I was always humiliated and beaten up over the most trivial reasons.
He’d hit me and flip the dining table over if there was just a little extra salt in his food.
I was never allowed to open my mouth and give my opinion.
Cooking zucchini was always a frightening experience, because if just one piece of zucchini turned out smaller than the other, it’d be a disaster.

I’m 27 years old. When I was 19, I left my mother’s place, taking my sisters along with me, and went to stay at my father’s.
We left because mother used to beat and belittle us.
In her mind, she owned us. She educated us. We belonged to her.

If, while baba was beating me, I cried, he’d hit me again for crying.
“If you cry, you’ll get hit. Men don’t cry”, he’d tell me.
Whenever he beat me, my main concern was to not cry.

My father was a difficult man.
He didn't like us girls.
He only liked the boys.

I’m a country girl, unfortunately.
I am 27 years old.
I’ve been getting beaten up and humiliated since I was 3 years old.
I remember every blow, and the pain.
I still have scars on my body,
That serve as a constant reminder.

I was in middle school then.
My little sister, who was three years younger than me, was also in middle school.
I was in 9th grade and she was in 7th grade.
My mother is ignorant and uneducated.
She harms others and herself.
She was never loved by her parents or siblings.
Girls to her were mere servants to their brothers, their mothers and their fathers.

No one has ever experienced what my father put me through.
It’s such a difficult thing to live through,
When you’re a kid in first grade,
And your father takes you home from school,
And beats you with a spiked rod,
Nails penetrating your entire body.
It was a long walk home,
And I was being beaten up continuously,
blood gushing out of the wounds.
All of this for something I didn’t do.
Something that wasn’t my fault.

His cousin tried to convince me to go back to him.
I told him I won’t.
He said, “Do it for the girls.”
I told him, “Growing up with a mother and father, who are divorced, but respect one another, is so much better than living with two people who hate each other.”

He instructed me to put on my nightgown.
I put it on, but I didn't want to leave the bedroom wearing nothing but it.
“Goddamn it,” he exclaimed, “Let’s try and get this done sometime today!”
“Your family’s waiting in the street!”
domestic violence, gender violence, sexual violence, sex education, sex work, virginity testing

“You’re a failure.”
My father has always called me a “failure” ever since I was little.
I don’t remember when he started calling me that.
But he still does.