Love letter to my dear friend

To my dear friend,

I am not going to ask you to write a love letter to yourself. I’m just not going to do that. What I am going to do and what I can do is to write a love letter to you from me. I am going to speak words of wisdom and courage into you. I am going to lift you up out of your anxiety. Why? Not because I care. That’s obvious. It’s because you deserve it. You fight so hard every day and your strength, the strength that you may not always have the perspective to see, is awe-inspiring. If there were to be any woman I would want as a role model, that would be you. Because guess what, we are not perfect. No one is. And sometimes we fuck up. But when justice comes into play, you don’t have to cognitively admit to yourself that you are right. You know it in your heart and your body knows it for you. That’s why somatic issues creep up and tears emerge and restless nights occur.

But you are not alone. If there’s one thing you take away from this letter, it is that you are not alone. It’s not that you’re amazing, and that the value that you bring to this world and my high opinions of your morality come into play. It’s that you are simply you. You deserve everything. You deserve justice. You deserve to have other people fight for you and to support you when you become weary and want to give up. You deserve to know that what you are going to do in trial is absolutely the right thing to do.

This isn’t just for you, you know. I know you want justice to be served, as much as a detriment this would be to the recipient of the consequences and possibly the short-term public opinion of you in the field. Notice that I said, short-term, because in the end, justice always prevails. The law and binding ethical standards exist for a reason. It is to protect the consumer from getting taken advantage of. Because in a therapist-patient relationship, who really has the power? It’s the person who is acting upon their professional license, the person getting paid for their service. The mere fact that you were paying for a service, for this woman to be your couples counselor, gives her a huge responsibility and those people who hold responsibility in their hands have power. She had jurisdiction over her ethical obligations to you as a couple and to not take sides and to not breach confidentiality. She made an active choice and an active decision to choose one party over the other and not just that, but to write a damaging letter which had detrimental consequences.

What were those consequences? I wasn’t the one living that life and going through the motions and trials and tribulations and heartache and shame and disappointment that you went through, but I can imagine the consequences you had to endure. Any compassionate, rational human being would realize that this letter had damaging consequences, but you are the only voice you have for yourself and no one other than you can say it on stand under oath. You are all you’ve got when it comes down to it. How do you want to look back upon this time in your life when judgement day comes around? Do you want to feel confident and relieved that you did everything in your power to ensure that this woman did not do damage to any of her other patients?

People don’t lie once. Because if they’ve done it once, and with such ease, the chances are they’ve done it before and they will do it again. Why would they choose to speak anything but the truth? That’s not for you to know and it is not for you to judge them. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect you. Of course it will. This event was the catalyst of a storm of events which occurred which then culminated into a tsunami. It could have killed you but it didn’t because you are resilient and strong and you fought for what you believed in, part of that which was believing in yourself as a mom and fighting for the custody of your child. If you didn’t fight, could you have lost your child, thus causing extra damage and trauma in his life due to your absence? Absolutely, but that didn’t happen.

What did happen is that your son suffered the consequences of an unfortunate series of events which weren’t his fault but which he probably grappled with in blaming himself for, which all children do. They blame themselves. The ripple effects of this one breach of confidentiality and smearing of your reputation reached far and did not stop for years because of the PTSD which you endured. No one should have to go through what you have been through and I want you to stand up for what is right and know that when you are on the stand at trial, you are representing all women whose voices go unheard and who get taken advantage of by “the system.”

Do this for your fellow women, and sisters all over the world who are moms. Do this for me. Do this for you. Do it for your mental health and for your future. Do it for the people who’s lives this woman will damage if you don’t tell your story. Do this for your son and for the pain you endured and the sleepless nights it created, the anxiety, the fear, the trauma you experienced. Nothing can make right what happened to you because of that letter, but knowing that you can finally do something about it, even all of these years later, can be somewhat of a consolation. And a confidence-booster. Knowing that the nights you spent feeling that the whole world was against you were not in vain and were not right. No one should be made to suffer so much. You can’t take back the suffering, but you can take back your life. You can take ownership of your past and rewrite your story. Write your story in a way that you would want to be remembered for the rest of your life. Let justice take its course. All you have to do is tell your story. Nothing else. The judge, the general attorney, balance of good and evil, and fate will take care of the rest. And God is behind you lifting you up because you are his child and were made in the image of him.

Lord, anything that is evil, I cast and bind it away to the foot of the cross, Amen. May my dear friend be protected by your ever-lasting love and be infused with the peace that passes all understanding. Please let the strength and the courage which are already within her shine through and give her a sense of knowing that standing up in trial and telling her story is the right thing to do. Please give her the wisdom to choose her words carefully and not let anxiety get the best of her. Please let her rest and prepare for this important occasion you have granted her and challenged her with. And please bless her for being just who she is, because who she is, is just enough.

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Reaction to “I am Jane Doe” Film

Disclaimer: This is an extremely personal and private journal entry.

I have no words yet I must express myself after having experienced the film, “I am Jane Doe” tonight. Shock. Sadness. Fear. Terror. Disgust. Silence. These are the first words which come to my mind. These women had evidence in regards to what happened to them, and they lost their court cases but they didn’t give up.

