Where is the Bruise?

The first time I told someone I had been abused, they didn’t look at me—they looked at my skin.

Their eyes traced my arms, my jawline, my collarbone—searching for something.

Purple.
Swelling.
A mark they could name.

Something they could point to and say—there.
Something that would make my story easier to believe.

But what happened to me didn’t live on my skin.
It lived in my body, underneath my skin.
And when they didn’t find anything, they asked—

“Where is the bruise?”

The bruise is the pattern.
Freeze.
Brace.
Shrink.

It’s how my body learned danger without ever seeing a fist.

He didn’t have to hit me—he just had to teach my body that it was never safe.

A sigh—and my chest tightens.
A look—and my body locks.
A shift in tone—and adrenaline floods me like a storm I can’t stop.
And when I try to explain that they ask again—

“Where is the bruise?”

The bruise was in my thoughts.
A script I couldn’t escape.

“You’re remembering wrong.”
“You’re overreacting.”
“You’re imagining things.”

Over
and over
and over.
Until I stopped trusting my own memory.
My own instincts.
My own reality.

He rewrote my world—
and handed me a version of myself I didn’t recognize.

And somehow, I believed him.
I tried to explain that.
But I had no proof.
So, they asked—

“Where is the bruise?”

The bruise was in the silence.
The years I stayed quiet.
Because his voice echoed louder than mine.

The way I braced to be dismissed—
again
and again
and again.

The weight of a story never fully seen.
Never fully named.

The story they told—said I was broken.
Overreacting.
Imagining harm.

But the truth I claim now—
My perception was real.
My body knew.
My instincts were right.
My survival—was strength.

What happened didn’t leave marks on my skin—but it was real.
So now when the world asks—

“Where is the bruise?”

I don’t look down anymore.
I don’t search my body for something to make them comfortable.

The bruise was my nervous system trapped in survival.

But my body—is learning it’s safe now.
And this time—I decide.
Who gets access to me.
What I carry.
How I heal.

My body is mine.
My mind is mine.
My truth is mine.

The bruise was never my identity.
It was a chapter.
A chapter of survival.

Not who I am.