Trigger warning – SA

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So much of recovering from sexual assault is feeling uncomfortable in your own skin. Your body, your agency, your identity becomes sullied by another person. You don’t feel like you fully belong to yourself anymore.

For the first few years I felt like my skin was crawling all the time. I didn’t feel right in my body. I would try to take baths – something I regularly used to enjoy – and it was hard to wash myself or feel clean. Sometimes I would make the water hotter than usual just to feel like I was boiling away something. Looking back it’s understandable but also deeply sad.

I recently decided to do a photoshoot with someone who specialized in empowerment and it was a really rewarding experience. To acknowledge that at least where I am in my journey right now I feel safe in my body and I feel free. I can accept compliments on my appearance fully. I can let someone do my hair or tell me how lovely my body looks in a pose and feel like it’s genuine, and pure, and innocent.

I am not dirty. I am not sin personified because of what was done to me. I have not lost value or purpose or identity.

Articulating what it means to heal from something traumatic has been hard for me especially considering that I’ve been creatively writing my whole life. But I’m still trying even though my fingers feel stiff and my voice feels stuck. Going through the uncomfortable seasons, all the flashbacks, the tears, the loss, has not been worth it. I won’t offend myself or anyone else going through this by shining that up and tying a bow that says I’m happy this happened because that’s a lie. I’m still not sure if there is going to be a happy ending to this – or if this is just something bad that happened to me and I will move on from it. No fancy testimony. No greater purpose. But what I can say is I’m finding freedom from it – I truly feel moments of freedom and it is a relief that I can.