I have no evidence. Nothing will ever make right what happened to me during my early adulthood. There could be so many “If only’s.” But I cannot dwell in that realm. What I can do is fight the depression. What I can do is to keep living and to survive every moment of suicidal ideation which comes my way. What I can do is to continue to see my psychotherapist who has, over the course of nine dedicated years, changed my life for the better, who has stuck by me through every setback and every frustration, and who helped me get through the pain and the tears just last week because of the memories of the life that I used to live.

The sexual abuse started in 2005 but he had been grooming me for it since the year 2000. I met him in 1996 for the first time in a physical exercise class where I was at least two years younger than everybody else in that class, save my twin brother. All of the girls had started to grow breasts and I didn’t even have a training bra because I didn’t need it yet. My chest was flat. Little did I know that I had met my future abuser who would later sell my body for profit on Backpage.com and on Craigslist.com, who would put me on starvation diets so that I would weigh not much more than a young teenager, who made me regularly get my vulva waxed so that he could enjoy “playing” with my hairless vagina, as if I were a child, who bought for me and made me wear children’s underwear and children’s two-piece bathing suits while having sex with me, who hated my big breasts, and who coerced and manipulated me into having humiliating “pee accidents” on the floor so that he could be sexually aroused. To be honest, the list and the run-on sentence could span many pages but the idea of the clear perversion is already there.

My fingers clutching my favourite pen, uncapped, hovering in the air like a pendulum stopped halfway whilst that same right hand takes a pause from the tension in my tendons and forearm muscles, propping up my bowing head. My eyes close and I take a breath. I open my eyes again to the reality of the safety I have created for myself which had been years in the making. This is my home and I am in charge of my life. I make my own decisions, I buy my own food and clothes, and I even have a say in what happens to the money which I earn. I wear my hair as I like, long and free-flowing with no product to alter its natural beauty and I no longer have to wear contact lenses for the sole purpose of making my eyes look blue or green, a stark contrast to my natural olive skin and the hazel eyes I was born with. I haven’t touched a straightening iron or curling iron for over five years, save the Winter Formal my company hosted in a ballroom last year, for which I foolishly and lavishly wore a $700 dress “just because I could” purchased by the unexpected alimony I had recently received by the sale of his company, whose beginnings I suffered through, and of which monies my ex-abuser thought I did not deserve a penny.

Here I pause because I am allowed to take respite from the breathlessly long sentences running through my hidden veins which want to be heard and acknowledged. I am okay. I am okay and I am always going to be okay no matter what may come, because I have learned how to take care of myself.

This piece which I am actively composing is not only dear to my heart, starkly honest, and telling of my vulnerabilities but also my strengths, it is so intensely personal, pivotal in this moment and important to me that I was compelled to pull out my personal journal and become a part of the process, fully engaged, where ink becomes shapes, which become words and finally, sentences. I am not typing these words on a computer keyboard or via my phone; I am creating strength and beauty which is taking shape in my own handwriting. How special is that.

I do not have the time or energy to continue this on for much longer because I now live a life that is full of things which living people do, as opposed to being oppressed by the grip of the death wish of suicidality because of the trauma which I experienced at the hands of an immoral man who is likely doing the same thing he did to me to someone else.

At this, I must conclude, because I simply can’t go on any longer right now. I must go heal myself so that I can face another day of the mostly and amazingly happy life which I now lead.

Appreciation and Back To Who I Used To Be (Minus the PTSD)

It’s the dawn of a new day… no, no, no. It isn’t actually. It’s an hour before sunset and it is my privilege to be sitting outside under a blue sky on campus. I just got out of work and I have a half hour before class, so I figure I can make use of this time and have the luxury of writing a blog entry. I was elegantly dressed at work and I brought my bright pink duffel bag with gym clothes and flip flops to change into. It always feels great to not be in work clothes since I spend over 40 hours a week in them anyway. I wonder if in grad school I’ll feel compelled to dress formally as at work or casual as I am now. I suppose it will depend on what others do in my cohort. But this is undergrad and I totally fit in in gym clothes. I still don’t get the whole torn jeans thing. You buy jeans and other clothing items that look totally mutilated. I don’t get it. Not for me. Not of my generation or stylistic comprehension. But I will reserve judgement.

It’s just cool enough, 71 degrees and in the shade, to be wearing a nice, baggy sweater. I love covering myself up but letting my feet roam free in the air. I don’t like tight clothing unless it is black because then you can’t really see the shape as well. Even if I were super skinny… no, no, no. Yet again, no. I don’t want to be thin. I want to be healthy. I want to be as I am now.

I am so lucky to have been able to afford a new and lightweight computer. I look at myself out on this slab of a concrete bench with a laptop in my lap, typing away, and I think, wow, I am so modern. I have modern technology and my computer is portable. I can use it anywhere. I can connect to WiFi anywhere on campus. It just wasn’t like that when I went to college. I don’t even use a physical notepad any longer because I take all of my notes on a Word document. What ever happened to the buy-it-once computer technology. It’s because Microsoft can make more money off of an annual subscription fee. Plus the software gets updated automatically.

This morning was amazing. This weekend was amazing. It’s all because I have not been feeling depressed. I woke up before my alarm clock. Can you believe it? Me, of all people. Me, the person who used to have three alarms set on my phone with three snooze options per alarm. That’s an alarm ringing every 5 to 10 minutes for 45 minutes long. My first alarm would ring at 7:00 and my last snooze would be at 7:50 in order to make the short drive to start work by 8:30.

