My Body Did Not Forget: Facing the Shadows of the Past

This story is one of the stories from our book A Nő világa (The World of Women), created together with Miklós Vámos.

(Trigger Warning: This post discusses sexual abuse.)

Have you ever felt that you were not where you belonged? That you did not know who you were or which path was yours? That you were searching for yourself but had no idea how to move forward?

When rejection seems to come from everywhere and everyone, and you cannot understand what you are doing wrong? Why do other people seem to find a partner in an instant, never really knowing loneliness, while all you know is the crushing feeling of being alone?

Two years ago my spleen was removed because of an autoimmune illness, and since then I simply have not been able to find my way back to myself. It was as if something inside me had broken. In March 2017 I volunteered as an interpreter at a conference, and from that point on I kept feeling that I was in the wrong place — both at work and in my private life. I did not know what to do with that feeling, so I began searching for myself.

At the same time, I desperately wanted a partner. I had wanted to get married for twenty years, but I felt that nobody wanted me.

The maze of searching

I went to career counselling, worked on personal development and completed self-awareness tests. I wanted to know who I really was, what I kept doing wrong and why men rejected me.

I did not receive a concrete answer, but I did learn that around the age of forty many people begin to feel that they want to do something different with their lives. In my case, however, the sense of being stuck was actually rooted in a secret I had been carrying for twenty years, locked away in a drawer deep inside me. Nobody knew about it but me.

The shell — and what was behind it

For twenty years I lived closed off from the world. I called it my shell. In reality, that shell was more like a pit, and I was sitting at the bottom of it. I shut myself away from people and from life, keeping myself constantly busy so I would not have to face the pain inside me.

The secret was a sexual assault that happened when I was twenty.

A man I knew forced himself on me. I no longer remember his name, only his face. He did not rape me in the strict sense, but he pinned me down so forcefully that, unable to get free, I eventually stopped resisting. He ejaculated on my face — I have been repulsed by semen ever since — and when I struggled, he hit me. I gave in out of helplessness. At twenty years old, as my first sexual experience, it burned itself into me permanently.

My body's response to trauma

In my twenties, the trauma contributed to a breakdown. I received psychiatric treatment for depression, but I told no one the truth. I was ashamed, even though I was the victim.

I was terrified that men could hurt me and I never wanted to experience that pain again, so my mind created a defence mechanism: I gained weight. I became fat and, in my own eyes, unattractive. That gave me an explanation for why nobody wanted me.

Of course, that only made everything worse. Here was a woman who “nobody wanted” because she was fat. I rewarded myself with food, gained even more weight, and alongside my damaged emotional state my body developed thyroid and autoimmune illnesses as well. The shell protected me from emotional pain, but inside I was suffering.

When the masks began to fall

In 2017 I began facing myself. When I decided to accept vulnerability and step out of the shell, I broke down again.

I went to work behind a mask so nobody would see the depth of my pain, then came home and cried for hours. I felt it was time to give up loneliness, but to do that I had to face the consequences of the assault. I had to realise that I was unable to let anyone come close to me.

I turned to a psychologist again, but this time I brought the truth with me. It became clear that I displayed many of the typical responses of a victim: guilt, and the fact that I had blamed myself for twenty years. When I finally tried to let someone close, physical touch triggered fresh trauma and sexual numbness.

The path towards healing

I do not know how other people move through an experience like this, but I chose conscious attention.

I started exercising again — box aerobics — and lost twenty kilograms.

I work on self-awareness and personal development.

I am beginning to see who I really am.

I still cry a lot, but emotionally I am becoming stronger. Instability has gradually been replaced by focus, direction and greater balance. People around me have noticed it too.

I wrote this story with roughly a hundred paper tissues beside me, but writing it is also a way of coping. I believe it may help many women. It is time to talk about what happened, even through tears, because when we lock trauma away in a drawer, it can poison us from the inside for the rest of our lives.

And I would finally like to be happy.

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