be punished saying “This product encourages illicit sexual relations, Islamic culture forbids these relations except within the confines of marriage,” Bayoumi said.

The controversy over virginity and the newly provided ability to fake it, hits at the center of questions regarding the status of women in much of the Muslim world. Questions regarding female purity hold a crucial position in evaluating the worth of a woman and negotiating marriage contracts. In Egypt itself, thousands of women undergo hymen reconstruction surgery every year in order to fulfill preconditions of virginity for marriage and to avoid bringing shame to families.

The practice of hymen reconstruction surgery has migrated with Arab populations to European countries like France where young Muslim women may undergo the half hour surgery for a cost of about €2000 ($3,000). Others choose to go back to countries like Tunisia where they can get the surgery at lower cost. The surgery is legal in the European Union as well as in the United States where it falls in the category of elective surgery. While surgery itself is less common in Pakistan, women are routinely abused tortured and even killed if they are found not to be virgins upon being wed. In several cases, young brides have been known to commit suicide rather than risk bringing shame to their families.

The issue of whether virginity constitutes the total worth of a woman upon marriage (rendering her otherwise unmarriageable) was dealt with recently in a courtroom in the French city of Lille where the judge initially ruled that a marriage between a Muslim man and a woman could be annulled because the bride had lied about her virginity. A French appeals court then took up the issue of whether virginity was “an essential quality of a woman” and ended up reversing the previous decision that had decreed lying about virginity to be a grounds for fraud that would justify annulment. Of course, the outcome of the case would have been markedly different under Islamic law where deception regarding the virginity of the bride would result both in an annulment of the marriage and a repudiation of the dower.

Expectedly, as the news clips from Egypt amply illustrate, much of the clerical debate over the device has focused on the fact that it allows women to fake and flout the theological precept prescribing a prohibition on extra marital sexual relations. No argument is provided of the fact that the male involved may also have come to the marriage without proof of virginity which is equally theologically culpable but less easily verified. The assumption is that women’s virginity must necessarily be verifiable hence necessitating the ban on the Chinese virginity gadget while male virginity can conveniently be glossed over. Equally sexist are attempts to justify the concern over women’s virginity as one motivated by insuring the sexual purity of society in general since it ignores the reality that every extra marital sexual act involves by definition two parties, one male and one female which are both equally responsible for their actions.

The fact is, in Egypt, Pakistan and in a majority of Muslim countries the onus of protecting a society’s delusions of purity and piety are placed solely and singularly on the shoulders of women. In insuring that virgins are venerated and non-virgins vilified social constructions of good and bad women are enforced in a society where the value of a woman is little else than her ability to breed sons, please her husband and be a good housekeeper. The myth that is continually forwarded is that all those women who are not virgins are somehow dirty, impure and unworthy of marriage. No consideration is given to the fact that the majority of these women may be widows, divorcees or victims of sexual assault. In other words, male complicity in reducing women to non-virgin status is completely ignored in the whole discussion.

Because of this, thousands of widows, divorcees and rape victims in countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are forced to live lives at the very margins of social acceptability. Not only can they not expect to be married again but they are further dealt the burden of being somehow morally compromised simply because they are no longer the pure virgins venerated as brides. Examples from Islamic history that suggest otherwise. For instance, the notable fact that the first marriage of the Prophet (pbuh) was to a non-virgin are given short shrift and virtually ignored.

It is interesting indeed, that the device in question that provides Muslim women with some semblance of empowerment against the strictures of proving their purity is being sold from China. Indeed, it brings to focus the vast disparity between nations like China, who have put their women to work and hence harnessed 51% of an unused labor force to become a manufacturing super power and countries like Pakistan and Egypt who are still squabbling over inanities that necessitate a device like the Artificial Hymen Kit. While Chinese women work to produce anything that sells and raise their country to new heights as an emerging power; Muslim women remain embroiled in proving that their worth is more than just their virginity.