I woke up before my alarm because of a nightmare. But in that bad dream I was saying “no” to my abuser. I tried closing my eyes to think of something pleasant, such as imagining sitting in my therapist’s calming waiting room, but the visualization didn’t work. So I got up. I actually got up. I put my feet on the ground and slowly stood up. That’s all it took to get up. I am so amazed. Why does it feel insurmountably difficult to drag myself out of bed every single day, but today, for whatever reason, it was easy? I want more of these days!

I had coffee. I only make myself coffee on weekends when I sleep in and I have nowhere to be in the mornings. I purposefully don’t schedule my weekend mornings because I know just how difficult it is for me to get out of bed. But today, on a weekday, on a Monday, I made myself espresso in my stovetop moka. I even sat outside to drink it. I felt the cool air rushing over my skin while I was still in pajamas.

My patio is filled with a bag of potting soil, a new plant, and new pots. I have big plans for my patio. Two years ago, in 2013 and 2014 when I had my one bedroom apartment which I could afford only at the time, I had a potted garden on my balcony. I had the most beautiful ceramic pots of blue and other colours. I grew sunflowers and morning glories and basil and zucchini and mint and succulents and I still had my sentimental tree that I had grown since it was a baby tree for about eight years. I have since given that tree to my brother and his girlfriend and I’m fine with them having it. I can grow a new tree. Wouldn’t it be cool to grow an avocado tree? It takes years to finally bear fruit. I have only ever gotten a seed to grow two feet tall, but that in itself was an accomplishment. I used to take pictures of my flowers and send them to friends. All of this, I am going to do again. I am going to return to the person I was, the person who had hobbies and who did creative things, and filled her life with joy. It has taken a long time to come back to this place. But I did it. I am doing it.

Mental Health Recovery Day

I am kind to myself. I can be nice to myself. I give myself permission to practice self-kindness. I can be gentle with me. I can do this. I am doing this. I will keep doing this. I am strong, kind, generous, faithful, intelligent and beautiful.

I took the day off of work today. It was a mental health recovery day. These last five days have been hard and I just couldn’t see myself going to work today. I kept snoozing the alarm and I knew I just didn’t want to deal with life today. Instead, I slept for about 16 hours. I finally got up in the early afternoon, a couple hours before seeing my psychotherapist. I was originally going to see him after work, but because I took the day off and he had availability, I was able to see him sooner. I saw him yesterday and I am seeing him tomorrow. It’s Spring Break and he’s not teaching this week, therefore, I am taking what I can get. I’ve always dreamed of seeing him every day for several days in a row. I tell him by email all the time that I hate not seeing him and I hate having to wait five days to see him. Well, I can rest easy because I get to see him in less than 24 hours from now.

When I can’t cope, I can’t cope. It’s just a fact. I wasn’t okay. When I get overwhelmed my mind goes straight to suicide and self-harm. It makes sense. I wasn’t able to retaliate when I was being abused because talking back or acting out would only make things worse. So when I couldn’t control things in my external world, I turned to my inner world for a sense of control. In focusing in on myself, in exacting self-harm whether through restricting food, cutting on myself, drinking alcohol, having more sex with strangers, telling myself I wasn’t worthy of love, and in so many other ways, I was able to control aspects of my life. Unfortunately, the control seeped out into other parts of my life and I felt that this was beyond my control. I acted out at work and ruined my professional life by quitting my career job out of desperation. But after leaving the abusive situation I was in, I began to heal myself once the major PTSD symptoms had subsided, which took a couple years.

When I was growing up too, my external world was beyond my control and things were unstable, so I controlled my inner world by fantasizing about running away from home or sleeping out on the porch in the snow to hurt my mum by hurting myself. When I was eight, I remember yelling at her, “I wish I were dead!” at the top of my lungs, because I wanted to hurt her back so badly, and I knew because my father had died, that it would get to her. “No, no,” she had replied with tears in her eyes, and I knew I had gotten to her. It’s as if I had to go to extreme measures in order to receive unconditional love and attention.

Self-harm has always been a part of my life, but with the help of my psychotherapist over the last eight and a half years I am learning to find other ways to express my anger and to not direct it toward myself. Because I don’t deserve that. No one deserves to hate themselves and to hurt themselves. Everyone deserves kindness and compassion. Most of all, from me to myself. I am okay. I will be okay. I am going to be okay. I can do this. I am okay. I am okay. I am okay. Just keep telling myself that and eventually it will be true. But the fact of the matter is, I am actually okay, it’s just that I don’t always feel okay. But I have learned that feelings come and go, and I remain. The emergency in my mind is no longer happening, and the noise and the chaos in my mind has subsided, and what is left is just me, without the state of emergency. It meant the world to me today when, at the end of our therapy session, my therapist said to me, “I’m glad you are feeling better.” “Me too,” I replied. Me too.

