It has been my intention to write this piece for some time, but I keep finding a reason not to start. So, today, I’m just writing.

My story: At least part of it.

I don’t know why we feel the need to share our stories. Maybe it’s because we need a witness. To be able to say, “see, this happened” and to have someone say, “yes, I see.” Also, I think it’s because when we experience something and grow through it, we want to give a blueprint and testimony to what’s possible. I heard a guest on a podcast once say it’s the natural desire we feel to help, and to give someone the tools and insight we gain from going through whatever it is we go through. Because when you get to the other side of a thing you want anyone else who may be in that experience to know it’s possible.

I didn’t grow up learning the way of interacting with boys, and then men. I never got the chance to practice how to engage in that space. By the time I did start having interactions, I had no sense of self or identity, so my identity came from the people around me and what I could pick up on that they wanted from me. I didn’t have a healthy sense of self; I can now say I didn’t recognize that I even was a self in the way of being in relationship.

To go into some back story: I grew up obese, and I was a textbook obese girl. I used to use that phrase: trying to tell my story without saying the words. I was abandoned by my father. So, the one man in your life who gives you the base line of being wanted did not want me. I was molested by two different older/adult male figures in my life, between the ages of 4-5 and 7. For a long time I dismissed that part. Because whenever I would see someone recounting being molested they would be crying and upset, and I didn’t have that reaction. So, I just thought, well, I guess it didn’t affect me. But that was before I became aware of the ways it can show up in your behaviors. I became “promiscuous”, a term I hate, because it implies choice rather than what I see it as: an unconscious reaction to not feeling autonomy or agency over your body, when I started having sexual encounters.

I go through all these unmeaningful, disconnected, unpleasurable encounters. Not from a place of power and choice, but from a sense of “I don’t have anything else to offer.” I couldn’t see myself as someone that would be wanted as a partner or girlfriend, or the most laughable of all, a wife. So, my way of getting attention was to be available. And, I can honestly say, at that time I did not know saying no was an option. Because I didn’t have a sense of worth and value of myself that came from an internal place. I felt I only existed by how someone else told me I existed. And that was an object of convenient and easy sex.  I spent a few years in that space, and even when I was able to put part of that down, I still wasn’t able to pick up the belief that I could be more than just that; I just decided I didn’t want to be just that anymore, and I don’t even know how I made that decision at the time.

Cut forward some years later: I’m watching this Netflix Series, Orange Is the New Black. They have an episode featuring the character Pennsatucky. For those not familiar with the series: She is this hillbilly, skinny, white girl. In this episode it shows some of her back story. How she is at this party, and she’s propositioned by this guy; I think he offers her some orange sodas. She looks really uncomfortable, and she obviously doesn’t really want to do this, but she doesn’t look like she knows how to say NO. And I’m recounting all this from memory, so I may not get it all fully accurate.( I just rewatched, and the storyline is more detailed. Multiple scenes to get a sense of the characters state of mind, and lack of sense of agency and power.)

I watched this, and for the first time in my life, I felt seen. Not only did I feel seen, but I also saw someone seeing me. And in the most unlikely place. How was it that I could see myself in this character? We had nothing on the surface in common. She’s this skinny, hillbilly white girl, and I’m this obese, country black girl, and yet, there I was: right there, on that screen. Not only was she skinny, she also had a boyfriend. My mind was blown, and my soul was opened.

For so long, and for so much of my life, I associated my weight with all that was “wrong” with me, and why I felt the way I felt. Why I couldn’t have the things others had. Why I wasn’t wanted, and that that just had to be the only way I could get attention. But then I see this being played out on the screen.

At first, I was just stunned to see it, but then I thought, “wait, someone wrote this.” That meant someone else had these feelings. That, in order to express this, someone else has had this type of experience, has experienced and thought of themselves in this way. And with that also came the recognition of the shame I had, that I hadn’t known I felt until that moment. The feeling of being unlovable and unwanted, that I could only ever be someone’s easy convenience. Before this moment I don’t know how much I looked back on or reflected on my life. Everything was just on autopilot at this point. But in that moment, I got to see me through a different lens. Not just someone who was easy and convenient. That if someone else can write this story line, that I so viscerally identify with, what else am I not seeing of myself?

Where else am I unknowingly judging and condemning myself? How else am I dismissing myself for the wrong reasons, through the lies I’ve believed, thinking they were truths?

This was a revelation! And, unknowingly at the time, a first step to breaking free. There would be more years of sadness and depression. More missteps and mistakes, but in that moment I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t this wrong thing that had “chosen” to be misused because that was her only option.

I once told a friend: “We each have our own unique experiences, but they are not exclusive.”

Yes, your story is yours alone, but you are not alone in it. We hold so much shame when we think no one else has had this experience, no one can relate to what is happening to me. This is how shame works. It makes you feel alone and bad and wrong. And that brings me back to where I started at the beginning: Why we tell our stories.

At this point it’s not so I can feel seen, I don’t think I have that need in relation to this topic anymore, but it is so I can help someone else feel seen. It may not even be this specific topic, but just knowing that someone can have the feeling of being alone and singular in an experience and find that they’re not. Maybe you can let go of any shame or feeling of aloneness that may be limiting your being able to start your healing, rebuilding journey.