When you have been sexually abused your body is no longer a safe place. Most people take for granted that they live in their bodies, that your life expands outside the confines of your body. But imagine for a second this Home of yours, your private space, the physical manifestation of you has been robbed, broken into, attacked, ripped apart from the inside. Where can you live? This is a question that terrifies you and that you simply cannot answer. So you retreat, you try to take up as little space as possible, you become less than. Your life shrinks within the confines of your skin, you can’t imagine being able to trust your body in this world, it is no longer yours.
You copy other people, you ‘act as if’, you mimic what others do, when they hop, skip, jump and laugh, you hop, skip, jump and laugh in the hopes one day you will once again feel whole. This is not living. You are not yourself, you are a puppet, entirely defined by those you spend your time around. So your life becomes complete potluck. Entirely based on your postcode, class at school, who’s in your dance class. You have not chosen any of it, you don’t know how to choose. And here lives the fear. The space between you and your body. This deep pervasive existential fear that you may never find a way to close this gap. You will be destined to a life of puppetry, hoping you will find a show and a puppet master that suit some facet of yourself well enough so that the show can go on.
But there is hope. Any single tiny step that you take. Where you, the real you, make a choice and face the fear all on your own. You have planted a seed of hope. A seed that will root yourself in your body. That connects the you inside with the you outside. You take enough steps, you plant enough seeds and there is a garden, a jungle of shared experiences you and your body have been through together. You lay the foundations brick by brick of a glorious bridge back to yourself. And that’s how you come back to yourself, come back to your body. You take the step, you plant the seed, you build the bridge, you wave goodbye to the puppet master, the curtain comes down and you step off the stage into the life you were always supposed to live.