Suicidal Thoughts, OCD, and Mental Health Talk

Lately, I have been feeling stressed. Most of it is work stress. There is a finite level of the human capacity to tolerate stress, and I was close to that ceiling today. I took time off of work in the middle of the day to see my therapist because I needed to see him three times this week and that was the only time which was going to work. He helped me talk through the concerns which have been giving me anxiety at work in regards to my new assistant. I feel responsible for her progress because I am the one training her. However, I am not her supervisor and I do not have the authority to correct her behavior. I am worried that her motivation might not be as high as I hoped it would be and six weeks into the job I just thought she would get it by now. But I have to give her leeway because the learning curve in this industry is steep and she has no prior experience. I want her to be making more phone calls and taking on more tasks and I’m worried about not being able to trust her with projects to take on her own. She has been consistently late to work and she does not dress appropriately professionally. All of things are going to be looked at and handled by our supervisor now. What was hard was handing over that responsibility to someone else because I thought I could handle it. But my boss said she didn’t want to put me in that position. She’s right.

I just ate a chocolate that is at least three years old. It was Ghirardelli with raspberry filling, only the filling had sunken in on itself. It tasted okay though I was hesitant at first bite. People give me chocolates and I just don’t eat them.

I found a new walking path today. Because of the time change and the fact that it is lighter for longer in the evening, I had decided to go for a walk by my home. My neighborhood is not ideal for walking: there are long roads with only one sidewalk and cars which go by at fast speeds. I went walking along one of those roads. It crosses over a freeway. The bridge over the freeway is not very high, but I imagined myself jumping off the edge into the traffic below. I would probably only break a foot or leg, but the cars going by at 75 miles per hour in the fast lane would surely kill me. Only, if I survived, I might be physically impaired for the rest of my life and it would be very hard to kill myself then. I didn’t think about that at the time.

I thought about that if I survived, and another person died on the scene due to the car accident, then I would be convicted for involuntary manslaughter or some sort of charge and I would have to serve jail time and then it would be very difficult to find employment. If I had a criminal record I would not be permitted to work with children and the idea of my future career change would be out of question. I would be stuck in a minimum wage job because that’s the only type of job which would be willing to employ me and I would be on state healthcare and unable to travel or buy nice foods or do anything that costs money. So, I kept on walking, both times that I crossed the bridge, and I left my fleeting thoughts behind me on the bridge each time. I didn’t take them with me.

I had a nice dinner, leftover sweet potato curry from a restaurant, and it was delicious. Yellow sauce and whole pieces of soft yam and potato and some mushrooms, with rice on the side. I recently bought jasmine tea, which I haven’t had for some time in my pantry, and I am really enjoying sipping on it. I should be studying but I’m not. The cat is on the carpet right in front of where I am sitting and I had to reprimand him a few minutes ago for scratching on my cloth ottoman in the middle of my L-shaped couch. The couch is light green and I really love the color. My paperwork from school and job interviews and college applications have been littering the living room for the past month. I want it out so I can visually see it, and be reminded that, oh yeah, I still have that essay to write, or oh yes, there’s the New Yorker Magazine from the subscription my Mum got me which I never take the time to read. I told her not to renew it last year but I was too late. “They were having a discount,” she claimed.

Every day I catch myself rubbing my skin to get the dirt off of me. Only, it doesn’t consume my hours any longer, it’s just a little skin rubbing here and there. It’s part of the OCD category of symptoms, but doing it soothes me and at the same time it feels productive because I actually get dirt off of me. They come off in miniscule amounts which my therapist and my aunt have told me are dead skin cells. But I don’t believe it even though the rational side of my brain knows that they are right. I am still uncomfortable with the topic of sex and when it comes to my body, I don’t like to think about it. I feel fat even though I’ve weighed the same amount for the past two years, which is the first time in my life ever that my weight hasn’t fluctuated drastically. I used to be very skinny and it was absolutely unhealthy, but at least I didn’t feel fat (even though my ex abuser told me I was). I am supposed to look at myself as beautiful but the best I can muster is “eh, I look decent.”

My therapist doesn’t judge me. He doesn’t like to diagnose me and never tells me that there is something wrong with me. He guides me and makes gentle suggestions or gets me to think about a situation in a new perspective that I wouldn’t have come up with on my own. Therapists aren’t supposed to diagnose anyway, unless it’s for an insurance company. Having a diagnosis sucks, although some people find it useful to have a label for their symptoms, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or OCD, to name a few. Five years ago I met the criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder, or BPD, and now I no longer do. So it seems to me that it must have been PTSD symptoms instead. Because, how does a personality inherently change? A personality defines a person. Labels don’t define me. And I don’t have BPD. I have major depressive disorder, but it’s something that I have but not something that I am.

Four Words

“I will help you,” he stated simply. He said it clearly and with a calm voice. There was no urgency, no judgement, nothing but truthful intention. It was all I needed to hear. He had said that phrase twice: once at the beginning of our session and once toward the end of the hour. I know I will get through this because he is going to help me. He has a track record of over eight years of consistency in seeing me, week after week no matter the circumstance, and he has always been there for me. I have no reason to doubt him now. I would not want to do this without him.

Less than 24 hours away is the hour I have been dreading all week, panicked, and with preemptive flashbacks of horrible moments in my past. The feelings have been, at times, overwhelming. That is why I chose to see my therapist today. I needed his steadfast guidance and I needed to hear the confident tone in his voice. He believes in me fully.

When I feel overwhelmed, it feels like there is an emergency happening, but it’s all inside of the confines of my mind. I don’t hear voices. I don’t get headaches. But it feels as if my head is pounding and my thoughts are screaming out at me. My body goes into panic mode. My mind reacts as if there is imminent danger present. I don’t notice my heart rate increasing or my breaths becoming quicker and shorter. No, I don’t think that I have any physiological reaction other than wanting to break down crying. No, sobbing, screaming at the skies.

