The Silent War Within

One difficult part of being a survivor of sex trafficking is learning how to live in a body

that once felt like it didn’t belong to you. Trauma doesn’t always leave visible scars.

Sometimes it changes how you see yourself, how safe you feel in your own body and how you cope with pain long after the trafficking has actually ended. For me, part of that has been how I see my body, how I feed it and how I have punished it. I wrote this to

describe what the silent war within has felt like to me.

I really want to come to a place where I can love the body that carries me. I want to rid

myself of our toxic relationship and trade it for something softer, something more lovely.

Its such a struggle to look at yourself and never feel like enough, not in the eyes of

others but in my own. To look at yourself with disgust and quiet pain while wishing to

change the very thing that has carried you your whole life. It's such a struggle for me but

I don't want it to be. I wonder if other people feel trapped by their bodies too. Silently

screaming from behind a smiling mask while at war with their own refection. I wonder if

they too wish away their lives praying to be smaller, hoping they could just take up less

space. I wonder if they're always discontent believing happiness lives ten pounds away

just out of reach, hiding somewhere behind the mirror. I wonder how many of us are

sucking in telling ourselves it's normal hoping to disappear a little, cinching our waists

with waist trainers to feel accepted. I wonder if other people lose control and eat until it

hurts, leaving them riddled with guilt and wanting to purge. I wonder if others fight a

silent battle begging and negotiating with themselves after mealtime to undo what was

consumed. I wonder how many of us are starving ourselves of love and kindness and

punishing a body that has never betrayed us. A body whose carried our grief, sadness

and suffering. A body that has laughed, known joy and stayed when we wanted to

disappear. Maybe one day I’ll stop asking my body to be different and start thanking it

for staying, for being there for me. Maybe self love doesn't come when I am smaller but

when I learn that hating myself has never made me happier. Maybe healing begins the

moment I stop trying to take up less space and allow myself to just exist.