I have a problem with my body.
It suddenly got bigger and I feel the need to always hide it.
I hide my hair and my breasts.
And menstruation is the biggest secret of all.

My body was the cause of many problems other than loneliness and isolation.
It was why my uncle and neighbor sexually harassed me.
It’s also why the owner of a bookshop harassed me once.
I didn’t know that it was harassment.
I didn’t know that the bookshop owner cornered me to harass me.
My uncle pulled me into bed and started doing weird things to me.
I managed to run away from him, but he came after me.
He was worried I’d tell people what happened.
It wasn’t that he wanted to play with me.
I didn’t know that my neighbor only played with me in the water just so he could touch my private parts under the water.

I only learned that this was harassment when I grew up.
I felt a strange kind of distress.
I didn’t know that I was supposed to report these incidents.
I hated them all.
I hated this country.
I hated my body.

My body was the reason why I was the first one to get circumcised among my friends.
I was the first one whose legs were opened wide by a doctor.
It was so he could check and decide if I needed to get circumcised.
A famous surgeon decided that I needed to be deprived of sexual pleasure.
The kind of pleasure everyone talked about.
His decision made me go through the most painful experience of my life.
I cried in silence.
I knew that screaming wouldn’t change anything.
I cried because I felt humiliated.
My hate for my body increased tremendously.

My body was not the only thing I hated.
I hated my mother and father as well.
I stopped considering them my parents.
I started looking for different parents.

My body made someone grab one of my breasts when I was walking down the street.
I was in fifth grade at the time.
He laughed and I didn’t know what to do.
There was nothing I could do but hate my body and hate being a female.
I had to pretend that I was a man in the way I walked and talked.
I convinced myself that being a man would make my life easier.
I told myself that I could learn how to be a man then get a sex change operation later on.
I told everyone that I was going to change my sex.

Even when it came to love, people only wanted sex.
I tried phone sex just because the other person wanted it.
It was disgusting.
I didn’t enjoy it.
I pretended to enjoy it and followed the other’s person instructions.
All I felt was disgust.
I stayed away from these people.
I once told a guy who wanted to have sex with me that sex disgusted me,
And that I had been circumcised.
He said I was frigid.
I am frigid and I hate my parents for doing that to me.
I could never forgive them.
I stopped believing in love.

I know I’m ugly.
My brother told me that many times.
“She’ll find a good husband who’ll make it up to her,” my mother would say.
As if I was cursed by the way I look.
I lost faith in being loved.
I’ve been in love several times.
But I’m afraid of being in a relationship.
I don’t think anyone could really love and want me.

I hate my body because it’s depriving me of love and stifling my life and dreams.