Yesterday, after a night of panicked tears and a morning of flashbacks, I was sitting at my desk in front of the computer. My fingers were furiously typing out an email to my therapist on my phone, which I had positioned below my desk as to not make it obvious. When no one was looking, I allowed myself to sink my head into my hands, my fingers sprawled across the sides of my head as if trying to stop it from exploding. I wrote several emails that day. The word “trauma” and “scared” came up frequently in my writing.

My therapist allows me to email him at any time, and as many times as I want to. It’s important to me, and to my process of healing. I need him, and him alone, to know what is going on in my mind at all times. I usually write to him daily. I used to write novels each day, when I was entrenched in the after-effects of the recent traumas. There was an endless need for me to get out the words I couldn’t manage to say. I needed to tell my story over and over again, until, through the mess of the memories, some of it made sense to me, and the feelings began to fade.

Those feelings are not gone. They simply remain dormant in the background. It has been almost five years since I got out of that relationship. “I got out.” He had never hear me before say it in that way. I got out. I managed to get away. I escaped. None of that “he left me” and me wanting to get back together with my abuser. I hadn’t known much of any other life. Now I have the power to own my actions. I chose to leave, and what a fortunate and life-altering and gut-wrenching thing it was to do. I suffered for many years afterwards.

At first I was in complete denial and for over a year I had still wanted a marriage, but a different kind of marriage. That man, with that evil and ill mind of his, was not capable of providing any other sort of relationship. He needed to act out the trauma again and again that he experienced when he was two years old: the feelings of helplessness, the guilt, the shame of a child who didn’t have the words or mind to understand what had happened to him when his male babysitter made my ex-husband-abuser put his penis into his mouth. A grown man puts his penis into the mouth of a two-year-old boy. How fucked up is that? Yet it happens more than we know, today, in our society. A father is having sex with his young daughter and a neighbor is inserting objects into the little girl’s vagina whom he is babysitting. But instead of being told that it was “our little secret” I was told that it was my fault. I was to blame that he liked little girls. He dressed me up like a little girl, buying the clothes for me, and making me role-play. He got off on that and then blamed me for it.

He taught me how to have sex with a woman when I did everything I could to resist his control. But the manipulation and the guilt tactics and the pleading and the fact that I thought I loved him over a period of many months, with daily repetition of these behaviors, wore me down. I didn’t want to have sex with anyone but him. In fact, I wanted to make love with him. But he was incapable of making love. It was all about him, and the satisfaction of his needs, and the release he got. He had a sick mind. He still does, only he is no longer the perpetrator of abuse and trauma in my life. He will not change unless he seeks therapy and that is not very likely.

I need to shower tonight. Showering used to be such a struggle for me. I wouldn’t shower for days, and my hair got greasy and I would attempt to cover up my body odour with flowery deodorant. Only, there was nowhere to go anyway, and I would stay in bed for 22 hours at a time, getting up seldomly to go to the toilet. I probably spent over two years in this perpetual state of hibernation. Living was too painful for me and I needed to protect myself from the hurtful, dangerous world by staying in my bed with the shades of the window drawn closed.

When I shower I am going to imagine washing off the difficulties, no, the challenges, of the last days. Yesterday, while I was sobbing and wailing inside the confines of the safety of my car in the parking lot of my office building during the middle of the afternoon when I was supposed to be working – I felt dirty. It wasn’t just a thought. It was a feeling. Through the tears I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t my fault, but I couldn’t shake off the feeling that my whole being was dirty. Dirty because of what happened to me for over a period of six years. Dirty because my body was sold to over two hundred men. Dirty because of the scant clothing I used to have to wear. Dirty because I was ashamed and horrified with myself at the same time.

I used to scratch and ferociously rub the dirt off of my skin. My dear aunt would tell me that it’s not dirt, but dead skin that is coming off of my body. Why then, is it a darker colour? Little miniscule bits of dead skin coming off of my arms, my chest, my neck, from under my breasts. It was everywhere. I used to spend hours just rubbing my skin. It was calming. It was satisfying when I got a miniscule particle of something under my fingernails. I would flick it to the hard ground and continue rubbing my skin red in order to find more dirt to get off of myself. Even if I showered, it was still there. Nothing could make it go away. The flecks of skin particles would collect on the hardwood floor beside me where I was sitting on the couch and I would have to get a paper towel to clean up the floor. I stopped doing that, for the most part. But sometimes I find myself rubbing the skin around my clavicle. There must be thoughts and feelings which trigger me to do it, but I haven’t figured that out yet. It still feels satisfying, triumphant, to rub my skin. Because it’s my body, and I have control over it, and I control what food goes into my mouth, and who touches me, who has sex with me. I have had sex once in the past five years and I do not regret it. But at the same time, I wasn’t ready for it either and I never saw that person again after that.

Over the next ten weeks during the course of this group therapy I am choosing to attend, a lot of feelings will be brought up. A lot of thoughts and a lot of emotions. But I must always remind myself that “feelings come and go, but I remain.” There is no emergency happening inside of my mind right now.

