Reclaiming my body

I feel peaceful. Yesterday I began painting a mural in my room. It's a copy of a self-portrait I drew several years ago of a nude woman clinging to her body, hugging it into herself with her eyes closed and an expression of protectiveness on her face. Around the time that I did this piece I was sexually assaulted by a married man who was a friend of my boyfriends while he was outside having a cigarette. We had all been drinking and I was drunk, I felt a false sense of security because of the man being married, and had children, I didn't expect that he would touch me sexually and because my partner was there I thought I was safe. At that time in my life I had not yet taken ownership or responsibility of my own safety. I thought that I could blindly rely on pretense.
It was not the first time that a man touched me in a way that was unwelcome, so this experience brought up a lot of emotion from the past, in addition to what I was feeling in the current situation. I remember slurring to my boyfriend that things had gone too far, but can't remember that anything happened next. Likely I began to keep my distance from the friend.
I was unaware that the drawing was about this experience until, several years later, a friend of mine alerted me to an art show that was about sexual violence awareness. I submitted the drawing along with a couple of others, that I came to see were all about me trying to understand my pain and reclaim myself before I was ready to admit it. I was secretly healing because the fear that I would forever be broken, and there was no point in even trying, consumed my conscious mind.
I've recently felt this calling to make large art so I realized that I needed to recreate the drawing as a mural. After some semblance of completion, I lay on my bed and stared at it. I feel hope, I feel joy, I feel so much love for the original artist. My past self was always taking care of me.

No matter the despair you feel, there is a part of you that is secretly fighting for your life on the sidelines.