Dearest Flo,
If you are bothered by posting this publically in any way, you don't have to. But, more than a few of us have been in similar circumstances and to recall the past sometimes is painful. Go at whatever speed is necessary for you and if you need to do so do so privately with someone you trust. Or in a group with others who have been subject to the same terror and brutalizing.
And yes, the public posting may bring up memories for others that they imagine they would rather not have dredged up. My experience with some of the same problems you are posting about has also been that until you can actually share this and work with it with other survivors that it will continue to haunt you and release itself in ways that will make you ashamed, guilty and likely to self-harm.
No one should be destroyed by a past incident/s that they were not in any way complicit in. Yet, that's exactly what occurs with many of us. The perps keep themselves alive for us in overwhelming memories and in acting-out in ways that are extremely harmful to
us, not to them. It's as though their influence and terror continue long after one was visited by them.
IMO, you cannot allow that to continue to occur by repressing it yet more than you've done. But, a public, very public, forum is probably not the place to relieve the pain. Such relief is, of necessity for the survivor, something best done in private, or better in a group of other survivors.
To confess one's "sins," especially when the sins are not sins, but are having been sinned against and then internalizing the guilt and degradation to one's own harm, publically as a kind of penance, is
absolutely not recommended. That merely recapitulates the already overwhelming shame and sense of "what did I do that made this happen."
The direct and simple answer to that is "I did nothing at all. They did." It's a very difficult place to reach for many of us.
Whomever harmed you already "put you on a cross to die." You, no one, needs to keep herself there as a tribute almost to the monstrousness of the perp. Please, don't do so anymore. OK?
You are going to get through this and be healthy and content in your life. You are not required to suffer to gain absolution, luv. There is nothing to absolve but the fact that you have tried to pay a price that wasn't yours to pay. That has been way more than enough. And more, you are not alone, either in your attempts to cope or in your experiences.
Come away from that, sister. Come away.
Love,
Nichole