What Trauma Memories Do To Me

The emotional pain has subsided for now, but I know it will be back. It always comes back. That’s the thing about the ebb and flow of depression and PTSD. It comes and then it goes, and it leaves turmoil in its wake. Only my therapist and two friends know that I stepped out of my office in the middle of the afternoon today to cry, no, wail, in my car for fifteen minutes. I mean, I cried for fifteen and then had to recover for another fifteen so that I could hide the red, splotchy eyes and dry my tears. No one else, not even my family, knows of the pain I am experiencing.

My therapist booked me as soon as possible upon my request. I will be seeing him in about thirteen hours. I am counting. This is all in anticipation of the therapy group I will be starting this week. It hasn’t even begun and memories of things my abuser said and did have flooded my mental space. It is difficult to concentrate at work. The feelings that were brought up were unexpected and out of the blue. I did not want them to take over my day!

What happened to me wasn’t fair. No person deserves to be treated the way I was, to be manipulated, used, abused, raped, talked down to, isolated from social contact all in the means of controlling the subject. He told me that I always played the victim, and that really, he was the victim. It was I who was manipulating him. It was I who was punishing him. Let me ask you this: who wouldn’t want to find some means of punishment for a man who just sold your body to a stranger for financial gain? Even if it was the silent treatment. I was desperate to find some form of expression, because I couldn’t get away. I could not fathom a life without him. I had become a possession of his, and anything he told me to do, I would do.

Until the day I wouldn’t. After he realized he could no longer manipulate me, have me be a “good” wife and a “good” girl by doing everything he told me to do, then he had no use for me. He had planned to divorce me, I imagine, far in advance of whence I knew of his plan. All of a sudden he filed for divorce, and my life came crashing down. I was out of physical danger from him, but everything I had known up until that point was no longer in force, and the damage he had left upon my being was far greater than even I could imagine.

One person knows. And that person is my therapist. He saw me through all of it. The suicide attempts, the self harm, the hospitalizations and the 5150’s, my inability to talk, my continual self punishment because I thought I was inherently a bad person who was deserving of punishment, my fear of people and of trusting and of abandonment. He is the one person who knows it all, and that is how it should be. One person, one human being, can make all the difference in the world in another person’s life.

The pain has subsided and I am able to type without my head banging on the invisible wall of despair. I will see my therapist and we will figure out together if I will be attending the sexual assault survivor’s group therapy course in two days. Ultimately, it’s my choice. I have already told him I am not ready for this; I admitted it just two days earlier to him. Yet, I still want to do it. Is this a form of self-punishment? To be honest, I think it is. I know that there is healing potential in group therapy, sitting side by side other women who have experienced some of what I went through, but I have been tortured this week in preparation for it. Really, it’s not preparation but trepidation. I am unbelievably scared about what this group therapy course might bring up for me: the memories, the feelings. Memories of trauma can be just as scary, in my opinion, more scary, than when the events happened. At least when it was happening, I could dissociate, and in a way, not be present in my mind as to what was happening to my body.

The memories of trauma don’t just go away. They persist over time. But it has been almost five years now since the end of that toxic relationship. It was killing me because I wanted to kill myself. Well, here I am, still alive. I’m not currently suicidal, and that is a good thing. I hope it stays that way and if it doesn’t, I can always go to the hospital. I’ve done it before and I can do it again. There are ways to get through this. One way would be to not attend this group. No, I don’t think I can do it. But I might anyway. Maybe my therapist can help to dispel my ambivalence.

Not enough therapy

I didn’t go to work today. I called in sick. Actually I emailed in, I didn’t even call. I stayed in bed literally all day, until 6:35 PM when I had to get up to go see my therapist for our weekly session. We agreed that I am going to see him twice a week for a while, and see how it goes. I have felt for a long time that once a week isn’t enough any more. I write him emails about my day every day and I’ve told him several times by email, but have never had the courage to say it in person yet, that once a week isn’t enough. In addition to seeing him this Saturday, he is going to help me look for a sexual abuse survivors group. I tried looking on my own and found a group that looks like it would work but after contacting the group therapist it turns out there are not enough people committed to the group to hold session. So he said he will keep me in mind. My therapist thinks that this would be a very good idea, since it appears there are still some things that I need to work through. Friends and family can’t understand because they haven’t gone through similar things that I have. They haven’t been sexually abused. They often can’t handle if and when I talk about it. But in a group it’s okay to talk about those things especially if the other people in the group have gone through similar experiences.

I am going to be getting more therapy. Therapy, therefore, will be more intensive. I am ready. I am ready to work hard in therapy. I want to work hard. I want to work harder than I have ever worked before, because I am sick of feeling sad and depressed. I am tired of the tears. They are exhausting. I didn’t have to feel today, because I was asleep. I didn’t have to think. But during my therapy hour, I felt deeply. I felt very deeply. And I cried a lot. I almost couldn’t stop crying. Sure, it must have been cathartic, but I felt as if I was drowning, and my therapist was there to keep me afloat.

I feel awake right now. I am awake. My eyes are open. For the first time today. I’ll have to go to work tomorrow, and I’ll have to do actual work while I’m sitting at my desk. I’ll have to find a way out of this darkness and despair. My therapist pointed out a pattern to me. It seems as if, now and then, I bring myself back into this very dark place. And it’s hard. It’s difficult. It’s really difficult. Why did I go on the internet and look up my ex-abuser’s name? Why did I try to do research? Logging into his old accounts. Looking for something. What did I think I was going to find? Something to prove his guilt? Some kind of justification for all of the pain I have been through, that he put me through, which I continue to put myself through?

