All Photographs of The Lovely Reina by Jade Beall

Reina:
Starting to write…hmm. now that I have some time at 11:30pm I don’t have anything to say. What have I been doing the last year? Avoiding a lot that’s for damn sure. The last year has been intense. I started dating a man…that I now live with. I’m still scared out of my mind at the thought of having a real relationship. But it’s been a beautiful process of getting to know someone and letting go of walls and fears and realizing that I have a lot more fear than I thought.

I got an invitation to go to France for a bit. That was scary..because I immediately went from just visiting to…I’ll just move there. Escapism much?!

Jade Beall emailed me back about photographing me for A Beautiful Body Project. I’m writing this now tryin' to find the words to write about myself. About my “story”. Everyone has a story. Mine is real long and gory and detailed and hurts sometimes, but sometimes I can spout it off like I’m reading a shitty horoscope. I’ll try to find some balance and will leave out most of the details. I guess I can start with the outline:

I was born in 1982 to a white mother and Mexican father (chicano to be exact- means born in the U.S.) and an older sister. The white/mexican thing still is a point of contention for me as far as looks..but that’s a whooooole other book). My dad was a nasty drunk, sold drugs, was super smart and I thought he was the bees knees. I loved my dad. I was in love with my dad. For always. He was a badass and a total asshole all in one!

They divorced when I was 4. My mom and us kids moved out. We began visitations at my dad’s new place about a year later. I was sexually abused there by the 16 year old son of one of his drug customers (I believe it was crack at the time). I was 6 when that happened.

My dad also had a lot of porn lying around the house at all times. That had a huge part in shaping the core belief that my worth as a female bodied human must certainly be determined by how sexually useful I was. I don’t say sexually attractive here because as a young child growing up watching hardcore porn on the reg- it’s all action…how can I do that!? How can I be useful like that?
I was super into it and very very ashamed of it.

Come around to puberty which reared its “beautiful” head when I was 11, I went from a glowing little tom boy to a pale pimply faced awkward girl thing with boobs. I still clung to my tomboyness while simultaneously managing to get with as many boys as I could. I was out, I was on the prowl(shamefully). Surely it was the time to begin exploring making out and pushing boundaries what with my new boobies and bleeding and all. My hormones were on a rampage and so was I. All while still being the awkward tomboy thing FULL. OF. SHAME.

12 years old: I ran away from home for a couple days to Huntington beach with two other female friends we’ll call L and K. Once we got there it wasn’t long before my friends and I hooked up with some guys to party with. Whilst exploring the boundaries of making out with a 22 year old guy whom I told I was 15, my boundaries were pushed to the max. He raped me. His friends heard the first parts, me saying no repeatedly- he proceeded. In the morning his friends were making fun of me because I had blood on my underwear and they were inside out. They also mimicked me saying “noo, noo!” in whimpering little voices. I sucked it up and saved face in front of L and K- on the inside I was mortified, humiliated. I stepped in the bathroom to cry and put a cool rag on myself to ease the pain…and then to cover it all up with makeup and smiles. The guy couldn’t wait to get us out of there. He dropped us off at the Huntington Beach Pier at something like 6am. I remember because only surfers were out and the sun wasn’t up yet. I was glad to be away from him, from them. The saddest part of this story is that I lied to my friends. I said it was great and that I was so excited to be rid of my wretched virginity. I didn’t tell them that he made me have sex with him. I didn’t tell them that I cried the whole time and he didn’t care. I didn’t tell them that I was so so disgusted with myself that I was nauseous. I played it cool and acted like I was proud. Touching up our makeup in the a public beach bathroom. I’ll never forget that bullshit discussion with them about what went down. Shame overload. This was the beginning of many many years of self hate and abuse. This was the first of three rapes that I have experienced.

