What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

by Sohaila Abdulali

What happens when you keep such a big secret? What happens to you, and what does your silence mean for the people around you and your community?

But, no matter how much we talk about it, it is in fact staggeringly, almost incomprehensibly awful. Like war, childbirth and other traumas, it’s almost impossible to explain if you haven’t been through it.

They don’t tell you that you may dread becoming pregnant because having a child is going to mean you have to pay some serious attention to your vagina, which is historically not a peaceful place …

Another life-sapping result of rape is the huge output of energy it takes to keep secrets.

Secrets are like cancer. They mutate in unpredictable ways and create strange distortions.

Some people are destroyed by rape; most are not. They come through it, they go on, wearing with great dignity a mantle of bitter grace.