Crow and Flame

I never spoke about my sexual assault before last year.

I never even acknowledged it.

I just lived in survival mode

without recognizing

that I was surviving.

There are ways the body keeps going.

Ways it smiles.

Ways it performs.

Ways it succeeds.

All while carrying something unnamed.

Rape.

What kind of word is that?

It’s something boys toss around in locker rooms like it’s a punchline.

It’s something people roll their eyes at.

Something they say women invent when they’re angry.

Something debated more than mourned.

Rape.

Four letters.

One syllable.

Too small.

Too sharp.

Too clinical.

It doesn’t hold the weight of dissociation.

It doesn’t hold the silence.

It doesn’t hold the way your nervous system learns to scan every room for exits.

It doesn’t hold the way your body can freeze and your voice can disappear.

It doesn’t hold the shame that never belonged to you

but somehow moved in and unpacked its bags.

For years, I told myself stories.

I should have known better.

I should have been stronger.

I should have been smarter.

Anything but the word.

Because the word felt nuclear.

The word felt permanent.

The word felt like it would split my life into before and after.

And maybe that’s why we avoid it.

Because once you say it,

you can’t pretend you were just dramatic.

You can’t gaslight yourself anymore.

You can’t keep minimizing your own pain to make other people comfortable.

But the body never minimizes.

The nervous system keeps score.

It remembers the tone of voice.

The pressure.

The moment your stomach dropped.

The instant your body realized you were not safe.

And when your body realizes you are not safe, it chooses survival.

Fight.

Flight.

Freeze.

Fawn.

Not weakness.

Not consent.

Not confusion.

Survival.

For me, it was freeze.

My body went still.

My mind floated somewhere near the ceiling.

Time stretched thin.

And afterward, I lived like that was normal.

Hyper-aware.

Hyper-independent.

Overachieving.

Over-functioning.

My nervous system humming like a live wire.

I thought anxiety was just my personality.

I thought control was strength.

I thought being “fine” meant healed.

But trauma doesn’t disappear just because we refuse the vocabulary.

It shows up in tension in the shoulders.

In shallow breaths.

In the way intimacy can feel complicated.

In the way loud voices make your heart race.

In the exhaustion of always being on guard.

When I finally said the word out loud, something else happened too.

My nervous system softened.

Not all at once.

Not magically.

But slowly.

Naming it told my body:

You’re not crazy.

You’re not dramatic.

You’re not broken.

You were hurt.

And hurt deserves tending.

Healing, I’m learning, is less about “moving on”

and more about teaching your body that it is safe now.

Slow breaths.

Grounded feet.

Hands on my own heart.

Boundaries that say no without apology.

Spaces where my body is believed.

Strength without acknowledgment becomes armor.

Heavy.

Rigid.

Exhausting.

But strength with truth becomes integration.

I am not just someone who survived.

I am someone reclaiming.

Reclaiming my body.

Reclaiming my voice.

Reclaiming the right to take up space without shrinking to make others comfortable.

Rape.

The word is small.

But the truth is not.

Silence protects perpetrators.

Naming protects survivors.

And healing — real healing —

is when your nervous system no longer has to live like the danger is still happening.

I am not a punchline.

I am not a regret.

I am not a cautionary tale.

I am a woman whose body survived.

And now — slowly, deliberately —

I am teaching it how to live again.