I told my therapist I didn’t even brush my hair today. He said he didn’t brush his either. He’s funny like that, and it made me laugh. He doesn’t have much hair to begin with and it’s so very short. Of course, it was a joke to lighten the mood, my mood, and it worked. I admired his square lamps. I touched the fabric of the shade and ran my hand along it. I told him I don’t know anyone else with square lamps. Touching them was to ground myself. It was a way of bringing my mind back to the present, and I did it on my own, automatically. I have learned some coping skills over the years.

I think this next year is going to be hard, because I am ready to work hard. I have been through harder things before. I have gotten stronger and stronger over these last few years. I still have a long way to go. I used to have to sleep with the light on. I used to not be able to leave my apartment. I used to have much more difficulty with showering, though I still hem and haw about it, and that’s not a PTSD thing, I don’t think. There is so much wrong with me!!! How is it that I am supposed to live?! Not like this. Not like this. Not like this.

Why do I bring myself back to the dark places? Feelings come and then they go, and I remain. My mantra in therapy. Is there something I haven’t been able to let go of? The anger. The resentment. The monumentous amount of anger. That I was wronged. That I will never be able to get “justice”. That I have to keep living. Not like this. I can’t do it any longer. Not like this.

I just took a deep breath. Sometimes it helps to breathe. I love my therapist. We have such a deep, strong bond and connection. I trust him with everything, and I can tell him anything, even that I love him. There was a time when going to therapy twice a week was too much for me to handle, like I didn’t have enough time in between to recover. But things are different now. Things are different and I am stronger. I just keep getting stronger. Now I want to stop thinking about this and just lay on my couch in the dark of the night and not think.

Own It.

I have to own my illness. I have to own my story. This is my story, not yours, damn it! You can’t tell me that I wasn’t a victim, that I knowingly took part in those acts, that I have responsibility to burden and bear. I was coerced, manipulated, infantilized, abused, exposed, indignified, raped, pimped, emotionally wounded, psychologically distressed, innocent…

I can’t go on. I started this rampage a day or two ago but I can’t go on. I am unable to concentrate at work. I toss and turn at night and wake up every hour. Ever since I found out that my ex-abuser is getting married, I’ve been wanting the world to know my story. The world! I want everyone that he knows to know my version of the story. Why? Why do I need their acknowledgement and validation? Why care about other people’s opinions? Why care about his happiness versus mine? I don’t! I care about the woman he is going to hurt over the next years, and the child that he might bring to this world who will have to live with him as a psychologically abusive, manipulative, childish, and potentially sexually abusive, objectifying father. God forgive us all if he has a girl. That’s abuse that could have been preventable. Or could it?

I can’t concentrate. I am infuriated. Beside myself. With anger, with rage. It’s not that he’s moving on in his life; we have both moved on. It’s that he’s sinking his fangs into another innocent soul. Someone probably unexpecting and susceptible just like I was.

I shared my last post, the “Warning Letter,” with a lot of people. I got mixed reviews. Some people told me simply that it was a great blog, that I’m such a good writer, that they’re proud of me. Some told me they would send it. Others have told me that it’s none of my business, their relationship and what goes on in between them, and that I should stay out of it, and focus on my own mental health. He’s totally the kind of person who would sue. If I sent her a warning letter, he would either serve me with a restraining order, sue me for defamation or harassment, and it would all be written off as me being the “jealous ex-wife” who’s still in love with him. Only I’m not.

I shouldn’t have looked him up in the first place. I shouldn’t have Googled his name. Why did I do it? To be honest, I’m not sure, but he has been in my dreams lately, in a different way. In my dreams, I am fighting back. I woke myself up one morning by punching the air and shouting out loud “asshole”. I couldn’t remember the rest of the dream, but that was the most important part, right there.

I shared the letter with a Catholic friend and she reminded me patiently to never, ever, ever send her anything about my story and the experiences I went through again because it is “tainting her purity” and she needs to protect herself. Seriously?! I mean, right, I guess I can understand. Some people just can’t handle the truth. But the memories of the abuse and the lasting effects and my past suicide attempts, those are something I have to live with every single day of my life. It is MY reality. It doesn’t go away. It isn’t always as intense but it doesn’t go away.

I shared the letter with one of his ex-employees. At first I told this person that my ex had cheated on me. That, he understood. Then I told him I had been sexually abused. He didn’t believe me. He said, “even if it were true (which I’m not saying it is) you played your part.” Personal responsibility and all that shit. That I’m not a victim. Is he saying I wanted it?? That I wanted to get raped and pimped out to hundreds of men?! I was vulnerable, yes. I was codependent and he was narcissistic and it played hand in hand. I lost myself to him and he was everything I lived for. I had no sense of self and no sense of reality or normalcy. My “normal” was what others would call a “living nightmare”.

How am I supposed to go back to work after this? I can’t even concentrate! All I am thinking about is this stupid letter and whether or not I should send it to this lady who will be his new wife, and knowingly not acknowledging that I really should not send the letter because I could get sued and I don’t want to lose all of my money to this, something that could be and will be preventable. The “not contacting him”. Or his wife. And I don’t want to have a restraining order on file.

