I take back the night, day, afternoon, morning. I take back my life. My body. My mind. My soul. As a survivor of lifelong domestic violence, I dissociated to escape my trauma-filled childhood reality of witnessing abuse. I internalized the toxic notion that feeling powerful requires domination and control, foundational elements of toxic masculinity, and I am currently in the process of detoxifying my soul of it. I witnessed my alcoholic father emotionally and verbally abuse my mother and watched my mother, a hypochondriac, retreat in her domestic shell away from him. I used to underestimate my childhood trauma with sayings along the lines of, “Other people have it worse.” and “I wasn’t sexually abused.” as an effort to minimize my deep-seated pain. Only recently have I gotten in touch with my childhood triggers: aggressive body language, angry tones, doors slamming, certain smells. I take back my life in order to shatter this toxic cycle. I embrace the divine femininity that has always been inside of me and feel it dance alongside my evolving masculinity. I now accept help and freely ask for it when I am triggered (this can’t be stressed enough!) I also resist the urge to feel entitled to people's’ bodies, time, and space; men can always do better in this regard. Boundaries are key to living a feminist life. Along with domestic violence trauma, I grew up as a rural femme queer child with no LGBTQ role models to look up to and I felt extremely ostracized. I felt isolated from other boys because of extreme childhood bullying and always trusted girls and women easier. This gender dynamic dovetails into my present adulthood life: I have to fight identity-based shame every single day. I have to remind myself that there's nothing wrong with me, that I am worthy simply by existing. That my femininity is a gift from God. That my queerness makes me who I am and that I am proud. I remind myself everyday that I am proud to be who I am. I carve happiness out of trauma and deep pain because I deserve love and smiles, just like everyone on Earth. Bullying can spark severe trust issues in adults; assuming good intentions and good will can be extremely difficult for harshly bullied youth like me. It can engender extreme paranoia with multiple triggers of childhood bullying that affect people well into their adulthoods. For me, I have a strong sense of justice because of my extreme bullying. I don't want anyone else to go through that again. No one should. I want to trust men and create fulfilling relationships with them but my trust issues with boys stemming from my childhood bullying restricts my ability sometimes. It's an everyday struggle. But I will never give up. This is why I take back my life through my story. My story is my truth. My story is also the story of countless other LGBTQ kids in rural towns struggling to locate their identities, locate their allies, locate their safe support systems. To conclude on a positive note, I am so grateful for my sisters and my community. Y’all are helping me take back my life. Thank you, Vanesa and Sandra. We are the Power of Three. You two are the reason I got through high school. Thank you my high school friends, to my badass all-girls volleyball team. You know who you are. Thank you to my bestest of friends. Thank you, Mom. And yes, thank you Dad. My healing centers forgiveness and I must forgive in order to move on. I take back the night through forgiving myself. I attached a poem of mine from my blog queerasaverb.wordpress.com: I read somewhere once that almost anywhere inside, a spider is at least six feet away from you at all times. We know they’re there, tucked in the walls, hiding. But when they reveal themselves and perch on our windows and bathroom floors, we scream, run away, and stomp them to death. Spiders actually do more good in households than harm, killing our unwanted pests. Why do we let irrational fear control us? Trauma is every spider on earth. Ubiquitous. Hidden in the shadows. Waiting to be visible but feared or murdered when it shows its hairy body. Even if we don’t want to acknowledge it, it’s always there. Always
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
April 2019
Categories |