This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/twoxchromosomes by /u/Superb_Repair4353 on 2023-10-02 21:24:41.

((Trigger warning)))

I was sexually abused by my grandfather in my childhood, many many times. Once all of it came out during my parents divorce when I was 11, they both swept it under the rug and were more preoccupied with their drama. I had to keep quiet. I’ve held it in my whole life. My grandfather is being buried today and I have been receiving sympathy phone calls and texts from those around me.

I want to share my story on my social media page. I’m sick of hiding it. This has all been so surreal and reopened the wounds I’ve been working so hard to heal.

Am I wrong for wanting to share? I’m friends online with family members that will see. This is my story, sparing the gory details:

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

As a child I was a victim to the hands of a vile creature. I’ve held onto this pain for my entire life. Guilt, shame, confusion. My innocence stolen from me, many times over. Memories searing through my skin, clawing at my soul. I’ll spare you the details. Fill in the blanks.

I’ve held on to this trauma for my whole life, gripping so tight, pushing it down deep. And now its rising up like a wicked dark muck purging from my body. Realizations flipping over in my head rapidly, flashbacks surfacing that I can’t stop. At times I shiver and the energy causes ripples of convulsions throughout my entire being.

There are two very special people in my life that have urged me to share what’s inside. That have acknowledged it is eating away at my soul. That I have spared those around me for long enough.

Keep quiet child, nobody needs to see your pain. Suffer in silence. It was a mistake. Every time, an accident. They didn’t know better. What would the family think? Nevermind how you feel, how would it make everyone else feel?

I spent the rest of my life trying to escape myself. As a child I lived in my imagination. As a teen I thrust myself into unhealthy relationships with people and substances. Anything to feel something good. I was wild with pain and loathing. As most teeangers are, I assumed. But layer upon layer of trauma built up over me pressing me down into an abyss of worthlessness.

None of these words can even touch the amount of grief and pain that roils through me at the mere memory of what I went through, reliving it over and over. The body keeps score. Dreams always turning into nightmares. To this day sometimes I wake up not knowing where I am or if I’m safe.

I’m triggered by complex things that I hear passing through the news, stories similar to mine- details always varied but the result always the same. “Me too”. I’m triggered by innocent things like a touch by a loved one, or a scent, or an emotion. Dark secrets surge to the surface sending waves of sickness through me.

My healing has been a long and winding journey of peaks and valleys. A spiral of healing and then undoing, then progress, then the wounds unexpectedly ripping wide open again.

I’ve been to therapy, energy healers, priestesses, micro-dosed psilocybin, and macro-dosed as well. I’ve been a numb alcoholic, and now I’ve been sober for 5 years. Five years of wading through a thick dark fog of hurt. Enormous effort and struggle to reclaim my sovereignty.

I’ve felt ruined and broken and so fucking angry. At times I’ve felt liberated and free and holy. I’ve learned there is a light inside me that cannot be dimmed and cannot be touched.

I’ve ricocheted back and forth in my head whether any of this should ever be shared at all. Does it even matter? Some days its absolutely nothing, a gnat, a nuisance. Some days its bigger than anything I can handle and completely crushes me.

Maybe I will never get closure. Maybe the memories will never fade. Maybe I will continue to heal and then regress. But I will no longer allow this thing to eat away at my soul. I woke up this morning and remembered the light in me that shines so bright it attracts a certain type of darkness, like moths to a flame. But I shine my light and they burn up like the sun. I will endlessly turn my light onto others and help guide them through their own darkness.

I’m learning how to live in my body. To speak kindly to myself. How to speak up and care for me. How to love that sweet little red headed girl deep inside me. How to put up boundaries that are woven with kindness, because that’s what I deserve. Realizing that’s what I’ve always deserved.

So this is my story. What started as a whisper asking me to let it out has become a deafening scream. Uncomfortable for others. Beyond Painful for me to live with every day.

But on this day, let it be known, child-

Its over, baby girl. You’re safe now.