How do you explain depression to someone who's never been abused? There's absolutely no way to make someone feel the soul crushing despair that comes with being physically or sexually violated. It seems like unless you've had your sense of peace and comfort taken away violently, you just don't understand why safety is so uniquely precious. Without "being overly dramatic" and "playing the victim", I'd like to share something about myself.
Since the age of nine, excluding my father, I've been sexually violated by five different men. All of them before I turned eighteen. I don't understand what it means to trust, because all of them said to me, "it won't hurt, I promise. Trust me." Everything I'm interested in, whether it be educational, creative, social or sexual, I am completely embarrassed and ashamed of. As a child, my mother did her best to try and teach me to love myself, but I've never thought there was something there to love. When I look in the mirror, I see every man who's ever touched me privately. My body is a prison, my dreams being the only time I don't feel trapped in it. My social anxiety comes from not being safe from predators in my own circle of friends, as one of my rapists was the friend of an ex boyfriend. That same ex boyfriend is the only one who respected me enough to not take advantage of how much I cared for him. Sometimes I feel like he's one of the only men I know how to trust. The other few being my husband, brother and step father. Women scare me almost as much as men. When you're raped by someone's boyfriend, you automatically become a slut. All of a sudden, you asked for him to violate you in your sleep and now you're hated by an entire town. Sorry for getting dramatic, but I'm not lying.
It's so painful, living with so much loneliness when you have people trying to love you. How do you let them in when all you've ever known is betrayal? When tears pour down from your cheeks while you beg for understanding, how do you trust? I'm so scared, every day, that I'm going to do something wrong and get hurt again. All I want is to be held so I can cry away the endless pain until I'm empty.
Please don't tell me I'm weak. True strength and courage come from surviving when all you want to do is break. Psychological trauma is as real and excruciating as breaking a bone. Fifteen years of sexual abuse doesn't just disappear because I want it to. It's just not that simple.
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