The abuse ….

Deep breath …

Am I actually going to press “publish”

Will I do it …

I have to ….

Here we go…

Sexual abuse is never forgotten

The pain, the memories, the guilt the questions may come and go but it is always there .

Therapy may help to alleviate the raw pain the most traumatic of memories, but until the perpetrator has acknowledged and paid the price for what they have done it is impossible for a victim to move on completely.

Some weeks, some months may go by where he or she sits quietly smugly tormenting you at the back of your brain but than as sure as summer turns to autumn and autumn turns into a cold, dark winter the abuser will come back and haunt you.

The necessity of the abuser paying for what they have done is unparalleled. Until they are punished until they know the damage, the havoc they have set in to motion the victims will suffer.

The tears will flow and then just as you will think they have stopped that image comes back in to your head, the same image, of his hands, his words, the room you were in, replayed over and over and over and once again the tears will flow.

Every other kind of trauma is understandable, illness, disease,hunger, death can be spoken about and will be understood, empathy and love will be shown, people will understand why you cry, why you are in pain but sexual abuse is a secret, a secret that even close members of a family probably don’t know about, and why??

Because, the one big fear anyone who has been abused will have is “ will they believe me”. And so we don’t tell, we hold it, we keep it close to our heart until it trickles out, bleeding and spreading until we can no longer keep it in, until we need to face our abuser and show them , with our eyes and hearts just what they have done .

There are some perpetrators who will never pay, where people are afraid to testify, where memories are sketchy, where the community will hound them, where it’s His word against yours and for us who have been the toy of that abuser closure is almost impossible.

So, we cry, we sob we time and time again make plans to somehow obtain the closure we need but we are pulled back, “it’s not the right time” we are told, “what will you gain from confronting him” we are advised, “ it was so long ago there is no evidence “ they tell us, “ do you really want family/ friends/ community knowing about this” and yet again we retreat, because we know that if we take action our lives will unravel, people will stop speaking to us, our families will suffer, our mental and physical health will suffer, and so we continue to cry and we continue to hurt.

Today I have cried so many tears and yet they won’t stop I need and want closure but it does not come

Addendum:

I wrote the above a few months ago, I decided then not to publish this, at the time my pain was still raw, my heart still bleeding, now I can take a step back, it still hurts, hurts real bad, but I need to publish this.

Some people have told me not to, that I won’t gain anything from publishing this, I will become “ that person” I say to them, I have been “that person” since I was abused, since I was divorced, since my first massive psychotic episode, since my baby died… I have always been that person.

What will I gain from letting this be read by the public? Who knows, maybe, someone like me who suffered abuse at the hands of the same man will feel they are not alone.

The anger I held towards him still resides somewhere in me but I try to still it, not to focus on it and prove to myself over and over that the life he set in motion for me, the Bipolar, the anxiety and so much more , has not beaten me, I have continued, become stronger and he, he means nothing

 

 

 

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