The Callus of Coping: Extract from 'The Way We Survive: Notes on Rape Culture' by Catriona Morton
The word ‘trauma’ literally translates from the Greek word for wound or injury. We can be traumatised by any number of things in our lifetimes : families, break-ups, grief, accidents, racism, bullying. In our modern common vernacular, however, ‘trauma’ tends to be equated with some form of violence or abuse, namely war and rape. Some trauma, as with wounds, can be healed ; some can be partially healed, and some will never heal. Healing does not have to equate to finality, something I hadn’t realised until I began the process of writing this book.
Originally, this segment was a seething take-down of notions of healing within the survivor sphere. Journeys, scars, battles and healings crowded the vernacular I saw across social media and in literature about sexual violence. I worried that all these notions of healing suggested some sort of end-goal we must aspire to ultimately reach. Healing, as it is commonly discussed, evokes an endpoint of an idealised ‘wellness’, a cure for the craziness. Scars suggest the end of an injury, a cauterising of the hurt. My original qualm with narratives of healing was rooted in the woo-woo culture that can be found across so many discussions of being a survivor. Faux spirituality and memes would come to the fore, declaring that we’re like butterflies erupting from our chrysalis of trauma, or that we’re women warriors against the evil monsters who have harmed us. Buzzwords are used : journeys, honouring, manifesting. To me, these felt tiring. In my life, there will be no finality to the effects of trauma. As a survivor of both childhood sexual abuse and sexual assault in adulthood, the aftermath is both ever-present and ever-evolving. I will never reach the ‘end’ of my trauma. It will forever be a part of me, and that is not something to be ashamed of. The way that I survived what happened to me has helped to sculpt me at my very core.
In a talk you can find on Vimeo, Johanna Hedva talks on how the mark of trauma, and the continuation of your life despite it, may be better described as a callus rather than a scar. A scar implies the trauma doesn’t hurt any more, that it’s just a benign physical mark of something that tried to destroy you in the past. But our trauma often isn’t as straightforward as that. It can be seemingly ‘healed’ for years, only to then come back, ripping out of our skin when we see someone who looks like our abuser on the bus or when we hear a song that transports us back to that evening we so wish to forget. More like a callus or corn, our past traumas can still exist as wounds on our skins, but they do not destroy us. We build up a resilience around them ; we protect ourselves and become hard against all that has tried to destroy us. We grow around the mark, but it doesn’t disappear, and it’s still tender on certain days. We learn to live, and we learn to keep going with this hole we may now have. The callus may fall off and we may falter, wounds infected once more. But the callus will come back. Year after year, we will become resilient ; we will keep going despite it all. And it is our own skin that has saved us, our own bodies that protect us from the trauma of what was done to us.
You can buy The Way We Survive: Notes on Rape Culture by ordering it to your local bookstore or clicking here.
