By Ruth
Rape and sexual assault are not only a physical and mental violation; they are a spiritual violation. One does not need to be spiritual or religious to understand how the soul becomes shattered after this experience.
When I was a child, I was forced into a van with five other men. When I went to college, I was drugged and told all sorts of things in a dark room with a man I had just met. As terrible as these experiences were, I could handle the physical aspects of the assaults.
Biologically my body turned to a fight or flight state during and after my rapes and afterwards for years. For my own self-protection and survival, I turned off many parts of my body that sought pleasure. I became suicidal, depressed, anxious to cope with the emotional pain I was experiencing. I thought my sexuality was a threat to myself.
For years, I hid behind shame and guilt. I developed an eating disorder in additional to other self-harming tendencies. I wanted to escape the pain, overwhelming emotions, and my own racing mind and numb body. I never understood why my feelings were so intense until I understood this: my soul was violated.
This is why a person cannot “get over rape.” They must heal from rape. Rape is a physical and energetic violation of the body and mind. My energetic space was violated in such a way that I did not know what was good or bad, physically or sexually. I didn’t know what love actually felt like and this terrified me. My mind took over and drove me to the brink of insanity because of this. For years I tried to “figure it out” in talk therapy, but every time I left I felt more ashamed, more confused about who I was. I felt like part of myself had died, and I was so desperately trying to awaken her.
The first time I consented to sex was when I was 23. This man provided me a safe place to share my sexuality with him and to learn about my body, he helped me begin to peel the layers of my broken heart. To me, having sex meant power and control, not love and pleasure. I could intellectually understand these concepts, and on the outside I physically looked like a “normal” person, but in the inside I still felt empty and broken. I couldn’t give him my whole heart like I desired. I was afraid to be sexually vulnerable. I still had to spend time putting the pieces of my sexuality back together rather than expecting to feel “less broken” one day.
I never stopped having hope that I could one day reconnect with myself in an intimate, loving, and spiritual way. Having my soul ripped opened has been the most transformational process I have gone through. I had to learn to rediscover who I was at my core. To reconnect with my soul, I had to reconnect with the desires of my heart and essentially reconnect with myself.
I began a journey of exploring my soul and who I really was. After years of reflection, the rapes I experienced lead me to understand that I wasn’t bad or damaged, but I had the opportunity to become the person I knew I always was deep down inside. I learned to love myself into becoming the woman of my dreams. I wrote love letters to myself. I learned how to please myself sexually in a way that I felt empowered. I spoke up for myself and become my own hero. I learned to fall deeply in love with every aspect of who I had become. I was no longer a victim, but a survivor who had the ability to reclaim her voice, her body, and her life.
I wanted to befriend my soul to learn who I was, aside from being a survivor of rape. I began the journey of putting the pieces back together, of rebuilding my life on the outside and also the inside. An ongoing journey of healing, I reconnected with my lost soul and found strength in the vulnerability of my heart. Through exploring the depths of my sexuality I found the energy of love that continues to run through my veins. Today I choose to love my self with all my heart and all my soul because I know what it feels like to be violated and forgotten.
For the first time in my life, I do not fear living in my body. I feel safe to be present wherever I am and I live not from a place of fear, but from a place of love. I choose to love my body, mind, heart, and soul. I choose to reclaim my sexuality not for anyone, but myself.