Losing Angels - I

What must have been the experience of listening to a victim during a normal day-hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission like? What must have been the experience of speaking during the hearing like? How must it feel to speak out and “clear your hearts” of all traumatic experiences, but be aware that the act of speaking would not be followed by action, but by a few sympathetic nods and maybe an occasional tear or two? But the victims have cried quite enough, to stop seeing the value in tears. Is that too harsh on the part of the victims? Is it too harsh and insensitive, in general, to lose sympathy, as a result of suffering violence?

So many of us suffer from violence and do so little about it, but when we do reach out to professionals for help, we go through experiences that leave an indelible mark on us. We suffer from violence – of body, mind, or soul – because we have no control over circumstances that enable the existence of forms of power that cause this violence. Would our lives be any different, if we had control over the circumstances though? I am not saying that we ask to have violence caused to us, but that when we don’t do what we should have done to stop that violence, there are good reasons. While I haven’t read much on it, what could perhaps be the reasons for violence (physical/psychological/sexual) between homosexual couples? Would it have anything to do with a very high level of insecurity of all sorts of living in a hetero-normative society? Despite the existence of these oppressive structures, people do disentangle themselves from the various forms of oppression that they are under the grips of. How?

Finally, what about the violator? It has almost been six weeks since I looked into the eyes of the person who brought down the world on me, and asked them, if seeing me in all my vulnerability and ruins, reminded them of the violence they had once suffered – was externalizing violence on another body, rendering the body incapable of thought and action and in a miserable state – a way of bringing peace to oneself? I am not convinced I got an answer that made much sense, even though I wasn't in a state to make sense of anything anyway.

Suffering has its own way of working for everyone. For some of us, we need to wallow for a bit – a few days, weeks, or months – each time going down the tunnel of pain, until there is no way further down. The most terrifying thing about this journey downwards is that we are never sure when we would hit rock-bottom. The elevator to take us up and away, only starts from the basement and the journey downwards is like a passage through hell – we shed layers of our body and soul, it’s almost as if each passageway to that road downwards requires a sacrifice, and since the way up is through the basement, we rip away our happiness and peace, in a hope to eventually reach a happier place. The length and hardships of this journey, the ripping out of every wound the travelling body had ever suffered from and exposure to fire and spice – all of this, makes it possible to secure happiness, because there is nothing but happiness to be acquired.

Through these moments, you think of love, and the breaking up of love or prospects of love, that actually caused such suffering, and how much you loved, and what love meant for you and what you were made to understand, was reciprocal love – now laying in pieces, now being nothing more than memory.  You want to go back and pick the bottles of the most concentrated forms of acid, and wipe clean your life of this memory. You scrub and pour more acid, and scrub some more. It’s a little too late when you realize that you were not cleaning off this memory from granite but from a living and breathing body. Do you see the blood and guts that you threw away, while scrapping the memory off… has the acid started to cause more pain to your body? I am sorry; this wasn't meant to be so bad. I’m sorry you didn't deserve to suffer. I am so sorry!