"I don't know where to start. It's just... one day, in a session with my therapist (I live across the ocean), I lay on the couch, as usual. She had long realized that I spoke more freely when I couldn't look her in the eye. And that day, after many years of therapy, a sentence came out of my mouth that I had never said before:

“I've always felt like someone took advantage of me... even when I'm intimate with someone.”

She told me quietly:

"From the way you're talking, it's very likely you've experienced some form of sexual abuse."

And it was like an explosion. I lifted my body off the couch and, as if in shock, I said out loud: “I remember.”

It was like opening a door that I had locked and chained. A dark memory that had affected everything – how I loved myself, how I related to people, how I treated my body. I had covered it up for decades.

I went numb. It was as if my body had left me. The noises in the room became unbearable. I went outside and walked unconsciously through the city. I went into a clothing store just to find a place to hide. I went into a fitting room and burst into tears.

I called a close friend who works with trauma and addiction. "I remember. I was sexually abused as a child," I told her.

She told me in a calm voice: “I had always suspected it.”

That sentence brought me a momentary release. The pieces came together: why I became addicted to alcohol, why I always felt anxious, why I couldn't let anyone really get close to me. But the relief was short-lived. I went home and crawled under the covers. I just wanted to cease to exist for a few hours.

My therapist explained to me that what had happened to me was a dissociated memory – meaning, my brain had pushed it deep enough to protect me. And it had worked… for a while. But my body had remembered it every day. In ways I had never connected before.

Then I started talking to other girls in the addiction recovery group. And, one after another, they would say, “Me too, me too.”

I was shocked. Why didn't we talk about this before? Why are there so many women who carry similar trauma in silence? Why is it so hard for us to admit that something like this happened?

The brain sometimes forgets to protect you. But the body never forgets. The trauma haunted me day and night – with insomnia, with body aches, with anxiety that I didn't know where it came from, with a feeling that no place was truly safe.

It took me a long time to work on myself: with therapy, with prayer, with calm, with care for my soul. Today I can't say that I am "healed" in the classical sense. But I am moving forward. I am remembering. I am freeing myself. And for the first time in my life, I no longer feel alone.

"If you're reading this and you feel something similar in your body, in your memories – please, don't ignore it. Start talking. To someone who will listen, without judging you.
You're not alone. It's not your fault. And it can be fixed."

Copyright Anabel.al / Reprinting without permission of the editorial staff is prohibited.