I’ve no words

Sometimes the feeling trauma leaves with you cannot be explained

Sometimes we experience things in life that floor us.

Mine happened when I was 19. And I didn’t know it would have floored me at the age of 37, even though the policeman did warn me this could happen.

“Just to prepare you, a sexual assault like this can affect you much further down the line”.

What he didn’t say, was when that time comes you might not be able to find the words to process it.

---

I’ve spent the last two years processing this trauma while also experiencing delayed grief for my Dad. The difference between the two, is that I’ve been able to articulate the feeling of grief. I’ve eventually been able to grasp the feeling and untie it and unravel it. I can feel the hole and emptiness it leaves. It is excruciatingly heartbreaking, but the feeling is understandable. It is a feeling understood as a nation. There is a strange kind of unity that when you say you’ve lost someone, you don’t often have to describe what you are feeling, because most people get it, because they, sadly, have been right in the depths of that despair too at some point in their lives.

But the rest of my trauma leaves me speechless.

In the most wordless way.

What’s in a word

Rape is a word I find hard to say or type. I detest the word. It’s like a punch to the soul. That’s why 99% of the time I use the term ‘sexual assault’, because it softens the whole conversation, the description, the violation. But there is nothing soft about sexual assault, rape or whatever way you want to depict that kind of monstrosity.

And I have realised I actually largely avoid using the word ‘rape’ because I don’t want to offend other people. What an odd concept. I’m the one that lived it, I am the one that still lives it now, yet I am worried about a word offending other people?

Huh.

And what has been sitting with me the hardest recently is that I cannot find the words to process the aftermath of something as cruel as rape. I cannot find the words to explain how it makes you feel as an individual. How it tarnishes your identity with so much grey, you feel almost unidentifiable. How it rips the centre of your power clean from your soul.

How it buries fear so deep within you, it feels impossible to feel purity.

Every time I try to describe it or explain how it makes me feel, I just cannot find the words. Because there are no words in the English language or any language that do justice to the feelings that still have a tight hold right in the very core of me. And this is 18 years after the trauma.

I’ve used words a lot to heal. That is how I process. That is how I let go of my feelings and move forwards. And not being able to in this instance makes me feel frustrated in the paralysis that the right words, the right description, the right feeling cannot be found. Or that the words that do find pen to paper just aren’t enough. They aren’t enough to describe what living through something like that does to you.

Nothing can describe it.

And trying to, almost feels harder than not.

Yet not talking about it makes it even worse.

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Replacing words with safety

Sexual assault, rape, sexual abuse, domestic abuse all feel like hidden topics that women (mostly) are having to digest and heal from in their lives. Ordinary women trying to live ordinary lives. Lives that are being overshadowed by something so astronomically overwhelming.

There is no one to say;

‘me too’

or

‘I know how you feel’

Sometimes there are no words, and when that happens to you and to me, we need to bring our bodies back to safety.

We need warmth. We need time. We need a safe space. We need comfort. We need compassion for ourselves. We need cosiness. We need understanding. We need physical space. We need less pressure and kindness from ourselves. We need to be needed less. We need to feel at home in our bodies. And feel alive in our souls.

Through safety we can heal.

With patience we can rise again.

And when you begin to rise

What made you fall

will become

smaller

and

smaller.

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Together

So let’s rise to the mountain tops and cheer for ourselves and cheer for the women standing by our sides. Let’s join together in unity, reclaim our voices and own our identities. Let’s embody safety in our souls. Let’s stand tall knowing we are enough X

If you’re not there yet, don’t worry, WHERE’S THE ME IN MUM will be your voice for as long as you need it X