dancing through a deep and painful wound (#4)

This is me in a dress I wore when I was 18 years old on the day I walked away from a terrible, formative, heart-wrenching situation. This is a dance to a song that he put on a mix for me at the very end of everything wonderful and miserable.

This is an expression of the battle between addiction and freedom. The fight. The strength it takes to get out alive. Not just once, but over and over again. From the beginning, to the end. From that first deafening experience at 13 years old--the one you let burrow under your skin, unspoken of for all those years--to that last hand on your smooth strong thigh, just before you got up and out. Just before you decided to never turn back.

This is for the unnumbered, unspoken traumas. This is diving in, so many years later. This is healing.

This is the confusion that you sort through for the rest of your life, simply because you were young and beautiful and had things to give, but things were not taken nicely--they were stolen, ransacked.

This is me taking back my body. All of it. All of the luscious beauty I'm afraid to reveal. All of the weird or scandalous angles. All of the ways these muscles laugh and all of the ways they cry.

This is to all of the people who have been stolen from, violently, abusively, without permission, at far too young an age.

This is for our bodies, which are wiser than our minds and even our hearts. They can be trusted, I am told. They, of all things, are here for us to return to, I am told. They will not deceive us or misguide us. We can live in them. They are not our abusers.



It's not my body's fault. It's not my fault at all. What do you need to say to your body? Feel free to let the comments be a safe haven for forgiveness and reclamation.