Taking back my body
Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 9:08PM 
Sexual abuse is like a bullet that's never been removed. From my body. I’ve been shot. It lodged in, deep in my tissues, deep in my psyche. If only that was not enough. I helped pushing it in, to my core, buried to the point where I could no longer feel it. It tore my skin, my muscles, my bones. I bled, but I refused to acknowledge I did. Because to acknowledge meant to believe that my father was raping me, for real. That I didn’t imagine the whole thing, that the strongest protector in my family was also the one who wounded me the deepest, the hardest, the most painful. When it was raw, when I could still feel it, I helped it to go deeper still. One day, I succeeded, I stopped feeling it, then I forgot that I had a bullet within, I continued living like nothing happened.
Only it did happen. And the bullet distorted my vital systems, if left scars, and it didn’t organically grow into my body, it simply sat there, being rejected by tissues around, causing inflammation, for years on end. It hurt like hell when I touched it, so I touched it very rarely – unconsciously, because I forgot it’s there. I had sex as rarely as I could. When I had to have it more often, when I thought the goal in life for women was to please men, when I tried to please my husband, without telling him I did, I numbed my pain. And it was ok, it worked. For a while. Sometimes I swung the pendulum another way – I had a lot of sex to make it numb, being angry at it, acting out, telling it – see, I don’t care that you hurt, you’re lying, you don’t hurt at all. Like any wound, I ached after being touched, so I took long breaks in between. I thought it was normal, that was my normal sexuality – once a week was enough for me. No, make it once a month. No, actually, once in 2 months sounds better. It escalated to the point when I decided I don’t need it at all. My husband turned silent, suppressed himself as much as he could, patiently waiting for my change. I turned into depression, and bursts of anger or panic attacks. All the while I still didn’t remember I have been shot. I guess my body has had enough, it started rejecting the bullet with sheer force, pushing it out the way it came, and with it the poison that accumulated around it.
The pus started leaking, my skin opened up again, after being closed for 20+ years. It was an ugly sight. It smelled, it looked bad, it was nasty to touch. I cleaned it up, with a few visits to therapists, here and there. The bullet moved up a bit. More pus came out. I wasn’t ready, my washcloth composed of writing my novel, journaling, and talking to therapists didn’t hold up. It spilled over. I reeked of the stuff. I still didn’t remember where it was coming from, and I tried shutting it down a couple times, only the hole was big by now, and the movement started. There was no way to stop it now. With pus came blood, it went out gushing in the form of panic attacks, suicidal thoughts, memory flashed, PTSD, nightmares, insomnia, you name it, I had it all. And then it came. The bullet. Like a birth in reverse – it never meant to be in my body, and now it was out. Boy, was it ugly. Squished, distorted, rotten. I took it in my palm and I looked it in the face. I recognized its face, and I yelled. I yelled in pain, in horror, in disgust. I yelled until my ears rang, then I saw that it was dead. It was no longer a threat to my life, and it was out of my body. Out, away. Gone. I threw it into trash.
I took my body back. It was mine again, I owned it. It took me months to clean the wound and heal it, to repair all those little tears and bumps, to wash away the dirt and the grime. To close it off, to cover it with love, to let the skin do its thing, to repair. To not touch it, for weeks, to keep it clean. A miracle happened. This week, it closed off completely. I felt new energy, I took off all covers, to let it air, to feel, to live, to be.
Sexual abuse is like a bullet that's never been removed. If you’ve been sexually abused, know that you have a bullet in your body, even if you forgot about it. To take it out will take an enormous effort, but once you are through it, you will have your body back. You will be whole, once again, like you were meant to be. Take it out, look it in the face, and then recognize that it’s dead, it has no power over you. Throw it into trash. You are free. Live. Be happy. Be you.
P.S.: As a beginning of a collaboration project between several survivor bloggers, this blog post was written to my quote - "Sexual abuse is like a bullet that's never been removed" - by several bloggers. Here are the other posts - Scarred Seeker, Sugarpatch, Ye Olde Crone's Gazette.
Photo by dishevld.
Reader Comments (9)
WOW! WOW! WOW! This post is so powerful. I'm just kind of waking up to the existence of that bullet in my own body and only just beginning my own healing journey. Thanks for writing this, it helped me so much!!
You mentioned the trouble with sexuality for sexual abuse survivors... how true that is. We live in a society that judges women sexually on a regular basis. If you don't you are a prude, if you do you are a whore, if you think about it your are nasty, if you enjoy it you are bad, if you reject it you are frigid.
Little girls grow up with all of these messages, all contradictory, all confusing. Is it any wonder that childhood sexual abuse and rape have such devastating effects on us? We don't even know how we are supposed to feel about consensual sex...
How we are supposed to feel...
Thanks for participating in this project. It is really beautiful seeing our voices unite.
Fiona, thank you! Please keep going forward with what you have to do, no matter what! No matter what anyone tells you, get rid of it, be strong, you are not alone!
Boshie, yes, powerful words - it is never in between, it is never right - it's black and white, always being judged, always being watched, never able to relax. I am honored to have been able to participate in this project, and i am looking for more - this got me on fire, the knowledge that I was writing together with powerful women, like a song that was sung by three powerful voices. I am looking forward to more!
Thank you for sharing your words, your scars and your wounds - together we can find the path that is going to take us to a place where our sharing and caring will help with the healing work. Bright blessings!
Shanyn, thanks girl! Looking forward to writing more together.
Thank you for sharing this powerful, powerful story of your sexual abuse. As an incest survivor myself, I can definitely relate to your words. To this day, my husband doesn't understand that all those years of making love out of obligation and going inside my mind and not feeling anything inside was not healthy for me. He still says sex was better before I started working on my incest issues. Yes, it was, for him but not for me.
Today I make love to my husband with all of me involved which is way better than it used to be when I was so disconnected from him and my body. Thanks to my husband, I have learned that it is okay to experience pleasure and it is okay to sometimes not be interested in sex. Even if we don't make love as often as we did before counseling, today making love is a glorious experience for me, not the painful, numb experience that it used to be.
Patricia, this is a big victory, and it is hard to understand how we feel as incest survivors for someone who hasn't been there. I'm happy you've gone through this healing process and are enjoying sex now. I thought I would never get to that in my life. I'm happy I do now.
I have just finished reading your blog, which has, in my own mind, helped me realise that I am not the only one out there suffering.
I am only in the beginning of my healing journey, but can relate so very much to alot of your words and emotions. So much so that I am going to get my husband to read some of them so that he in turn can understand me. I cannot at the moment put into words so eloquently as you can, for him to be able to see what I am going through in this journey, nor can I talk to him about it either. I am still hiding.
Thank you for being so brave as to put your story out there to help others.
Dear Tracy, for the words like yours - I write. This is my sole purpose - to expose it, to help others see - when I was suicidal, i didn't see anything worth living for, but then I thought - if I die, it won't help anyone, if I live, i can help. You just proved it for me - thank you. I will keep writing. And if there is anything you feel strongly about, anything I haven't covered here, and you want your husband to understand, suggest me a topic and a line or two on how you feel - and I will write a post about it.