Healing Through Forensics

• Essay

								
Feet, sweating in dress shoes, firmly making contact with the floor with each new step. The once soft dress that I loved for its comfort felt tight on my body. Its fabric wrapped around me like a python suffocating its prey. My hands and legs trembled as I turned to face the classroom full of students. I felt as if my body was jello and that at any moment, the sweat covering my body was going to loosen the gelatin, and I was going to melt to the floor. My eyes locked with the audience. The lump in my throat began to loosen. 
“Judges and timer ready?” 
With those four words, my life begins to write a new chapter. A chapter of healing. A chapter that I never thought I would be able to write. For the first time in eighteen years, I had a voice, and everyone in attendance of the Michigan Interscholastic Forensic Association’s State Tournament was going to hear me. 
	You know that saying: my stomach is in knots? The feeling when you’re trending up a hill of a roller coaster and with each click of the track belt the knots become tighter and tighter until you finally go over the edge of the hill. Then, almost instantaneously, the knots dissolve and you’re left feeling almost free. That’s how I felt everyday. Except the knots weren’t just tamed to my stomach, they were covering my entire body. For me, there was no dissolving these knots either. There was no “top of the hill” and once I got over said hill I magically felt better. Each minute of every day, those knots were pulling tighter and tighter, with each organ in my body slowly losing its circulation over time. 
I lived my life knowing that one day those knots were going to pull so tight, it was going to decapitate me. From a very young age, I felt powerless. I grew up being taught that speaking up was talking back. So, I didn’t speak at all. If you were to ask my elementary and middle school teachers what they would change about me, they would most likely tell you that they wished I would have talked more. I yearned to speak, in fact I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. All I wanted was for somebody to listen to me, but the adults in my life that were supposed to protect me, stole my voice away from me. Even the people who were labeled as mandated reporters failed to unglue my lip and let me speak. When they did, my words never entered their ears. It was as if every single person on the planet was deaf. In a world full of millions of people, I felt invisible. No one heard my silent cries for help. Most days I felt like if one day my familial abuser was to let his anger go too far and I would fall victim to homicide, and still no one would care. There was no escape. No one would listen. 
	The first time I put a pen to paper, the words flowed like a waterfall. Writing poems about my trauma or just writing in general was a coping skill (or catharsis?) that got me through a lot of dark times, but I never pictured sharing those poems with other ears. Standing in front of the classroom for the first time, reciting a poem I had written, I felt a feeling I had never felt before. It was an indescribable feeling. I felt as if I was floating. Eleven years fighting with paralyzing anxiety that tormented me on the daily, and for the first time I didn’t feel like I was suffocating. I could take a deep breath.  The weight that lived on my shoulders, slowly crushing me to the ground, let up. Never in my life did I think I would be planted in the front of the classroom, captivating the audience with my words. I felt like I was the light and the audience was moths. 
	The first few minutes into the first public speaking competition had my heart racing. It wasn’t necessarily because I was nervous, it was more because I didn’t feel good enough to be there. That seemed to be a common occurrence. With Each competitor's speech, my heart began to beat louder inside my chest. The pounding of my heart was so loud it was as if it put me into a trance. My mind was hyper fixated on each beat and nothing could pull me out until the judge called my code. All of the sudden I snapped back into reality as I began to make my way to the front of the classroom. All my senses seemed to sharpen simultaneously. I was about to open the floodgates to a whole new world. As I began to speak words I had spent the last week memorizing, my body began to loosen. It felt like with every movement I was dancing on a cloud. Never in my life have I ever felt so free. The chains that bound me to my trauma for so long started to snap with each word that flowed out of my mouth.  As I bowed my head, marking the end of my piece, I felt tears welled in my eyes. The warm feeling of salty tears had never felt so good. Before that day, I never knew that I could physically feel my heart mending itself. 
	Public speaking has brought me a form of healing I never thought I would get to experience. I went from this dark, empty place where I saw nothing but the past. Where every moveI made I feared what was around each bend and corner. I was afraid of being myself, trusting others, letting people love me, and I was afraid of life itself. Now, that couldn’t be more different. Even though I still have a long way to go in my trauma journey, being in the position and mindset to share my story with others through public speaking has given me a fresh start. A new beginning and a new life. A life I deserve.
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