Runaway

Kathmandu - in happy times

With mind and spirit in turmoil after "the rape" I came to the conclusion that I needed to get away to sort myself out. There was no way on earth my parents would have allowed this, so the next step was an elaborate plan that I hatched to run away from home. The destination I had in mind was Kathmandu, which was a place I was familiar with, and where there were enough freaks roaming the streets so  I would fit in perfectly.

I left a note telling my parents not to try and find me and that I would return on my own when I was ready. My mother recounts the sickening sensation of shock and disbelief that she felt at reading this terse missive, since it was beyond her comprehension how I could be capable of doing something so drastic and unthinkably selfish.

I crept out of the house in the dead of night and caught a bus to Sonauli from where I crossed unchecked,  into the border town of Bhairawa in Nepal. I then took another ride up to Kathmandu where I blended into the throng of hippies, junkies and other strange people that made the Mountain Kingdom so notorious in those days.

It was just a week later that I  met up with a budding pop singer, TB, who introduced me to his family and offered me a decent place to stay. It was not long before I knew that things were very wrong. The family realised where I had come from, and who I was and decided that it would be lucrative for them to keep me under lock and key. The days that followed  passed in a disjointed haze in which I seemed to spend most of the time sleeping, so I presume I was being  given some kind of sedation.
My mother in the meantime had made a number of trips to Kathmandu to try and track me down, but only met dead ends wherever she went. She received a number of strange, frightening phone calls from unknown voices in the middle of the night, telling her not to worry because "they" would ensure I was returned to her safely. My parents lived in terror for the month that I was missing, not daring to hope for the best and trying not to think about the worst.

When my parents could not trace me, they sent a trustworthy Nepali gentleman who was employed in Saraya to try and find out where I was. He somehow, through local contacts, managed to locate me and a deal was struck to let me off in exchange for a large sum of money.

I staggered into my mother's arms a little over a month after I had so thoughtlessly walked away. I had not bathed  in all that time and my hair was a mass of stinking tangles. I was in an emotional vacuum, not really comprehending how lucky I was to have got out of this dangerous situation relatively unscathed.

For the first time in my life I saw my father cry when he met us at the Bhairawa airport, and that was a sight that shattered me completely. I never heard a word of recrimination from either of my parents, though the hurt in their eyes at what I had put them through was very much there.The only reaction I got from them was unconditional forgiveness, understanding and immeasurable amounts of love.  I deeply appreciated this but sometimes wished they would shake me up or even bash the hell out of me, since this kind and understanding behaviour only fuelled the guilt I felt and my down spiral just got worse and worse.
Looking back at that chaotic period of my life I feel I was actually going through some kind of breakdown. The whole journey was so surreal and almost like an out of body experience. I sometimes felt as if I was looking down at myself from a different plane and barely recognised the person I saw.
The first life lesson I learnt from this traumatic episode was the legacy of infinite understanding and support that I got from my parents, which I could in turn hand down to my own daughter. Luckily for me she was not the problem child that I was, but the lessons learned served me in good stead when she went through her own share of teenage trauma.
 The second lesson I learned was the ability to be completely non-judgemental. People were quick to gossip and speculate about the wild child I was, without having any idea of what was going on. Behind every unexplainable action there  is usually some sordid saga which accounts for unreasonable behaviour, and nobody should ever have the right to play God.

If I knew then what I know now I would tell the young girl in the picture to be careful where she sits! You never know when a rude finger can hurt a vulnerable body part!