Creative Expression 1.

Rape and Creative Expression 1

Hello and welcome. Join me, as I share a glimpse of my journey towards healing, as a sexual abuse survivor. Please stay to the end, so that you may enjoy my gem of positivity.

This post is actually a poem I wrote whilst in a mental health facility. I needed to express myself, without causing damage to either myself or anyone else. To be quite honest, it was either write this poem to save what little sanity I felt I had at the time, or be sectioned, which means being locked up in a secure unit for a minimum of three days. Believe me, the poem is better than the alternative.

There are no words 

To describe the hatred

I feel.

It is more than

Total annihilation that

I wish for this 

Body of mine.

To bleed is good - 

Like draining the

Evil from this

Human form.

I so desperately 

Desire to be

Loved and wanted,

But instead I 

Hurt on the inside

With a pain too

Much to bear.

I deserve the acts

I commit to my

Own body - 

Ruining it to stop 

The games

Men like to perform 

On it.

When I’m at my lowest, this poem describes the tortured feelings of not just my body, but my very soul. It is a glimpse of how I think and feel about myself because of the abuse I have had.

However, as dark as the poem seems, there is actually a light. That light is in the fact I can write about this darkness within me, instead of doing those acts of violence towards myself. The poem shows a way of getting how I feel out of my head, so that it’s not just festering within my head.

This is what they call, in therapy-speak, creative expression. To get your feelings out in a non-violent manner. It doesn’t have to be poetry. The simple act of journaling can help make a difference to your coping strategies. Even doodling. The point is to just let it out. If you press so hard the paper tears, that doesn’t matter. You are still expressing yourself and how you feel, in a manner that is neither detrimental to yourself, nor to the people around you.

Yet your expression might not be in producing a tangible object. It may simply be turning the music up and dancing as wildly and crazily as you can. Or punching a pillow until the stuffing comes out. Getting a telephone book or newspaper, and tearing it into as many tiny pieces as you can. 

It has taken me a long time to learn this lesson. A long time, and many locked units. But you know what? I feel so much better after my creative expression, and I’m not stuck with the baggage of guilt that comes out of hurting myself and others.

And now we come to this post’s gem of positivity. This time I have chosen a quote from Peter Drucker, on pursuing creative expression:

If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.

That is what I’m learning. To heal, by shaking off the old shackles of keeping myself a victim, and creating a survivor. And it’s not easy — nothing worth achieving ever is. But it’s worth being a survivor.

Thank you for joining me on this short walk with me. Don’t forget to leave a comment on what you either do already, or think you’d like to try to creatively express yourself. You may just give an idea that helps someone else. And until next time, breathe - and believe.