Home is at the core of what I've been seeking all my life, even when I didn't feel it. Being sexually abused as a child, beginning at the tender age of 5, meant my sense of belonging was tainted and marred before I had a chance to find ground and connection - more so because the violence came from someone who shared my bloodline. My young self decided it was safest to choose silence in hopes that the damage wouldn't lead to being abandoned. That version of me was certain that what happened to my body and how I responded made me unlovable. Protecting the secret became my moon and sun.
As I created distance from the suburbs that shaped me in my youth, the secret titrated through me, desperate to escape. I swallowed it along with gallons of shame, lukewarm Keystone Light, and connections that felt they were poisoned by my withholding. The handful of times I tried to share the burden, I was fled from. The crushing reassurance that I was, with certainty, unlovable kept the lid on the truth. As liquor became a strategy to drown what was true, so too came more violence. Each time my body was violated, it proved both that I was at fault, and that I was bad. My Catholic bred culture screamed that my womanhood was to blame, and I fell deeper into despair.
My first therapist clocked the truth when I shared a story about a man trying to reach into my pants during a red eye flight to New Jersey. We'd chatted at the gate, and he asked someone to switch seats with me so we could sit together. As his hands reached for the button of my jeans, I didn't get up, ask for help, or say no. The therapist asked why I responded that way, and I told her I didn't have a choice but to endure or avoid, and there was no escape. She said she'd only heard that kind of reaction from people with a history of child sexual trauma, and the truth finally burst out. She then told me she was obligated by law to report what I'd shared, and I felt like the world was swallowing me. I knew I shouldn't let the truth out. I left her office filled with dread that finally, certainly, everyone I loved would disappear.
Since then, I've been clawing at the possibility that I could be my entire self, at home in my skin, after feeling like my body was the crux of my pain. That same therapist told me it wasn't fair to share the truth with my family about the person who’d warped my sense of self and my relationship to the world. As more birthdays and holidays ticked by and I'd find filled with dreaming of ending my existence after, it became clear - setting the secret free was my only chance to survive. When I let the truth free, it tore through my family in ways I never expected. Surprisingly, it wasn't that I wasn't believed, but instead, that I was. Rather than be wrapped up in the arms of my relatives, I found myself in the in-between where nothing seemed to change, while nothing would ever be the same.
Since then, I've been in the rebuilding of loving and trusting the tissues I reside in. That's looked like letting in new hands to hold me and my sorrow, ones that catch all of me and expect no secrets. Finally, I've found love that really is unconditional, the hunger I'd stifled since my fingers and toes were tiny is finally being met. Although there are endless questions, aches that I imagine I'll carry til my last day, worries I've been selfish in choosing myself, I'm grateful. I've found home in myself, in those who have chosen me, in the many places I've called home (looking at you Bluefields, Nicaragua; Shiprock, NM; Denver, CO; Bay Area, CA; and now, most gratefully, the land of my ancestors - Ireland).
Two and a half years ago, I wept for a sense of home. I've long loved snails, for many reasons, but most deeply for their ability to carry their homes on their backs. Finally, I've found home inside my chest, something no one can steal or break.