In the end, it’s not my responsibility. It’s not my job to prevent another person’s life being potentially ruined. If it wasn’t her, it would be somebody else. I can’t stop him from living his life and hurting other people. Everything will come back to him in the end, right? Won’t it? He thinks he’s all that. He has rich, powerful, influential friends and business contacts. So what? It can’t hurt me, as long as I stay out of it.

I’ve wondered for a long time and have gone back and forth on whether I should publish my abuse and survivor story under my real name or under a pen name. If I do it under my real name, that story will forever be associated with my name, and will be on the internet, for anyone to see. If, however, I publish under a chosen identity that is not mine, then my story will be out there to help others potentially, without it harming me. But I want justice! I want people to know the truth! Is that so egotistical? Or is it normal to feel that way? We can have feelings, which doesn’t mean we have to act on those feelings.

I’m all confused. I don’t know what to do. I feel jumbled up inside my mind. I want to see my therapist tonight but I don’t get to see him until tomorrow. I want my mind to rest, to be at peace. I want to be okay with myself and my body and my life and my mind. I want to have health, and happiness, and children, and an intimate, adult, mature, sexual relationship with another person. I want to live again and I want to stop spending weekends in bed because I am only hurting myself. I still dread the weekends because I have nothing to look forward to and despite having slept all weekend I do not feel “rejuvenated” after the weekend. I just go to work in that same mental space of drudgery.

So, in the end, do I really own my story? Can I fess up to the people who are closest to me that my story is my reality and that I live in that reality every day? The knowledge of what happened to me haunts me and makes me a better and stronger person all at the same time. I wouldn’t be who I am without my past, yet I wish my past had not been as it was. I would much rather have a more simple life than the one I was dealt. I would much rather know myself and be fully okay with myself. I’m working on it. Slowly. Every day. Step by step. Moment by moment. I can do this.

Warning Letter

To the future wife of my ex-abuser and ex-husband,

Soon you will be a newlywed. I’m sure you don’t want to hear this. I would like to believe that people can change. But people like your future husband do not change, unfortunately. You may or may not know that he was sexually abused when he was two and a half years old. Not all abusers become abusers, but this was not a unique case. This man you are about to marry became one of those abusers.

I’m sure you like the gifts he gives you, the clothes he buys you, the expensive restaurants he takes you out to, the expensive car he drives, the nice home you probably share together. Just know, that ultimately, those gifts come with a price. Someone like this man does not give for the sake of giving. He expects much in return. He expects fierce loyalty, so much so, that you would do anything for him. And I mean, anything.

Has he admitted to you yet that he is a sex addict? Addicts don’t change if they don’t get help. The rouse of sex stimulates that pleasure center of his brain, only, he can’t control it, and he will want more and more. Has he taken you to the annual porn convention yet? Does he already choose the clothes you wear? Does he ask you to go out with him at night not wearing underwear? This is just the beginning.

Has he asked you to pee in front of him on the floor, because he gets a sexual rouse out of it? Has he asked you to urinate on a pile of towels on the bed while inside of you? Have you had a brazilian wax for him? He prefers that because he likes the idea of you being his “little girl”. He wants to feel like he is a “daddy” having sex with his “good girl”. Has he asked you to wear children’s underwear?

I knew none of this when I first married him. After we got married, everything changed. He believed he owned me and he got me to do things for him that were outside the compass of my dignity and morals. How is the group sex? Has he taught you how to eat pussy? Does he like to watch? Are you his porn star? Does he keep photos and videos of you nude and in sexy lingerie? Does he find men and women for you to have sex with on Craigslist and on Backpage? Has he pimped you out to men for financial gain? It’s not about the money or the sex at this point. It’s about the control.

Do you watch pornography together? Does he stay up late at night feeding his sex addiction by looking at porn? Don’t let him fool you. He says he loves you. He buys you gifts and nice things to own you. He earns your trust and loyalty, and then he betrays that which we call the marital bond.

Maybe you like having an open relationship with him. Maybe you don’t know that when he goes on business trips alone, he solicits paid girls to come to his hotel room to perform sexual acts for him. Maybe you think that you have a monogamous relationship. It won’t last. He can’t control it. He will have girlfriends on the side and you will either be okay with it or you won’t, or you simply won’t know.

You are probably thinking of carrying his children. Just beware if you have a girl. Don’t let her become a victim of abuse, manipulation and coercion. I tell you this as a warning, because he likes little girls. He likes watching them pee and modeling in little girl underwear. He will buy her revealing and “sexy” clothes at an inappropriate age. But don’t let her get molested. Fight for her. Don’t leave her alone with him. Please, if you do anything, don’t leave her alone with him.

Does his mother come over to clean your home? Does she still wash and iron his shirts? I know, she can be rather intrusive. That’s because she doesn’t want to let her “little boy” go. She would do anything for him, just as I, in a different way, did everything for him.

Don’t let it destroy you. Don’t let this relationship take away your sense of self. Set boundaries early on in the marriage. Don’t let him control you. Stand up for what you think is not right. Somewhere inside of me, I would hope that he would have the ability to change, to become a better man and a better person. But he is not. And that is why he drove me to attempting suicide, not once, but multiple times. It took me five years to get to that point. Don’t let this relationship rob you of your life.

I will always be around if you need someone to talk to 5 to 10 years from now. You are not alone.

Good luck,

A Friend.