Here is the link:http://www.menassat.com/?q=en/news-articles/7253-woman-s-burden-proof

I always dreamt about going back as a powerful, successful, beautiful woman to the places where I was molested.  To walk into those places, push the door open, take a deep breath and be unmoved by the smell, noise and sight.  I have dreamt about going in the classroom where I was molested by my teacher.  To sit, close my eyes, play the molestation and be so strong, it wouldn’t shake me up one bit.  I would walk into the bakery on a Sunday afternoon, where an employee once sat down, exposing himself, masturbating as I innocently came down the stairs as a seven year old, grabbing me by the shoulder, laughing at my immense fear, as he continued to masturbate, still holding on to my shoulder, then tucking his penis away, handing me my bread and leaving in utter fear.  I dream of walking down those stairs, a grown woman, grabbing him by the throat, tossing him against the wall, kicking him between his legs, choking him until he’s blue in the face, spitting on him, yet leaving him alive, so he knows pay back time is near.

I played those scenarious in my mind so many times,  I think they have become an obsession.  I feel that I can never move forward if I don’t face my greatest fear, going back to those places and just being able to breathe.  Is it really the only way to have closure, or am I creating an obstacle for myself and a crutch not to move forward?  I don’t know.

23 years later it still hurts.  Why does it feel like yesterday?  Why I can’t let go?  Do I like being a victim, playing the blame game and the pity party?  Or am I minimizing the feelings so I never really have to deal with the real scope of this experience?

Out of all the questions that have bugged me in the past, this is the one that takes all of my time and energy.  I have spent countless moments trying to figure it out in my head, trying to go back in time to that moment, right before I was first molested and think, if THAT didn’t happen, where would I be today?  I thought about it so many times yet none of  the ‘fictional’ scenarios felt real or that I was connected to any of them.  Maybe because they were so beautiful and vibrant, they couldn’t be mine.  I am so used to the darkness, even a beautiful daydeam feels strange.  So really who am I?  Am I really at this point in my life the person I am supposed to be, or am I the result of all the shame, guilt, silence and secrecy I have been living in for the past 23 years.  Boy, I am turning 30 soon, I have kept this secret for 23 years, and I feel even more ashamed because I feel I haven’t done much with my life.  So again, who the hell am I?  Am I the child who turned into an adult and took the “secret ” with her everywhere she went?  OR am I the child who became an adult and survived in the best way she knew how, to keep her mouth shut and eyes down?

I look at myself sometimes in the mirror and I feel good about where I am in my life.  Those are usually rare moments where I cut myself some slack.  Moments where I think about the experiences and lack of resources I had and think that considering the circumstances, I have done a marvelous job surviving.  Then the rest of the time, I look at my self and wonder why the hell didn’t I do more in my life?  I really do see myself as strong and capable, really I had to be to survive the abuse, and knowing that I wonder why I haven’t done a whole lot more?  I wanted to make movies and write books as a child.  I wanted to draw and paint.  I wanted to create.  I wanted to draw on walls and on pavements.  I want to write stories, novels and children’s books.  I wanted to write the story, tell the story and paint the story.  I wanted.  This is all I remember wanting a child, creativity.  But for every day after my abuse, I feel like I was 100 miles away from my desire to create.  What was I supposed to write and paint about?  The hands of the men who molested me, or the darkness I saw when I squeezed my eyes tightly shut when those men were molesting me?  I was a dreamer back then, a child so free to dream and those dreams were real and attainable.  Now I dream, but I dream of the blackness to move away, to open my eyes and realize things weren’t as bad as they felt.  I really just stopped Wanting, stopped desiring.

Is it possibe that who I am is ” a sexual abuse victim” or a “sexual abuse survivor”?  What if there isn’t anything else to me but that?  All of those days and times I have spent  wondering were a waste of time and all I see right now, ALL THAT I AM RIGHT NOW is it.  So what does that make me?  A 30 year old who have spent her life in isolation, away from life and the world, doing everything in her power not to be “found out” and I am infront of my computer still living to tell about it.  I have spent a long time sitting around watching life go by, I am apathetic and as I am writing this, I don’t feel one bit angry.  This scares me.  I have allowed the men who molested me to put a stop to my life, my creativity and my ability to dream.  I am still not feeling angry.  I have spent countless years blaming myself for something I didn’t even know it had a name and many more  years punishing myself for something I didn’t committ against myself, and until this day I am still doing it.  I am still not angry.  I have spent many many years abusing myself with food that I rendered myself obese; I did it because I felt that I was protecting myself from the eyes of men; because I had no other way to hush and soothe the feelings; I did it becasue I thought I deserved to feel the pain of being overstuffed and unable to breathe until the next meal.  I still don’t feel angry.  I feel sadness, I feel the sadness I see in my eyes when no one is looking.  I feel heartbroken about all the dreams that went unnoticed and answered.  I feel sad about the tears and the prayers that went unheard.  I feel sadness.  Sad about the little girl who had the hands of men up her dress, touching her thighs, rubbing them up and down.  I trembled in fear, fear of someone knowing I had been inappropriately touched, and fear of the feelings I felt.  I am sad that my precious body was invaded; I used to love my body.  I used to think my body was wonderful, it was really soooo wonderous, it was the best thing about being a girl, to have that girly body.  Now having a female body is a burden, its scary to be a woman.  I hate having those feelings, but I feel them, I don’t know what to do with those feelings except write about them.

