thinking about my life, my feelings and my thoughts as they relate to what havoc sexual abuse wreaks on my body at the cellular level.
my remembered abuse began at the time of my adolescence. i can't imagine how being abused at such an early age might affect one, though my little sis was also abused beginning at at age 5, and i've watched her particular struggle and confusion as she's grown.
all i know is that self-loathing seems to be a common thread running through the lives of many survivors, no matter what age the abuse occurred, even prior to issues around sexual identification.
for me that has been the toilet tissue that has stuck to my heel through all these many years of recovery and healing. i just can't seem to get the idea out of my head that ' i am my body'. i am not. this body is merely a vehicle, but someone made it an object, before i was powerful enough to resist and to object.
as a sensual being responding strongly to kinesthetic data i learned from an early age to define and construct myself in relation to the impact of those experiences and to identify with the stimulii. i became trapped by them.
later, in grad studies i studied the alexander technique which caused me to come across the topic proprioception, which, as an instrumental teacher, i find it really helpful in expressing an understanding of what happens as the body exists in the periphery of the time/space continuum.
nerves and muscles react to stimulii and in effect become a 'feedback' mechanism, that kicks into play whenever the factors affecting the physical components are brought into play.
so much of our reactions become automatic responses to a stimulus that acted upon us at a previous time. much of our reactions live in muscle and nerve memory.
my personal understanding is that the particular propensity for a certain orientation is built into one's personal dna imprint, and it cannot be changed---it is gifted. however, confusion can arise when these experiences happen to us and teach our muscles and nerves to respond in a manner contrary to the imprint, and when shame and fear enter the mixture, arising from the dissonance between who we are, and who we think we are supposed to be, then we find our selves in a cul de sac of looping behaviors that seem to ricochet between a set of motivators [learned muscle and nerve] and and undesirable effects [acting out behaviors] and fear and cultural shame attached to those behaviors.
for me, part of the path to release from such behaviors was recognizing that i had misplaced the focus on the undesirable result, rather than on the underlying issue, which in my case was shame.
i was ashamed of my body, and i hated it because i thought it had betrayed me. my abuse taught me at a very early age that the thing that made me 'special' and gave me any value whatsoever, was my flesh. and so i developed a life around the belief that if i made myself as fetching as possible, then everyone would want a piece of me.
i had bought so deeply into the notion of beauty = worth that i invested all my hopes into becoming 'beautiful'.
it is easy to look at 'the beautiful'. they are shoved in our faces everywhere we go, in all media. and the media plays on the notion that we are all so deeply disenfranchised from deepest and truest selves, that if they hold up a sign screaming 'be beautiful, like so and so....use this product....go to this gym.....take these courses.....eat this food....blah blah blah', then maybe we will invest in the sad reality they hold out for us as hope for a brighter tomorrow, a better 'me'. more palatable, more valuable, more worthy, more loved.
ok, so i went the long again......LOL, the point i am trying to make is that at some point along in my life, my abuse began to defined me in my ignorance, before i was even aware that it was happening. and by the time the mind caught on, schemas had already become enshrined within, which began to direct my life choices in such a manner as to live to sate this need for being loved and accepted.
i was caught in the quagmire of my own unrecognized self-belief. but through recovery and healing, i was able to eventually put all this in perspective and begin to live a life that i decide to live, rather than just be the servant of a belief system that seemed to automatically live out its own mechanism using me, as its host.
