Amazing, isn't it, what a difference something like that can make.
Me, I've never been raped, yet I know what you mean by this.

I'm not sure I want to voice it all here- aside from being deeply personal, it would make for some rather poor reading, I'm sure- but I endured years of abuse without really realizing it. That is, until I found a website that detailed someone else's own experience of abuse and I could just about hear those words being read in my voice...

It was an awakening at what could be considered either the best possible time in my life for it to happen or the worst possible time. I was in engineering school at the time, and I can honestly say that this awakening was the event that triggered my divorce and thrust me into five years of pure hell as I struggled with school, with divorce and with my own internal confusion.

I'm now a much stronger and healthier person for having gone through it, but it was about the hardest thing I've ever done.

One bit of advice, though- like most survivors of abuse (whether it be sexual abuse, substance abuse, violence of another type or whatever) I came out of it with a strong messianic urge to save people who are going through what I went through. I tried that for a couple of years- and found that it was pulling me down there and keeping me from finishing healing myself. I was unable to move on because every exchange I had with someone else who had gone through it opened up the wounds again and brought me right back to it, and perpetuated the depression I had been battling for so many years. Beware of falling into this yourself.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Tue 20 May 2008, 22:28, Reply)