So again, who am I?  I have no damn clue.  A lot of people wonder about that, I guess I am just another one of them.  I’m not sure if its different for someone who has been through abuse to ask this question compared to someone who hasn’t.  But all I know is that I feel who I am have been taken away from me the moment I was first molested and I want that ME back.  I am angry now.  I want ME back.  I want the vibrant, happy, in love with life ME back damn it.  I want Me back in my life, nestled in the heart of my life.  I want ME to dance to the sound of my heart beat.  I am really fucking angry now.  But how do I get ME back? Is it hiding far away, or it’s right infront of me and I am just choosing to shut my eyes and only see the dark?

while I was reading up on the movie “precious” and Tyler Perry’s involvement in it, I came across a few articles released in the past month about Tyler’s own experience of abuse.  This is one of the articles: http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/10/06/tyler.perry.abuse.precious/.  I was compelled to respond, simply because I think it is so courageous for someone to speak up about their abuse, and it is somehting I hope to do in a way that will liberate and empower me more.  Below is what I wrote on the message boards on TP website, here is the link: http://www.tylerperry.com/_MessageBoard/.

Have a great night everyone.

“I came across some articles about TP statements regarding his past abuse.  I thought that it took so much courage to reveal that to the public and its an experience a lot of abuse vicitims don’t get to have.  Many of us dont’ get to tell our story, mostly, our voices go unheard.  Congratulations on revealing that, it really is a huge a step and one I hope is very liberating. 
I know that it is a huge burden to carry around this “secret”; to do everything in your power to keep it from “coming out” , in the hopes of no one finding out that you’ve been done wrong, or someone thought you were weak and they could overpower you.  It is amazing to see someone take that step,  Speaking up in this country is not only a right, but its a GREAT privillage that millions of victims around the world never get to experience.  I know MANY women and men who would love to prosecute their rapists, yet they will never do so, because other cultures will prosecute the vicitm, not the victimizer.
I am from Arab descent, born and raised in the Middle East, and lived most of my adulthood in the U.S.  I am a survior of sexual abuse and have lived most of my life in silence and shame.  I was raised in a culture that values a woman hymen and demands her “virgin” status on her wedding night, yet does nothing to protect me and ensure I can get to my wedding night unharmed.  I am equated with the presence of my hymen and in its absence I am worthless.  It feels like I am in a tug of war, between how I was raised to see myself and I how I can see myself.  I know that I am more that that piece of skin between my legs, yet it is something I struggle with daily.
In my culture, I am a soiled, used, dirty and undesirable woman.  I am by no means even allowed to call myself a woman, I should be a girl.  A woman is a term used to describe females who are married.  You are a girl until the day you marry.  I am a woman, but it wasn’t my choice.  Womanhood chose me, and for a while now, I have been very proud to be a woman.  It took alot of courage for a seven year old child to survive in a culture with no assistance or resources, and to believe that there has to be a reason I went through the abuse.  So in September of this year I started a blog, dedicated for Arab womeen who are survivors of sexual abuse.  For me that was a liberating step and another step towards healing.  I don’t really know what my life will bring, but I know what I can bring to the table, courage and the insatiable desire to change my life so I am no longer that seven year old victim, but the woman I always dreamed of being.”

Bustan Worood

Here is the link: http://hawaa.elaana.com/show-4440.html

Another article about Bahrain…

البحرين: التقاليد عقبة أمام محاسبة المعتدين على الأطفال