It was early in the morning when Kashvi’s consciousness drifted from its state of slumber. For a moment, she simmered in that state of drowsiness; in a total state of bliss… for about three seconds. Then, she felt the dampness of her blood-stained sheets beneath her. A tide of pain washed over her, so quick and sudden it jolted her out of the soft arms of sleep and into a state of frenzied alertness. Adrenaline pulsing through her veins as she opened her eyes to witness her limbs sprawled across the bed like tossed dice; her guts spilling out of her body like maggots fleeing a forest fire. Fire. Her body was on fire, but the physical pain was only temporary. It was quickly exchanged with a striking fear as the memories of last night assaulted her defenseless mind. With a thumping chest, she suddenly became all too aware of the boy that lay next to her, his arm draped across her, somehow unbothered by the blood that pooled right underneath it, in the cavity of Kashvi’s chest. An expression of complete tranquillity on his face, mocking the panic that completely submerged Kashvi.
There he was, tall, handsome, and utterly repulsive—tangible evidence of Kashvi’s greatest shame. But no disgust she felt for the boy even rivaled the disgust she felt for herself. Disgust and shame and guilt, all tangled together in an ugly medley that twisted itself into her ears and whispered lies that Kashvi would accept as truths for a long time to come. It’s your fault, they told her over and over again, and Kashvi believed it. After all, she could have screamed, she could have fought him off, but instead, she let him dig the knife through her flesh. She lay there passively when he killed her. No, even that wasn’t the truth. Kashvi had incited him; she had held her hand over his and willed the knife towards her. So really, she shouldn’t be upset, because she had wanted this. She had wanted to die.
Image Source: Catherine Lanctot
Kashvi held her breath as she waited for the boy to wake up. Part of her wished she could stay in that moment forever, in that liminal space where she could still pretend she was still the same girl as yesterday. Back when she was more than scattered parts, back when she was whole. Another part of her screeched from the inside out, desperately urging her to get away, far away, from the boy who had rendered her to this piteous state. Despite the inner turmoil Kashvi felt surging through her, when the boy’s eyes fluttered open, she plastered a smile onto her face and told herself, more out of self-preservation than denial, that everything was normal. Kashvi silently prayed that he would, too, pretend nothing was out of the ordinary and slip out of her life. But when he truly seemed not to notice the spilt blood or the scattered limbs, it felt somewhat jarring. How could he not see how utterly mutilated she was? The racket in Kashvi’s brain caused by the tumbling commotion of her thoughts drowned out all the measly small talk the boy made as he slowly got out of bed and nonchalantly made his way out.
And then she was… alone. Just her and her guilt. She felt so dirty, so used. She tried to make herself cry, to release it from her system as if she could purge out her shame. But she couldn’t. She felt numb, really; she felt dead. A part of her wished she were, that she had never woken up. How was she to live like this? Dismembered… worthless. She had so clearly stated her intentions… right? She said no so many times… and then she stopped saying no. She gave in, worse, she ‘participated’ because she felt like she owed him something. Why? She didn’t exactly know. Why didn’t she scream? Why didn’t she outright leave? Why? Why? Why!? WHY!? Why… Did she let it happen? She remembered feeling proud when he first approached her. Proud that she was hot enough for a guy to want her, proud that he picked her over all her friends when it had always been the opposite. She’d never been looked at, she’d never been desired—maybe because she didn’t look like the girls on TV, because she had coloured skin and large features. At least that’s why she had always felt ugly. And how badly she had always wanted to be desirable. She just didn’t know what ‘that’ could mean… She’d rather be invisible than be stuck with the memory of what happened. The memory of him…
Image Source: Ava Tsarynnyk
As she sat there in her room, mocked by the four unfeeling walls that surrounded her, mocking her, she felt more alone in this world than ever before. She wondered upon the impossibility of life as a crippled girl, and thought life would never be the same again. It wasn’t. But somehow, she managed to gather all her severed parts and sew them back onto her body. It wasn’t glamorous, the string was cheap, and often they’d fall back off. She didn’t feel empowered; she forced herself back together not because she wanted to, not because she was strong, but because she had no other choice. It was either that or… She didn’t feel like a survivor, she didn’t even feel like a victim, all she felt was shame so heavy it consumed every fibre of her being. She felt ugly and self-conscious. Especially at first, when she’d feel the stitches that littered her body poking under the fabric of her clothing. Surely it was noticeable. But no one did notice. Not even in the first few days, when she could barely move, so unaccustomed to her new body as she was. So she told herself it was okay, that she was unaffected. That really, she could live like this, if only she hid her ugliness behind her bright eyes and twinkling smile. It didn’t matter how she felt, only how she was perceived.
