Abuse of Power (1)

No Harm Done?

No harm done. A phrase I’ve heard many times in my life — worded differently, but in the end, meaning the same thing.

And now, when I hear those words — or anything like them — my body clenches. I go silent. My nervous system starts to rise into overload, and it’s like everything that has happened to me begins flashing in my mind. Like my whole life flashes before my eyes — trauma events surfacing one after the next.

It’s like — boom, this happened. Boom, remember that — then more, and more — one after another, fast, loud, and relentless.

And my body surges, remembering that feeling of helplessness, fear, uncertainty, and shame, and I start slipping into an uncontrollable emotional state. Not rage — something else. Something I have no words for, but my body remembers. My nervous system braces, clenches, and the emotion comes rushing in like tidal waves, one crashing after the other.

This isn’t something I take lightly, because I feel it. And at my age, for words like that — or anything similar — to hit me the way they do… the aftermath, the heightened emotion, the past rising into the present. And the questioning — why? Why again? What did I do?

Because people see no harm — and I feel it a thousand times over.

In these next entries, I’m going to walk through what abuse of power in my life has looked like.

Not even to understand me — just to show that harm was done by those who thought it was no big deal.