Here I am again, all these years later.

Dear You,

Who’d have thought, even after all this time, that I would end up back here? I’m no longer the same angsty, traumatised, desperate-for-love teen that used to write to you because ‘no-one understands me’, but a woman in her 30’s with everything she has ever wanted.

And yet.

I still have the same darkness that follows me around, pressing in on me, threatening to smother me and take everything I love about my life. And I hate that darkness. I despise it.

I started therapy in January because the things that haunt me are triggering me day and night, and that’s not fair on my children. But it’s hard.

This week, after weeks of preparation and discussing it, I finally started to talk about the abuse that started when I was 9. Even now, I feel burdened by the shame and guilt. I feel disgusting and embarrassed. And I guess I feel guilty.

I have never discussed the abuse in detail. Not when I reported it to the school. Not when I finally went to the police 4 years later to report it. Not even when I had therapy, forced upon me after a mental breakdown. This week was the first time, in over twenty years, that I had said what the abuse entailed.

And it’s like this dirty little secret has got out. A secret that I should be ashamed about. A secret that has weighed me down and threatened to  take my life should I ever speak of it. And I feel like that 14 year old again that took up drinking, and smoking, and drugs, just to cope. I feel like the 17 year old that wanted to just go out on the town and sleep with as many men as I could in one night, because that was my worth right? Give the men what they want and they’re happy. Let them slap you around. Use you. Chuck you into the street at 3 am in the morning when you were lucky enough to make it back to their home before allowing them to do pretty much whatever they wanted. Most nights, it was a piss-sodden alleyway at the bottom of town.

It is taking all of my strength not to have a drink or buy some drugs. To run out and abandon my home to do some self destructive stuff. It’s like the trauma is still there, fresh and recent. I’m back there again. And I don’t know if I’m strong enough this time. I don’t know if I will win. Or if he will.