Still recounting?

After having written the last two posts, I really don't know to what extent I can recount things. It's not as if I don't  recall them. I clearly do, in every minute detail possible, but I don't see the purpose of going into everything.  Somehow, getting involved in every detail and recounting almost everything makes  me forget  the purpose with which I had started this exercise. What was the purpose anyway?

Of what I can recall now, is the faint memory of  how I want to see myself. It seems strange as to how  I remember details of incidents that happened years ago and not the reason with which I started writing about these incidents, the memory of the latter being more recent in time. Anyway, of what I do, the primary reason why I wrote about all of this is because it forms a very essential part of me, of who I am today and however much I try, I can't just chuck it from my life or my memory. This is not to say that it haunts me  day and night. As I had written in the  first post, I have never recounted these incidents to myself. But  has this recounting been of any use?  The feeling of having vented it out, for sure is relieving but what now? Are things any clearer now? Do I  know something about myself which I didn't before I recounted these incidents? Let's try and answer these questions.

The first thing that strikes me right now is the aspect of 'blaming'. Although people who have heard the story and timeline of these incidents time and again have put it out clearly that  Ram is to be 'blamed' for  whatever happened in your childhood (and I nodding my head in agreement have also acceded to that theory), I sometimes wonder what should  he be blamed for? For abusing the trust that was placed on him by my parents or his? For abusing me sexually after a certain point of time? Well, an 'abuse' over here is what made me realize something about myself, and when things  started making sense to me, I was more  than glad to embrace that abuse.  If we can call it 'abuse'. But I feel uncomfortable with this line of thought too. Did I have any agency in deciding what was good for me when it came to sexual relations with a person elder to me? At the point of time when we did start having sexual relations, both of us were 'minors', in the eyes of the  law, and therefore incapable of 'consent'. So who is to take the blame here? Is age really a factor of consent?

My relationship with Ram and whatever it came with had become a real  'given'. Something that was just there, and obvious. No surprises. And it repeated itself over a long period of time. Frankly, I  had become 'used' to it. The regrets and qualms were with respect to someone coming to know about it. And at that point of time, the 'someone' was family, primarily Ma and Babba. And that was majorly because  they trusted me a lot, and somehow had a very 'seedha-saadha' image of  me. It was an 'abuse' of this trust and a shattering of that image that  vexed  me more than anything else. My personal  crisis was limited to this.

Have I really trivialized these incidents by not addressing them further? How do I address them? Asking myself whether  I count it as 'abuse' is one way. Well, with respect to some incidents, yes, definitely. As long as he was forcing himself upon me, that was definitely abuse. But did he really 'initiate' me into 'homosexuality'? Am I  gay 'because of him'? That  is to say, had he not ever stepped into my life, I would have been attracted to women instead of men? I really don't know the answers to these questions. And these are quite discomforting ones. I enjoyed every part of the sex, of the kissing, sucking, intercourse, body-touch, foreplay and not only with him but also in my imagination when I have  fantasized about other men or when I have  actually done it with them. 

Today, I am in a relationship with a man, and I have no qualms in saying that  I love him the most. And when I say 'relationship', I mean it in every sense of the term. This is one place I am trying to make everything stable. Well, of course, things don't fall into place automatically and you have to keep on trying, which we constantly do. I don't know what prompted me to write this  down here, but whenever  I think of him, I  feel safe, and stable and secure. And this makes me erase any doubts I have about myself; of whether I was 'initiated' into homosexuality or whether  Ram 'made' me gay. And even if anything of this were true, I am glad he did. It's been beautiful since I have had the realization, since I have resolved things with myself and have shared things with people I love and who love me back. So for that, thank you!