Nothing funny. At all. So move on.

This is my friend's story: a story of torture and abuse perpetrated in the guise of immaturity. The years of abuse lasted over a prolonged period of time, from the victim's earliest memories to the abuser's final departure. And abuse was unreported for two decades. For some uncanny reason of her own, the victim could never expose the abuser, instead defended the abuser from those who would offend him for some reason of their own. (Perhaps, the reason for this was the subconscious loyalty to the familiar or the familial.) The victim rationalized her cowardice as "taking the high road" or "forgiveness." What she really did was tolerate violence.

This story brought me to contemplate about the effects of torture and abuse, and what Time does to each. For the abuser, Time plays the alibi; the alibi that endorses the abuser's "lost memory" and hence the eradication or worse, the denial of his guilt. Even so, such a day comes when finally at long last she musters the courage and the bitterness to expel out her unrepressed rage at the abuser by confronting him. In unabashed denial the abuser flippantly yells at the victim, "You like to dig up dirt and tell stories about people."

Incidentally, she is a writer. Her skill as the sorceress of imagination has paved out many short fictions and earned her applause. Thereby, it becomes all too easy for the abuser to make his remark plausible. The abuser uses the victim's profession as exhibit A to strengthen his defense. And this has finally unleashed the serpent within the victim, to fight for justice with all her might. The victim never realized before then that she was capable of such magnitude of hatred.

Over the years the abuser has strategically accomplished something, which the victim now likes to believe was part of his elaborate plan of attempting to remain unsullied. He has protracted an unofficial disease, "bad memory." He has convinced himself, and others, that he suffers from it; that no memory of yore remains with him. Everyone who knows him knows that indeed that is the case. The victim too was willing to believe this. In fact she had. She wanted to hide in the penumbra of this justification, thinking why revoke a lost memory, until one day she realized to her dismay that his alibi can't be true because the abuser has inadvertently sometimes demonstrated astute recollection of singular incidents from the past. When needed to furnish some argument, the abuser has readily been able to resuscitate events rummaging through long lost memory.

However, over the years the abuser has mended his ways. Or at least that's what the victim liked to believe and let him off the hook. The victim now thinks of the abuser as quite a gentleman. And if the abuser has redeemed then why open a can of worms, she argues with the voice in her head. She is doubtful though if this is not cowardice from confrontation, again. But alas! There comes a day when she is so nakedly provoked that she can't restrain. Not this time. One must penetrate this charade the abuser calls "lost memory" and how dare HE accuses the victim instead! How dare he accuse her as a story teller and a liar! O but of course the abuser is overwhelmed by the accusation against him. And had there been witnesses there, they would be too. ‘O but we have always known him as such a gentle boy, of good breeding, of untainted reputation. It cannot be. The victim, she must have had a fit of imagination, a strong figment no doubt. She must have needed to amuse herself, she must have needed a story to tell, she must have needed a self-orchestrated audition for a play! Plenty of reasons there must be, but not this. Not the one where this nice gentleman of unblemished character could have defiled this mistaken victim.’

Pleas for justice, she's afraid, will increasingly mar her as the liar because truths such as these are difficult to conceive. Worse, the abuser rampantly told tales about the victim to friends and companions, encouraging others to believe she is unstable, garish, and a panderer. So guilt stricken he is. Funnily, still, the victim sings praises for the abuser to her friends, laboring love for him, defending him against those who merrily laugh about him, and calls him a daft prig. The victim is determined to remain on the high road until morality I hope will make her bleed through her nose! 

The victim knows that over the years, to refrain from hating the abuser because she shouldn't, she has instead loved the abuser and defended him quite boisterously. The victim tried to overcompensate for her latent malice for the abuser. People have watched her love him, always. So what is all this now! Quite nonsense! Quite nonsense! Shame on her for pulling such a stance!

Alas now, the truth becomes all the more implausible.

No amount of therapy has healed her. And though lack of justice is the general order of the day and she must accept this as a grown up, she still searches for retribution. Be mindful though, the victim isn't an angel by any stretch of the imagination. She is angry when provoked. She is incapable of artifice, so needed in a civilized society. She shouts in intolerance of lies, hence cannot accept the most reasonable of human follies. It's her fault, really. She will not lie even when it’s needed, hence indifferent to other people's needs. She reproduces the exact words and actions when marshaled, so much so that she tape records most conversations, thus so cynical and untrusting. And worse, she is too idealistic for her own detriment. Dishonesty cripples her, and makes her want to hurt the one who practices so. But what is honesty in the end but a few well chosen facial expressions, and words of apparent reasonableness: A credible performance at best!

But in all this, one good thing yielded. She has learned to laugh a lot with her belly juddering, uncontrollably. Our victim takes refuge in humor. Humor protects her. Humor conceals the deafening pain. Alas. All she needed perhaps was a quiet apology, the denial of which is bringing out the syndrome of Dorian Gray; as the portrait slowly turns vicious. My once sweet friend.