*Disclaimer: This post is about abuse, including links to websites and articles that may be disturbing to some readers.*

I Would Write You a Letter…

If I knew where to send it.

How often have I walked into this lonesome place, how often have I dreamt that once I had a family of my own — my heart wouldn’t keep wavering about like a fly.

I’ve been trying to keep you off of my mind and keep everything all in line. I suppose it’s not all about the knowledge of you and who you are, or the type of blood that runs through your veins.

In being honest it’s much to do with events that wrap around those times when the darkest truths were spoken, flippantly or with anger…until it broke my heart. Acceptance and forgiveness like a maze of impossible, when it comes time. Sometimes I do okay at it, and other times it wraps around me…

Like a storm.

The one that’s always been raging inside of me.

I wonder when I’ll finally persuade myself to be at peace with it all.

All of the ugly.

All of the beauty.

All of the triggers.

Every single twist and turn in my memory.

When will it all become a sweet melody? (The answer is never, and that’s what I have to be okay with.)

I recently read a study which found that adults who have survived abuse in various forms tend to lose big chunks of their autobiographical memory.

How did I miss remembering that little tidbit I learned in school? As soon as I read it, I was immediately taken back to that prof, that lecture hall, his lips moving and my brain disconnecting. Much in the same way I did as a child. As a teen. As an adult.

Disconnect. Float away.

That’s a lot of layers to mire through even as an adult.

I remember almost losing my mind. I’m still learning and least now — my arms and heart are open.

Even though I have an anger that is soft and frayed and comes up to boil now and then. Forgiveness is a grace I can’t seem to muster. Sadness that I can’t be better at. It’s all overwhelming at times, especially in knowing it’s not just about me anymore.

It’s like you’re glowing in the distance, a light I can’t turn out.

It can’t be all about the enigma of you.

And it’s definitely not about hurting anyone else. These words, this trail.

It’s about speaking truths that in some ways I am painfully shy about; although as each tiny bit unfurls…a great release washes over me.

I’m coming on a new dawn of healing. Yet another path of self-awareness and self-work.

This is for other survivors who are afraid or ashamed. Or concerned about hurting their enablers or aggressors.

This written truth is for me. There may be more where this came from.

For once that needs to be acceptable.

I won’t be doing it here. (Digging in deep anyways.) I’ve found this place that gives abuse survivors a voice, anonymously if they so choose. I’ve thought long and hard about integrating something like a ‘Flashback Friday’ here — and every time, I balk.

Because in doing so, I would hurt others. I somehow have to find a way to stay true to the amazing support and community, the healing that I have found in sharing my experiences with the others like me.

Why on the internets?

Why not just in a personal journal?

Because in doing so, I am contributing to breaking the silence. Because reading other people’s stories, perspectives, success, and failures in continuing in life; REALLY DOES HELP. It is powerful people.

If we as a society know that gathering as a community is good; to support one another for various causes – then why is this such a hard concept for people to grasp when it comes to allowing survivors of abuse to do the same?

I understand it makes some people uncomfortable. Move along then. Our voices are not speaking for you. (Yet, in fact, they are, in a round about way — scraping at society’s disillusioned ideals of what weakness really is. Of what strength really is).

Survivors of abuse have every right to engage in public forms of community building too.