Taking Back My Soul

TW: This piece contains personal experiences of sexual trauma, emotional manipulation, and healing. It’s not written for pity or shock— it’s written because truth deserves a voice. Forgiveness is complicated, but healing begins by reclaiming the narrative.

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I was 8 years old the first time I was touched against my will.

I was in the second grade, sitting in class working on a paper at my table when the boy sitting beside me asked me if I “really had boobs.” 

He reached over and touched my chest as he said it.

I was left feeling ashamed and awkward, because I knew it was wrong. But I just turned back to my classwork and didn’t say anything. 

A few years later, I was walking into a grocery store with my mom when a grown man passing us looked at me and said, “nice shirt.”

I was 11 years old. I was so innocent I thought he was genuinely talking about my shirt. I was wearing my first padded bra. My mom had to discuss it with me and explain what he really meant. 

When I was freshly 18, I hid being in a relationship with a man who was 9 years older than me. All these years later, and I’m still not the age he was when I met him. 

When I was 20, I entered a very unhealthy relationship. He made sex a requirement in our relationship, and I, who was very inexperienced and insecure at the time, didn’t understand how wrong that was. I didn’t realize that most of our encounters were actually r*pe until a year later. There was even a time I was crying in tears from pain and he told me to shut up because I was distracting him. He ended up cheating on me with his ex girlfriend. 

When I was 22, I was seeing someone casually I actually felt safe with. It was never serious, but we were good friends and I cared for him. I found out he’d slept with someone else and then slept with me without telling me about it. He told me after. I thought I at least was worth being upfront with— but I was wrong, and that genuinely shattered me. 

Though this situation didn’t bear as much weight as other things I’d been through, this was my breaking point and a huge catalyst for me moving forward. 

There’s so many other things I could write, so many stories I could tell— but I’m not here to trauma dump. I’m here to discuss how to forgive and reclaim your autonomy after absorbing shitty male behavior most of your life. 

Who else is over hearing “boys will be boys,” and “men have needs.” Barf.

I grew up with a very conservative baptist background with a single mother. Her ex husband had cheated on her. There was always fear surrounding intimacy planted in me before I even knew what to name it. A fear of being left alone with children to raise, a fear of being used and discarded, a fear of giving myself up in the name of damnation in sin. 

The reason my catalyst had been just a dumb situationship was because the emotions it brought out were all the same as before. My lack of boundary setting and undermining my own feelings blew right up in my face— again. All of these situations were reaffirming limiting beliefs I’d picked up throughout my life that were not doing me any favors and holding me back. I wasn’t honoring my truth—  because of that, my reality wasn’t reflecting truth back. It was reflecting my wounds. 

So I alchemized them. I stopped putting myself in situations that reaffirmed the beliefs that I didn’t matter, that I had to do it all alone, and that intimacy only comes from giving up your own needs. Most of all— that I’m only important when I’m putting others above myself. 

Coming to peace with knowing I didn’t deserve any mistreatment is hard. Accepting what has transpired and knowing I can’t change it, only how I move forward is harder. You can’t make a cut disappear— but you can let it heal if you stop picking at the scab. 

Not picking at the scab sucks. It itches. It’s flaking. It gets stuck to fabric and pulls. What the reality of ‘not picking the scab’ means is surrounding yourself with people who stop giving you shit to heal from, first and foremost. This can be difficult, because our brains are addicted to what we are familiar with and know. It doesn’t mean that triggers don’t come up— it means when it itches, I don’t scratch it anymore. 

There was so much rage and anger in me. That anger turned to grief. That grief turned into shame. That shame into acceptance. Acceptance into forgiveness. 

Forgiveness doesn’t mean excusing the behaviors. It just means I no longer carry the shame of others as my own. I don’t shame myself for not knowing better, for doing my best with what I knew at the time— though I have struggled with it from time to time. But forgiveness isn’t always a linear path, because it can feel fragile some days. That’s just the reality of choosing the path of healing, and being human. 

I highly doubt anyone ever knew much of this about me. I’ve never talked much about it, especially publicly— but it’s my truth. It’s been a part of my journey. It’s shaped me into who I am and the scars are there and they will never completely go away— but they can heal over when nurtured correctly. Yet, these experiences do not define me.

I still struggle with trust, intimacy, abandonment, feeling important, understood, and cared for. Some days I feel invisible. Sometimes I want to hide from the world, like disappearing would be doing everyone else a favor. It doesn’t mean I’m ruined forever. It means I’m healing— and I’m still showing up every day for myself, despite it all. 

And maybe that’s what forgiveness truly means— it’s not forgetting, absolving, nor is it pretending we’re unaffected. But choosing every single day not to carry the shame. It’s saying, “I’m still here. I’m still soft. That is my power— not my weakness.”

Forgiveness is choosing to be the author after years of being written over. I’ve stopped waiting to be chosen, and finally chose myself. I’m still here, and I’m not going anywhere.