Why I Do Not View Myself as Victim or a Survivor
When I was 15 years old, I was raped. I was held down on a basement floor with my hands pinned over my head and my virginity was taken. Taken by a 15 year old boy. A boy I trusted. A boy I was dating. I walked home after. I didn’t tell anyone. Not for years. When the #MeToo movement happened, I wrote about it. That poem became my first published poem.
Me Too
They said on Facebook
Woman after woman
Telling me what I already knew
That 1 in 4 is a joke
Me Too
I write
Because I have to
Though I don’t want to
That night I dream
Of that basement
Shirt pulled over my head
Pinned to the floor
By a boy with no power
Except the power to overpower
And 25 years later I wonder
Do I dare share this poem?
Will anyone believe me?
That moment in that basement was not the first instance of abuse that I lived through. It was not the last. I could list it. The sexual abuse and the emotional abuse. And if I did, there is no doubt that many people would relate to my stories. There is power in stories. There is power in relating to another human who has lived through similar experiences. But none of that is what I want to talk about today.
Today I want to talk about the power of language. I am a writer. I have a Master’s Degree in writing. I teach Literature and Writing. I believe in language. I believe in the power of language and words more than anything else.
I am not a victim of sexual abuse.
I am not a survivor of sexual abuse.
I respect people who have lived through what I have lived through and identify this way. To each of us, we find power in our own language. We write our own narrative. How we internalize or don’t internalize our experiences is incredibly personal and there is no right or wrong way.
However, for those, who like me, have never been able to relate to the terms of victim or survivor, let me offer an alternative way of looking at it.
You are not the things that have happened to you.
Your identity is controlled by you. Who you are is who you have decided to be. You are influenced by your experiences. You are not your experiences.
I am not a victim or survivor of sexual abuse. I am a person who survived sexual abuse. I am not a victim or survivor of emotional abuse. I am a person who survived emotional abuse. These are part of my experiences, good or bad. It is not my identity.
I am a mother.
I am a writer.
I am a teacher.
These things and more are things I find power in identifying as. Ways that I choose to view who I am and not what I have lived through.
This is my language and the language that I use to view the world.
If you view yourself as a survivor of abuse, I respect you and I love you. If you view yourself as a Sexual Abuse Warrior, more power to you. That is the language that speaks to you.
We all must think about the language that we use. How do we speak to ourselves when no one is listening? How do we identify ourselves? How do we allow others to speak to us, to identify us or to treat us “as if”?
If the language you use for yourself is serving you, keep using it. If the language that you use is hurting you, maybe it is time to speak to yourself the way you would want to be spoken to.
When you look in the mirror, what is the identity of the person you see?
Photo Credit: Daisy Kohler Photography
First Publishing Rights of Me Too: For Women Who Roar Magazine
