The Body Remembers Power

I always thought I just hated going to the dentist. But it’s more than that. It’s not the dentist—it’s what happens in my body.

I feel lightheaded. Tense. Angry. I hate that I can’t control what they’re doing to me. That I’m stuck there with things shoved in my mouth, unable to speak. And I think my body remembers something I don’t always want to.

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What it reminds me of, viscerally, is being in Spain—strapped to a stretcher, unable to move. No warning. No understanding. Just a loss of all control. They injected me with drugs while I was emotionally overwhelmed. But I wasn’t violent. I wasn’t a threat. I was just deep in grief. And they didn’t know what to do with that.

Maybe it was because I wasn’t Spanish. Maybe it was fear. But it felt like I lost my autonomy, my humanity—and no one cared. Just get him under control.

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But maybe this goes back even further.

To childhood. To moments where my dad would overpower me. Not in play. But with a kind of satisfaction. Like he enjoyed knowing he could control me. That I couldn’t fight back. That he owned the room, my fear, my silence.

And so I did what so many kids do to survive:
I ate.
I bulked up.
I grew into something stronger.
Something that couldn’t be messed with anymore.

By the time I was 12 or 13, I had that power. And one day, I used it. I shoved my dad to the floor of our kitchen. Hard floor. Loud fall. And I stood over him, fists ready.

I could’ve beaten the shit out of him. And a part of me wanted to. For everything.

But I didn’t.

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I mercied him.

And I don’t know why.

Maybe I saw that he was fragile. That he was already broken. Maybe I saw him as a little boy then. Or maybe it was just something in me that refused to become what he was.

Not because someone taught me integrity. But because it was already in me.

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Sometimes I wonder if I should’ve hit him. If maybe he deserved it.

But the truth is… I didn’t need to.

The fact that I could have—and didn’t—that’s power. That’s control. That’s the kind of strength no one could take from me. Not even him.

And maybe that’s what enraged my parents most. That the best parts of me—the quiet strength, the refusal to become cruel, the ability to grow out of the shame they fed me—triggered them. Because they couldn’t do it themselves.

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This hate I feel? Sometimes it’s not really hate.

It’s memory.
It’s the body remembering what it felt like to be helpless—and never protected.
It’s my nervous system screaming for justice in places I never got it.
And maybe, in that kitchen, I gave myself the first taste of it.

Not by fighting back.

But by choosing who I was going to be.

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