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In the months following my sexual assault, my body became a foreign place. Sure, its parts and quirks were familiar. But they weren’t my home. Living was setting foot in a stranger’s house with the same exterior, and a duplicate layout except the furniture, decorations, and space were all off kilter. I could sometimes reside in these spaces in comfort for a short time. Until that one thing emerged. Any of these new facets causing me to recognize the alien. It was only time before my mind reminded me something internally was off. Everything was different.
For months after my assault, sex, a once intimate behavior or source of gratification became one of my biggest fears. Nothing about the act in question was altered. The way I would have sex these actions, these behaviors, they were routines of the past. The acts of sex were still familiar. The desire for it, my thoughts towards it, were not.
The want to have sex was non-existent. Not in this space where my flesh scared me. Not in this space where the mere mention of letting another person control my body in that way, in any way, caused panic. Not in this space where my identity, my concepts of trust, vulnerability, shame, and my definitions of manhood, let alone individuality, were called to question.
After my assault, I stopped wanting sex.
Trauma has a tricky way of seeping into the brain and rewiring one’s chemistry. A complex dilemma modifies firing synapses manifesting in new behaviors. My changes? How I shuddered at a hug when a friend’s hand lingered too low on my back. How I froze when she tried to kiss me, a casual date, months later, but one I should never have taken. How I would sink into my comforter at the slightest thought of arousal, willing myself to merge with the fabric, to become a part of this salient warmth and forget lust, desire, or guilt.
Research shows that in the face of sexual violence, every survivor reacts differently. It took me more than a few months to feel comfortable with my body. To understand its urges. To identify its fresh pangs. The panic attacks. Massive throes cascading against me, waking me from nightmares or recalled by a touch. To learn the difference between these colossal waves and the more insidious riptide of nerves that began as a minor twinge of fear. An upset stomach at work stemming from a comment that sucked me down over time. Squeezing out my comfort, leaving me with a wrecked day deprived of life-giving hope.
The first barrier to my healing was my acceptance, a surrender. In the face of trauma resurfaced, this unresolved pain remerged ad nauseam. In the beginning, it felt insurmountable. I didn’t face it so much less as it consumed me. For the first few months, I gave in. I didn’t define the trauma or how deeply it infested my veins, soaking through me. Brining me. My psyche floated in a bitter stupor of defeat.
Time happened. I began to heal. I finally defined its pieces. Naming my trauma gave me power; in some ways. It helped me realize what I was facing. It took me vivaciously peering into myself- and at the externals of society, of relationship, of peers- to define my new world. I sought to diagnose, to pinpoint. Why sex now felt these ways. What it felt like to consider sex with another. What did trust mean post-assault? Learning to explain this to myself was one process.
Exploring them with another was a whole different journey.
I set up barriers. For myself. For others. Large and small. Shifts to this foreign home, these tweaks allowed me to become familiar with my new reality. Life was not returning to what it was before. The trauma still swirled around me. But making these changes, changes I controlled, allowed me to become more comfortable. To engage again. On my terms. Terms I could communicate and share with a partner. Terms that over time we could explore together.
The boundaries helped. The first few encounters were never comfortable. I didn’t do the best job of articulating it – the assault or my reactions to the present – but how can you? Even for someone else with trauma, how can you? You can’t, least their trauma becomes your own. I did my best job articulating it. My best job discussing my barriers.
“We can do this but not that.”
“Sometimes I am not going to be in the mood, and that has nothing to do with you.”
“I might cry after.”
“Please never touch me here.”
I usually became comfortable enough to share these boundaries. Sometimes I didn’t, depending on the relationship. Other times I masked them, depending on the partner. Not everyone needed to know about my trauma. Preferences were enough pretense. Sometimes I opened up more. Sometimes people knew about my trauma through connections or such. I still avoided talking about it, revelations are not always needed. In kind, I learned about myself. Practice makes perfect in all aspects of life and disclosure is no different. I matured in how I shared. When I told others. What I said. It fluctuated.
Now? Sometimes I can forget it. My experience can feel non-sequitur. Life goes back to before. Nostalgic, these moments. Then I remember the boundaries and why they existed. A touch or a day on the calendar or a feeling in the air. I have to reexamine my restrictions. I redefine the barriers. Things change. A new understanding of myself and what works. What doesn’t. Sometimes this makes me feel guilty. So, I explore. And I come to realizations. That it is okay.
It is a process. Over time, I made this new home, this metamorphosis of my being, into my own. I took control.
In the years following my sexual assault, my body became mine. Again. It is not without scars. It still has them, the kind knotted under your skin. The lingering of the waves of trauma having beat against you. Sometimes it is a stranger. I look at it, I experience it, and I am overwhelmed. I don’t always love it. Sometimes sex is something I avoid.
Other times I feel normal. I am normal. I enjoy sex. I talk about it. I remember the pleasure and intimacy it brings. I am grateful for it. Thankful for my partner. This is more often than not. I have made my world new around me. Taken back control. Taken back what was stolen from me. It was arduous. It was worth it.
Trauma has a way of seeping into the brain. Of changing people. Redefining them. Humans have the powerful resilience to remake the freshly foreign into the comfortable, the normal. For me, the best part of sex after trauma wasn’t when it became an aspect of my life I was able to engage in again with effort. A hurdle I was surmounting. It is when sex once again became mundane. The joys. The pleasures. The intimacy. All an afterthought. Just sex.
In the years following my assault, the best moment is when sex felt normal.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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