@Owlunar Thanks for the tag, it is an interesting subject, and it stirs up a great deal of emotion for me.
After my abuse stopped, I suffered in silence for the next few years. The only time in my young adult life that I felt any kind of control and relief from the suicidal thoughts and self hatred feelings was when I was severely abusing alchohol and drugs. At this stage in my life, while I was being controlled by my substance abuse I did actually have some kind of self esteem. It may not have been high self esteem, but I didn’t feel so pathetic.
I pretty much buried my past when I met my husband, that was a conscience decision because it was either bury it and take a leap of faith with this man - or die, I had actually tried to take my life 1 month before I met him.
My self esteem was pretty high for most of my marriage, almost every job I went for I was offered a management position within weeks, at one point I was made manager for 3 different branches of one business within months of accepting the job - in an industry I’d never worked in before.
Right now, at this point in time, I haven’t got enough self esteem to even apply for a job. Trouble in my marriage for the past couple of years has just chipped away at any confidence I had left.
Now for the tough part of this subject, the letting go. I was assualted on 3 different occasions by 5 different people between ages 8 to 10, during the last assault I disassociated for the first time in my life. The 4th assault/sexual abuse started when I was 11 and lasted for just over a year - I disassociated on and off during this time. When things were violent, I “stepped out” in my mind so I’m not exactly clear what happened - but that dissacociation didn’t happen every time, so there is a lot where I’m very aware of what happened.
Because of the dissasociation and burying it along with the substance abuse to forget, I am only NOW confronting it. To me this didn’t happen 40 years ago, I’m living it right now. I can hear it, I can feel it, and it doesn’t matter how hard I try not to - I REMEBER every last detail.
I wish I could let it go, I wish I didn’t feel so worthless, so pathetic like I do now. I wish I could sleep in a deep peaceful sleep at night and not wake up feeling in such a panic that I think my heart is going to explode. I wish I didn’t burst into tears for no particular reason at all, I wish I wasn’t crying right now.
I can’t let it go because it’s not in the past, it’s now.
