Publisher's Synopsis
Is it over yet? "Must is defeating, 'prefer' is personal growth. Now I can 'prefer' that my family and others may validate my experiences but is no longer a must." Is it over yet? Ended in 2006, where a new beginning was to flourish, a fresh. The struggle of living with secrets of child sex abuse, in a traditional Pakistani and Muslim family, a burden heavy to carry alone. The darkness, toying with fringes of life. Here, in 2016, I'm taking a journey into a world, which at 26 I was convinced was finally recovered. This story is based on true events, which I wanted to share in my own creative way. Long gone are the nights endless, waiting for the insistent visits of the angel of death. Forever now, for what feels like eternity I have slept with an ease seamless. Dreams of an exquisitely intricate butterfly; explode in my mind, inner. Her dance a teasingly seductive temptress beckoning me closer to a door yellow. Touch me, touch me not. One moment, she is within my grasp, the next, cheeky wings escape behind a door open. She waits, patiently for me to follow her in. I am yet to take the plunge, deep in the unknown. However, reality teaches me otherwise. Progressively, I accept that a world fuelled in unresolved emotion can and will not simply be overcome by a chance meeting with hope. It takes more than this to start over. This journey is a leap of faith. A chance to take stock of the ongoing consequences and long term impact our historical child abuse is having on our lives. This is an opportunity to begin where the journey really started in 2006. This is an insight into life after disclosure and the reality of lives changed, forever. In my hands, small, I hold the purple wings of a life, I want to live. Free, uninhibited and alive in every sense. Free from the demons of a past that relish in a mind destined to survive, a struggle long buried. These are my steps towards a life, I choose to live. With each step forward, I encounter plenty backwards. "Doors. Where one closes, another opens. We only have to seek and we shall find." Footsteps in sand, soft. Follow me now into a world not mine.
