Illusions of Control

this writing was inspired by Chanel Miller. After reading her memoir, Know My Name, I have been inspired to pursue a next path of healing for myself. My pleasurable experiences were tainted from a young age. This is me taking a stepping stone to healing.

I am stepping into more of me.
I am working on healing my pleasurable experiences—
because pleasure can be healing.

My first sexual experiences…
were not mine.
The say I thought I had
existed no more than the breaths
we cannot see.

I didn’t lose control.
I never had any.

An illusion.
Crafted to make me believe
I got to decide
what I did with my body.

Force.
Coercion.
Manipulation.

There was no control.

Now—
I’m seeking that feeling.
Trying to find it in anything:
how I brush my teeth,
when I go to bed,
how I do the dishes,
when I allow myself to cry.

I’m scared of the night.

Do I at least get to choose when I die?
Or did that already happen…
when my innocence was taken,
when my last hope for control
was told to:
“stop ruining the moment.”

What moment?
The moment you forced?
Coerced?
Manipulated?

I can control… nothing.

An illusion.
Like trying to hold the wind.

I feel it—
its presence on my skin,
a maybe,
a whisper,
a possibility.

But how do you capture
and contain something
that was never handed to you?

Do you ask for it?
Voice it?
Can it be claimed?

It wasn’t inherited.
It wasn’t respected.

Maybe there’s a reason
we can’t see the wind.

Only those lucky enough
to create their own—
with breath,
with voice,
with choice—
get to speak it into existence.

I’m just now
finding mine.