13 years old: My mom can’t take my sister and I’s shenanigans, bless her!(shenanigans being that we were desperate for some stability and love). She had us move to Tucson to live with our Nana who we hardly knew when my dad paroled from prison (he finally got caught and went to prison the year prior). Our nana kicked us all out shortly after dad’s arrival due to his alcoholic binges. Long story short, dad ends up back in prison and sister ends up with friends back in Cali. I end up starting a nasty meth habit at 13 and become homeless. That lasted for 4 years. (Many shenanigans contained in that 4 years)

15 years old: what is it with beaches and rape! raped on Catalina Island campsite. Asked to leave the island by the sheriff for noise disturbance from my screaming and attacking the guy. I have to ride on the same boat with my attacker. assholes.

17 years old: Meth is done. back with mom. road to recovery beginning with what I learned later is essentially mindfulness. Kicking meth is a hell of a ride for your nerves. Also being homeless for 4 years on and off tends to take a nasty tole on ones sense of well being.

21 years old: I move back to Tucson to go to DIHA. My relationship with my body begins again. Long painful reintroduction to myself. Briefly interrupted by one last sexual assault. Date rape as they say. Drinking too much with the wrong guy.

22 years old: Dad commits suicide.
Have to live. Have to live. Don’t want to, but have to. I get sober form alcohol at
25 and really start healing.

27 years old: first full term pregnancy. mind officially blown.

I write about all of this in relation to my body because I spent years avoiding being in my body. I spent years hating it. It makes sense since our bodies and our cells hold memories of all of the traumas we experience. But there is good in there too! I started to come back in when I began massage training and started a yoga practice. Even then my practice was scattered. What really reunited me with my body was becoming pregnant in 2009.
From the first month I was so proud and so excited and so scared. I felt so beautiful. Like true beauty. Deep beauty. I felt like my body was finally for something other than shallow bullshit sex or to be seen as sexy. Being pregnant allowed me to shed all of the weight of past trauma and social pressure somehow. I remember being so full but feeling so open and light! So free. So happy. I felt like I was in a safe beautiful cocoon in my pregnant body with my new baby. This mystery person.

Fast forward 4 years. Now my mystery person is out and on the prowl for things to break and explore. He’s still amazing to me. My body and I have some work to do though- probably indefinitely. Since giving birth I have been waiting for my body to “go back”. I’ve been patient, not expecting too much. I notice that I have begun detaching from my body again here and there (old habits die hard).

I breastfed my boo for 3 years. So it hasn’t really been a full year since we stopped. During that 3 years I’ve watched myself disconnect off and on while breast feeding, I’ve even become enraged about not being able to disconnect while breastfeeding and absolutely wanting to jump out of my skin. It has been really hard to breastfeed my son for 3 years with all of this body memory and trauma still wanting to come up. So now we have stopped and I don’t even have words for how shy I have become and how obsessed I am with my breasts.

I have ever present images of big round fake boobs in my head from childhood as how they are “supposed” to be. But no. They aren’t. Most people know that, but I have had to spend a good amount of time staring at mine from all angles and having the same conversations over and over with my self. “This is what your mama body looks like, it is beautiful, you are beautiful”… I’m still learning to accept my body the way it is. For what it’s worth having my son was worth it. “Body ruiner”….ha! more like life changer! Because of him I’ve become aware that I will always have this struggle because it is so a part of who I am. I like “looking nice” or well groomed and put together sometimes, but the obsession seeps in and shit needs to be checked, and around and around I go.

My story ends for now with an obsession about my imperfect breasts. I think it’s funny that after aaaaaaaall that bullshit- I’m sad about my boobs. But really I’m learning to be grateful for my imperfect breasts and my big nose and oily skin, and my tummy pouch, and my wrinkles, and, and… because they keep me questioning why I have a need to be beautiful in the first place. What I mean by beautiful and where I get those ideas from. Keeps me dissecting my history with body obsession/disconnection. Keeps me learning about the social structures we exist in that support this way of looking at women, feminism and myself. and seeing over and over that I and all of us are beautiful unique beings. My body will never let me forget that and I am grateful for it. That is what I find most beautiful about my body.