The Violence of Living

Monte Cofano, Sicily

I remember it first as a feeling: falling into a deep hole.

Not a clean, empty drop, but a tunnel of rock, closing in on all sides. My body ricocheted off the sharp, uneven walls like a pinball, slammed downward by a gravity that felt merciless and precise. Every part of me was getting beaten—inside and out. The strange thing was, I wasn’t entirely in pain. I couldn’t inhabit it, couldn’t name it correctly. But I could see it in the damage done to my body, as if I were looking at myself from the outside: bruises, cuts, swelling, a map of impact.

It kept happening. Over and over, I fell.

There was no control, no brake to pull, no ledge to grab. At some point, I realized I had to surrender to the possibility that it might never stop. I can’t say I gave up, and I can’t say I thought I was going to die. It was something stranger: a sense that my skin was no longer a boundary but something broken through. The rocks pierced through that barrier like daggers, opening me up, exposing what lived underneath.

Then there was the other feeling: being dragged.

In this version, I’m already on the ground, my body limp, pulled across sharp, dry rock, my legs and feet carving a path behind me. I still don’t know who is doing the dragging. I only know my weight, the roughness of the earth, the tear of fabric, the sting of skin splitting open.

The rocks are a harsh orange color, hot from the sun—my blood and sweat mix with the dust, darkening it, marking it. The earth leaves its mark on me, and I leave mine on it.

It is almost entirely silent. There’s only the scrape of my body against the ground and the rhythm of footsteps that are not my own. I don’t know when it will stop, or if it will stop—only that it feels eerily similar to falling into that deep hole: the same helplessness, the same lack of choice.

In both of these experiences, the central fact is the same: I have no control.

I can’t stop falling. I can’t stop the dragging. At first, this powerlessness is terrifying. But as I stay with it—really stay—the scenes begin to shift. The violence doesn’t disappear, but something else appears alongside it.

I notice that even as the wounds keep coming, I can care for them. I am falling and dragged, and at the same time, some part of me is gently cleaning the cuts, tending to the bruises. The heaviness I had always labeled as exhaustion starts to transform into something softer, something I recognize as loving compassion.

I treat my body with reverence. I clean each wound carefully, even as new ones open. I don’t rush. I don’t look away. This care isn’t performative; it feels like a quiet agreement with myself: I see you. I won’t abandon you.

This loving compassion allows me to witness instead of dissociate. To say, “This is me. Please don’t avoid me. Don’t deny me.” It is an invitation to myself, to the parts I have long tried to silence or forget.

When I step back and frame these images in the context of my own life, I can finally call them what they are: violence.

Not just the metaphorical violence of falling or being dragged, but the actual violence that has threaded through my lived experience—sometimes from others, sometimes from systems, sometimes from myself. And when I name it, something collapses. The two scenes—falling into the hole, being dragged over the rocks—fold into each other and into my history. They become a single continuous narrative rather than isolated nightmares.

I start to see that, throughout my life, I have swung between two extremes. On one side, doing everything in my power not to see: looking away, numbing out, distracting, minimizing. On the other side, taking full responsibility for everything: if there was violence, it must somehow be my fault, my burden to carry and fix.

Neither position allowed me to stand in the truth of what was happening. This is not a story about death or fear of dying. It is not a story about an ending. It is a story about the violence inside of living—the ways we are torn open, dragged, dropped, and also the ways we learn to tend to ourselves in the aftermath.

The falling hasn’t completely stopped. The dragging still shows up in dreams, in memory, in my nervous system. But now, when I picture myself hitting the rocks or pulled across them, I also see the hands that gently wash the blood away, the eyes that refuse to close. Those hands are mine. Those eyes are mine. And that, too, is part of the story of survival.

I remember it first as a feeling: falling into a deep hole.

Not a clean, empty drop, but a tunnel of rock, closing in on all sides. My body ricocheted off the sharp, uneven walls like a pinball, slammed downward by a gravity that felt merciless and precise. Every part of me was getting beaten—inside and out. The strange thing was, I wasn’t entirely in pain. I couldn’t inhabit it, couldn’t name it correctly. But I could see it in the damage done to my body, as if I were looking at myself from the outside: bruises, cuts, swelling, a map of impact.

It kept happening. Over and over, I fell.

There was no control, no brake to pull, no ledge to grab. At some point, I realized I had to surrender to the possibility that it might never stop. I can’t say I gave up, and I can’t say I thought I was going to die. It was something stranger: a sense that my skin was no longer a boundary but something broken through. The rocks pierced through that barrier like daggers, opening me up, exposing what lived underneath.

Then there was the other feeling: being dragged.

In this version, I’m already on the ground, my body limp, pulled across sharp, dry rock, my legs and feet carving a path behind me. I still don’t know who is doing the dragging. I only know my weight, the roughness of the earth, the tear of fabric, the sting of skin splitting open.

The rocks are a harsh orange color, hot from the sun—my blood and sweat mix with the dust, darkening it, marking it. The earth leaves its mark on me, and I leave mine on it.

It is almost entirely silent. There’s only the scrape of my body against the ground and the rhythm of footsteps that are not my own. I don’t know when it will stop, or if it will stop—only that it feels eerily similar to falling into that deep hole: the same helplessness, the same lack of choice.

In both of these experiences, the central fact is the same: I have no control.

I can’t stop falling. I can’t stop the dragging. At first, this powerlessness is terrifying. But as I stay with it—really stay—the scenes begin to shift. The violence doesn’t disappear, but something else appears alongside it.

I notice that even as the wounds keep coming, I can care for them. I am falling and dragged, and at the same time, some part of me is gently cleaning the cuts, tending to the bruises. The heaviness I had always labeled as exhaustion starts to transform into something softer, something I recognize as loving compassion.

I treat my body with reverence. I clean each wound carefully, even as new ones open. I don’t rush. I don’t look away. This care isn’t performative; it feels like a quiet agreement with myself: I see you. I won’t abandon you.

This loving compassion allows me to witness instead of dissociate. To say, “This is me. Please don’t avoid me. Don’t deny me.” It is an invitation to myself, to the parts I have long tried to silence or forget.

When I step back and frame these images in the context of my own life, I can finally call them what they are: violence.

Not just the metaphorical violence of falling or being dragged, but the actual violence that has threaded through my lived experience—sometimes from others, sometimes from systems, sometimes from myself. And when I name it, something collapses. The two scenes—falling into the hole, being dragged over the rocks—fold into each other and into my history. They become a single continuous narrative rather than isolated nightmares.

I start to see that, throughout my life, I have swung between two extremes. On one side, doing everything in my power not to see: looking away, numbing out, distracting, minimizing. On the other side, taking full responsibility for everything: if there was violence, it must somehow be my fault, my burden to carry and fix.

Neither position allowed me to stand in the truth of what was happening. This is not a story about death or fear of dying. It is not a story about an ending. It is a story about the violence inside of living—the ways we are torn open, dragged, dropped, and also the ways we learn to tend to ourselves in the aftermath.

The falling hasn’t completely stopped. The dragging still shows up in dreams, in memory, in my nervous system. But now, when I picture myself hitting the rocks or pulled across them, I also see the hands that gently wash the blood away, the eyes that refuse to close. Those hands are mine. Those eyes are mine. And that, too, is part of the story of survival.