I’m scared. My bones are shivering even as I type this. You think that this would never happen to anyone you know. You think that the world is a perfect, bright and happy place. But people just bury the ugly stories in order to keep this myth alive.

I have a story today which I need to tell the world because something needs to be done, my hands are tied and this is the only thing that I can do as a woman who wants to stand up for another woman.

They were in love. He used to sit in one corner, away from the world and sketch his thoughts and ideas. She looked at him and felt a magnetic pull towards him. Within a few months, he became her world. With friends and family, they shared their love and made memories. He learned everything about her that he possibly could. She couldn’t get enough of what he offered.

A few more months down the line, he started becoming distant. She was worried.

“Why is he always on the phone?”

“Why doesn’t he allow me to touch his phone?”

“What is he trying to hide?”

She tried to rationalize it with her friends. Some said that maybe it is a new friendship that he can’t let go. Maybe, it’s nothing and she’s just imagining all these things. She tried to calm herself down but women are blessed with this thing called “intuition”. She couldn’t let it go.

One day she found pictures and messages which she couldn’t comprehend.

“How can these things mean nothing? Am I a retard?”

“You are overreacting,” he said.

He started lying and deceiving her. He said that he won’t talk to her. But talk he did under a pseudonym that she could possibly never guess.

Misunderstandings led them away from each other. Her friends told her to stay away from him.

“He’s a cheater, a liar and a manipulator. Stay away from him,” they said.

She tried to but she loved him too much and didn’t know a world where he wasn’t a part of it.

“Can we be friends, at least?” he asked her.

He crept his way back into her life. This time her friends left her to make her own choices. The heart wants what the heart wants, one could conclude. They found each other again. He became her world again until one day… she picked up his phone and saw messages from the same woman he thought was just a friend.

She asked him, “What is all this about? Would you care to explain?”

“You fucking whore! How dare you touch my phone?!”

He charged towards her and slapped her with all his might. He was consumed with an adrenaline pumped fit of anger. He slapped her again and again. He pushed her against the table. She cried in pain. Her already sensitive back was further hurt in the battle of fists and feet. He kicked her in the stomach. She cried out more profanities and he hurled her with abuses, both verbal and physical.

“You slut!” he exclaimed and tried choking her in his rage.

Somehow she broke free and rushed to a place she could consider safe. Her parents saw the swollen cheeks and bruises. The taxing episode drained her of all strength. She was administered IV and a lot of love.

She didn’t know what to do next. She didn’t know why he did what he did. She wanted answers but that boy had all his defences up and ready. She told his mother but blinded by her love for her son and manipulated by his act of innocence she gave no heed.

She told her friends and they asked her parents to approach the police.

“We don’t want to get into a mess with the police,” they said.

Her friends wanted to beat that boy black and blue. They found out that he had done the same to his ex-girlfriend but he found a way to protect himself against any kind of charges. Smart people know how to manipulate the system.

I was told that they want to break a few bones to teach him a lesson. But we all knew that this is a violent vicious cycle that can lead to no good. One of the friends suggested that let’s make his act public and push a campaign against him in social media.

But I got scared. I was worried they’ll charge me or them with a case of slander. We can’t go to the police. The parents of the girl are too ashamed and scared to take concrete action. They want to save their girl’s integrity. The mother of the boy is blinded by her love. The friends can’t do much because they will get stuck in a cycle of blame games that will get their lives into trouble.

That boy will be free… out in this world with the reassuring belief that he got away with it and will get away with it again. He’ll have a ton of other girlfriends who he’ll cheat and abuse and no one can do anything about it. Because according to him and the public perception he has built, he’s an angel.

I can’t take names because I’m scared.

This girl has been a victim of domestic violence before this too and in her warped view of the world, that’s how all boyfriends of hers will be, now.

The girl lives in agony with wounds that will never heal. In every possible scenario that we thought in our heads, the system supported him and not the girl.

Domestic violence is real. And all of us are cowards. We women justify it to ourselves that maybe we deserved it or maybe, we pushed them too far. This comes from a woman who has been a victim of domestic violence herself. What did I do when this happened to me? Nothing. I did nothing. I lived with it. When I told my friends, what did they do? They wanted to break windows and bones. But what could they do? Nothing. They could do nothing.

What is this girl going to do? Nothing. The only person who could’ve possibly changed things does not see that she is a woman first, mother later. There is nothing in this world that can justify a man hitting a woman, especially in a conflict.

Our hands are tied and we want to change things.

Will they change? Can we change it? Or does another soul bite the dust in the injustice of it all?

You tell me.