I just finished high school. Feeling so free, independent, and thirsting to experience everything the world had to offer me. This was the summer of experiencing new things, of saying yes and seeing where life takes me. I spent the summer traveling, reconnecting with myself and my body after years of depression and self-harm.
I was beginning to grow back into my body again and I was remembering how my body flows with life. Wet and warm and blood pumping and muscles flexing as I used my legs for walking and climbing.
I used my hands to create beautiful things and to touch lovers’ skin.
My toes felt the earth strong under my feet.
Fingers slipped into warm sand and sea.
Towards the end of the summer, though, a stranger took advantage of me.
He held me to a wall and demanded sex. His hard fingers stabbing into my soft body. Grabbing and poking. I did not want his hand, there, inside my vagina. I did not want my hand forced on his penis. I felt so scared and little.
It felt like he put a cold stone inside of my stomach. There was no gentleness, no respect.
I should have said: ‘Fuck you, bastard!’ But it’s not my fault that I froze. It is not my fault that in some twisted logic, I apologized. It’s not my fault that ever since I was a little girl, society has taught me that I don’t have agency over my own body, my own vagina.
A few years ago, a friend from high school was violently raped and murdered on a cold January night. Her body ended up in an estuary and they couldn’t find her for weeks. It became a national news story. People blamed her. The bastard that did it is in prison now, but there is no justice.
After that, I would hallucinate dark male figures lurking at the side of the road when I was walking or driving home at night.
There are memories that are living in my body. Each time the memories get repeated in my body, my legs tense, and I feel restless. I feel like my mind is racing rapidly piecing together fragments of information. I feel simultaneously like I am frozen and like I want to run. Some of these memories are mine, and some of them are the memories of other women that live in my body too.
For a long time, I felt like my pain was not valid or that there was not enough room in the world for all of our pain to be expressed. I thought that if I talked about my experience once then it would be enough, but actually, I need to keep talking about it. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we all let the world know all of our pain…would the world explode? Could I handle it? Could we handle it? Maybe it would be transformative.
The pain means that we are here, we are alive and feeling it all. Our murdered sisters don’t get to feel. Our murdered sisters don’t get to say what is in their hearts. So, we have to talk about their pain and injustices too, and we have to talk about and remember their joy.
Expressing our pain, especially through art, is reclaiming it and making space for joy.
Consent is essential when it comes to sex. It is not something that can be done through objectifying others, and you can’t do whatever you want with others. In the case of sexual harassment and rape, the victim (regardless of gender) is often blamed for how they behave, what they wear, or how they live, which is totally wrong. The blame rests on the person who commits the assault. Everyone should be there to support the victims emotionally and physically, regardless of gender or age. Moreover, the victims know these experiences and oppressions through embodiment. Embodiment is based on the fact that we experience emotions through our bodies, and based on embodiment we will keep speaking up about injustices in our society.