Then one day, she was standing in line at the college dining hall when she saw him. Standing tall and proud out of the corner of her eye. Her heart started palpitating, and her airways suddenly closed up. Her lunch tray began to shake in her hands. She couldn’t breathe. PANIC. Help. Help. Help! HELP!! She felt her head spinning from the lack of air and her lungs burning. Her head thumped with the echo of her screams contained within it. It took everything inside her not to collapse into a ball on the floor, and instead, make her way to the checkout counter. When she looked back anxiously to see whether he was following her, she realised, first to her relief then to her distress, that it wasn’t him, only some boy who vaguely resembled him. That was only the first time. It happened several times after, for several months. It felt like torture, this constant state of terror. Constantly scanning every room she walked into, just to see the illusion of him out of her periphery. Still, she never cried. She often felt the world closing in on her, but she never cried. Maybe because she thought she didn’t deserve to cry. She had brought this upon herself. She was just being pathetic, and emotional, and dramatic.
Image Source: Ava Tsarynnyk
When she did finally cry, it almost killed her all over again. One of her friends had asked her how she was doing. She said, “You look a little off”. She probably meant that she looked tired. But Kashvi felt the veil she had built unravel. She felt the threads that secured her limbs snap off one by one, and the guts she had stuffed back into herself like an old teddy bear spilled out onto the floor in front of her. With them came the tears. A lot of tears. A stream of tears that seemed to never end. She cried and cried and cried, releasing everything she had inside of her. Every emotion that she’d suppressed for months, and even those from before ‘it’ happened. She cried over her childhood in a broken home, the rejection she’d felt time and time again growing up. She cried over every insecurity, every sliver of self-hatred. She regurgitated it all. Finally, she mourned—she mourned over the girl she used to be before he had ever put his hands on her. She mourned her death. She didn’t want to be strong. She didn’t want to keep going; she wanted to stay there, crying, forever until her own body melted and joined her tears into a puddle on the floor. A puddle of water. A puddle of nothing. Her friend held her through the night as she shook with the weight of her grief. Unsure of what to say or do. Unsure of what had caused this. They didn’t say anything to each other. When the tears finally subsided, and Kashvi was still left with the shell of her body, she whispered a soft thank you, and they never spoke of that night again.
For the hundredth time, Kashvi had to sew herself back up again, learn how to walk, how to bend the stiff joints in her knees without tearing the stitches, how to realign her jaw so her words didn’t slur or divulge something she would later regret. She stitched her own chest closed around a heart that wasn’t sure wanted to beat, rewired nerves that screamed with muddled memories and taught her patchwork body to move like it used to when it belonged to her, not her trauma. Kashvi had to learn how to live again and again and again. At first, picking herself back up more often than she could count, then a little less often, until eventually she rarely broke down anymore. She still does—break down, even now. She never fully moved on. I’m not sure if she ever will, but slowly, I hope, she’ll learn how to live with herself. Because what happened to her isn’t her fault, at least that’s what I keep telling her, and eventually, I hope, she’ll believe it.
We bleed and we ache, and eventually we learn to live with this new version of ourselves that we never wanted but that we have to learn to love, if we want to truly survive.
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