In years of working with vulnerable communities, I have heard of abuse and its many faces. Psychological abuse that destroys the soul with words, physical abuse that breaks the sense security, sexual abuse that takes by force another person’s body, and many others. However, many times they are not even called abuse but get lost in meaningless classifications.

This last part is one of the issues that have caught my attention at the tables where we have sat to talk about abuse. At these tables I have noticed many times that we talk about sexual abuse only when there is penetration. Our language then minimizes the harm of other forms of inappropriate touching, when in reality, any physical contact on my body without my consent that makes me feel uncomfortable is abuse. I find it more than necessary that anything that is abuse be labeled as such, because the failure to do so causes victims not to feel entitled to report the abuse, or even go through the emotional grief that arises from it.

In these safe places of sharing and listening I have heard the hardest and most painful stories of my life (the impact of these on the mental health of the social worker I will discuss in another blog). These stories explain why these women and men fall into addictions to psychoactive substances, isolate themselves from the world, and live life in darkness. It is their pain, fear, anger and shame that drove them to make decisions that led them to live on the streets.

Although at the moment they sit at this table because they want a different life, it is impossible not to see in their eyes the pain and the need to escape reality.

Their painful stories, of which they are victims, helped me to understand the path of each one of them. It is the one who hurt them, the one who stole so many years of their lives: the victimizer and the cause. And the victims in this table, are the ones who stand up today, the ones who fight with strength for a different life.

The addiction is the cause of the need to escape, of not being able to inhabit their body in a safe way, of the only permanent space that has become their own prison. 

That is why, when we talk about the problem of drugs and insecurity, the only solution lies at the root. These kids are not the problem, they are victims of a system. Abused girls who end up using drugs because the only time they don't feel the traces of the abuser in their body is when the drugs have disconnected them from the physical world.

When your system fails you so deeply that while you are starving others are feasting. You find that the only way to silence the pain of not having anything to eat, is to consume something that makes you forget the hunger.

I know it sounds like I am excusing all their decisions, but if you could know their stories, you would stop pointing at them and start pointing at the big culprit, one who doesn't know about hunger, one who doesn’t knows about the street, one who wears a suit.