My Body Is Still Holding It.
Disclaimer: This post touches on themes of physical, emotional, and sexual trauma, including the aftermath of abusive relationships, somatic memory, intimacy, dissociation, boundaries, and the complexities of healing while learning to love again. Please take care while reading. If any part feels too heavy, it’s okay to pause, skip ahead, or return when you feel ready.
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There are moments when love feels like a threat. Not because the person beside me is unsafe, but because my body doesn’t know the difference yet. It flinches at kindness. It braces for impact when someone reaches out gently. I’ve learned that healing isn’t just emotional, it’s cellular. My muscles remember what my mind tries to forgive. My breath shortens in moments that should feel soft. And sometimes, I grieve the tenderness I can’t yet receive.
There’s a myth I cling to, not because it’s perfectly true, but because it gives me something to measure against. They say your body replaces all its cells every seven years. That means I’m only three years away from being completely untouched by the hands that hurt me. Three years until every skin cell, every strand of hair, every lining of my gut has never known that violence. It’s not exact, some cells linger longer, some never change, but it’s close enough to feel like hope. I think about that when I flinch at kindness. When I brace for touch that’s meant to soothe. My body is still holding it, the memory, the reflex, the ache. But it’s also holding me. And every day, quietly, it’s rebuilding. Replacing. Reclaiming.
Emotionally, I’m relearning what love means. It’s not a transaction. It’s not a performance. It’s not something I owe in exchange for being cared for. After abuse, love can feel like a trap, like something that will be used against me later. I’m slowly rebuilding trust in myself as someone who can choose, who can say no, who can pause without punishment. I’m learning that attention isn’t the same as attunement, and that real love listens without rushing.
Sexually, the terrain is even more complex. Desire doesn’t always arrive when I want it to. Sometimes it feels distant, sometimes it feels dangerous. I want to want again, but I want it to be mine. I want to feel safe in my own skin before I share it. There are days when touch feels like a reclamation, and others when it feels like a reenactment. I’m learning to honor both. I’m learning that “not yet” is a complete sentence. That sensuality can be mine alone, without needing to be shared or validated.
Loving while still healing is its own kind of bravery. I am not a project. I am a person. I carry grief, memory, and hope in equal measure. I need relationships that honor my pace, my pauses, my process. I need space to be messy, to be unsure, to be in-between. And I need to know that love doesn’t require me to be fully healed, it only asks that I show up honestly.
My body is still holding it, the echo, the edge, the ache. But it’s also holding me. And I am learning, slowly and imperfectly, how to hold love without letting go of myself.
