Have you ever been raped?  Have you ever had to feel that complete loss of control?  Or molested?  Or abused verbally?  You feel like nothing afterward.  And you question whether anything will ever feel okay again.  You want so badly to just be okay, to just let it go, to just put it in the past where it belongs.  But you can’t do that.

People tell me all the time: just get over it. I’m struggling to stay alive, but they want me to make this supposed choice I have to be happy.  Do they honestly think I don’t want to be happy?  Do they think it doesn’t take every bit of strength I can muster–and more–not to commit violence against myself?  Do they think this is easy for me?

Fuck the people who make me feel guilty about my problems.

No. I take that back.  I pity them for the denial they suffer and the reasons they suffer it.

Sang told the group tonight that he had a realization.  I’m sure he’ll write all about that at yellowson.org.  The point is, when I asked what led to this realization, he looked at Charlie and said, “Because I can finally be myself with him. I don’t have to be strong anymore, or wise, or any other role.  I can show him all those parts of myself that I’ve been avoiding addressing.”

I was floored.  Sang essentially said he had realized things about himself that still affected him–his early molestation, his issues with women, his self-perception–all because he now had someone he could trust to show these parts of himself.  Charlie had helped Sang accept things about himself Sang considered long-buried and ignorable.

The people who tell me “just get over it,” including my psychiatrist, who suggested such a thing yesterday, the people who think this is easy for any sufferer of mental illness or any victim/survivor of sexual assault, will never have a friend intimate that news to them.  They’ll have friends, certainly. But self-awareness breeds self-awareness.  Those people will never have another person truly know them, truly understand them.  They are ignorant and their friends are ignorant.  I can only pity their foolish trust in their superior perception.  At least I know I’m fucked up.

So lie to me. Tell me, doctor, “friend,” lover, that I am the one in control of this.  I know the truth.

Related posts:

1. The Mental Healing Starter’s Guide: Because Some of You Have Asked, “Where Do I Begin?”
2. The Mental Healing Starter's Guide: Because Some of You Have Asked, "Where Do I Begin?"
3. Lessons: I Can’t Force Self-Awareness
4. Lessons: I Can't Force Self-Awareness
5. Torture and Time