Sympathy for the Devil

By. Sindhu Reddy

*please note this content may triggering to those who have experienced sexual violence and mental health struggles

“I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.” - Goethe, Faust

Ray asks me to quit smoking. With every inhale I see his features twist in aversion that mirrors my own self-disgust. I find a simple solution for us by vowing to quit. So we bunker down for hours while he holds me close and whispers all his love but it is short lived because I break down and beg for the instruments of my own destruction in the end. Exasperated, he drops his head into his hands.

Every attempt on my life begins with a pack of cigarettes. A lifetime of trauma, neglect and abuse, I have been suicidal since I was seven. I would dream of running away, finding a cold shoulder of road, where I could lie down and feel the warm blanket of death. I kept all these thoughts to myself, lost in reveries in the back of my family’s Toyota Corolla, but these were my daydreams as a child. Dreams of escape, dreams of death.

Suicidal thoughts have plagued me off and on but periods of bliss and harmony fill my life with Ray. Some weeks I wake up early, walk the dog and hit the gym. Some weeks I have coffee dates with friends and laugh at Ray’s bad jokes, but they always crumble as I start the burn the candle at both ends. In the middle of the flame there are small acts of self sabotage. A pack of cigarettes.

We fight about them all. I try to hide the smoking, I pass off the starvation as wellness and recklessness as youthful abandon. He doesn’t believe me, but he believes in me. “You’re a good person.” he coos to me, “You are kind and you are generous.” He sets his mind to one side of the dichotomy. To the angel in me, forgiving the devil.

This is until the day he rushes home to find me taking a kitchen knife to my wrists. “This is out of control” he sobs, understanding me for who I truly I am. “How can I trust you?” he asks desperately, and I don’t have a good answer. My therapist says we are all made of two sides. I do not feel them waging war within me, but when the sleepiness creeps in, when the sadness takes over, I blame the devil in me.

When I was sixteen, I was raped.

I was at a party with my best friend and she had a crush on a boy. They went for a ride in his souped up car, a surefire way to get the girl. Left bored and lonely, his friend took it upon himself to occupy me. Innocently enough he stole me into corners and felt around inside my shirt. I giggled protestations as he led me to his parked car where I solemnly informed him that I was saving myself for marriage. “How will you know if you like it?” he shot back, tipping a cup to my lips and making sure I emptied the contents.

I remember the rest of the rape in flashes of passing headlights. Pinned to the glass of the passenger side window, my dress pulled up over my waist. An immodest pause when through fogged glass my rapist exchanged a baggie of pills for a wad of cash. My legs splayed at impossible angles as he filled one condom and then the next.

At some point I passed out. My best friend had stayed out all night. I woke up in a parked car, a bloodstain seeping out from between my legs, ruining the upholstery. The tied-off condoms were left to linger repulsively on the dash.

Once I escaped my confines, the door locked behind me. Even though I sweetly left my number in lipstick on the windshield, I never see or hear from my attacker again. It’s almost like it never happened.

In a coffeeshop bathroom I force a tampon into my battered vagina to stop the flow of blood. I do this every few hours for five days and I don’t tell anyone for five years. It was almost like it never happened.

In the years to come, I do not so much think of that night as much as I boldly attempt to recreate it. I spend the next decade of my life searching for men who will hurt me without remorse and fall deeply in love with them. I continue to break the hearts around me who long to heal mine instead.

My rape was a climax in a lifetime of trauma. Braver voices than mine have overcome the shame of violation, the lingering fear of violence and pressed onwards with their lives. I want to ask them, what did they do with the burning self-hatred? With the surety that this attack was deserved and longed for? My death wish carried me into the car, I think, and the devil in me longs to hurt more and more. With all the pain I shoulder, I manifest this otherworldly power, unable to put into words what it feels like to want to hurt yourself.

I am not ashamed that I was raped, but I do feel like I deserved it. This passionate desire fuels a cycle of self-hatred that never lets any of these wounds close and heal over.

“How can I love you if you don’t want to live?” Ray asks me after the incident with the knife. I consider his question.

I call my rapist by his name. I apologize to my family, take their money, promise it will be different this time. I sympathize with what they saw, someone broken and helpless, someone hoping pain will beget pain. My anger is a white hot coal where my heart would be, burning incessantly to keep me alive. To use it against my attackers feels ineffectual. Justice is fleeting and out of reach, so instead I turn its heat against myself. Those who abuse me nourish me, feed its flames and burn up every tendril of tenderness that tries to snake its way through.

This year, Ray and I move in together. Down the coast and inland. I do psychotherapy, I take pharmaceuticals. For a month we are alright, I am always picking up the pieces, starting over, and he says there is something to be said for that. Inside I feel the call of the devil I know lives inside me and it isn’t long before I am sleeping all day again. I try to escape the thoughts that have haunted me throughout my life, “There is only one way all this pain can end.” “I do not deserve love or empathy.” “There is no one and nothing that can save you.” I start smoking again. “

Can’t you see I love you?” That I always love you?” Ray pleads with me as I crumble on our couch. I feel nothing but the pull of my own demise.

I am fascinated by Faust. I am fascinated by Marlowe and Bulgakov. I seek out the devil in literature, and though there is no place for him in my religion, I sympathize with his plight. Goethe’s devil is one of missed opportunities, willing evil he does good instead. I wonder what it’s like to merge my two hales, to not see myself as a disparate halves but rather a whole person who can hold pain and sadness in one hand with love and joy in the other.

“I wish you could love yourself.” Ray begs, a last ditch effort. Our relationship teetering under the weight of my own self-sabotage. He is not a man who gives ultimatums but his life goes on without me, and I see that I have choices to make.

What would be left is that coal burned out? After so many years of fire and brimstone, I wonder what a cool breeze would feel like. My father says this is my last chance, when he sends me on my way, my friends are far away and call frequently to ask how I am doing, Ray wakes me from my nightmares and makes me breakfast. Is it the devil in me that works this good?

I think self-love is the ludicrous belief that a broken heart can heal. The belief that there are good people who do not wish my harm. The belief that I can be nourished by love and care instead of anger and apathy. It is more than a workout plan, a tarot reading or a face mask, but it feels so elusive and temporary. Ray sees who I am now: generous and compassionate to others, vengeful and hateful to myself. He loves me anyway, and I wonder if that’s where I start, just by showing the people who love me, who I truly am and how I burn with hatred. I want to marry my distinct identities, wish evil on those who have hurt me, work good externally.

I consider my lover’s questions and requests. I find it impossible to return to a life I have never known. To return to a place of trust in people, to feel the innocence of innocuous touches. I cannot return to a place I have never known.

That leaves me to start where I am. Safe in the home we have built together, held in the bed we share every night, cooled by the breezes on an incoming autumn. I have a chance, a tiny will like a seed buried in the earth. I trickle water through the passages of my veins.

I try to quit smoking again.

My name is Sindhu Reddy and I am South Asian immigrant living in the United States. I am interested in the South Asian diaspora, intergenerational trauma and the different ways in which we seek to authentically heal. I have been writing all my life with two published books, staff writing for a newspaper as well as running multiple social media and PR campaigns. My goal is to not only share my voice, but empower others with similar stories to share theirs as well so we may heal as a community. This piece is about a specific incident of childhood trauma and how it continues to affect me today.