I believe the biggest factor that waters the stigma of abuse IS the response to our telling. It isn't the crime itself, the effects on the physical body OR even the betrayal of love or trust. It is the absence of connection when we need it most.
What messes with our mental wellness Is the lack of responses.
Our minds can't hold the way in which people act.
We internalize their distance.
I know that some of the mental illnesses are in our head; the voices of negativity. But, in the case of being sexually abused by a family member, the most damaging voices are the silent ones in real life.
In reality it is the absence of our friends and family...lending us their voices to help us. Instead we get the opposite.
No parties. No cards. No food delivered. We are treated to the empty landscape of deafening disapproval.
While I have a support team, many new friends that have happened upon my journey, and reconnected with old friends. A child who finds themselves in the footsteps of my childhood....feels this chilly terrain.
And, internalizes it.
Brings it in.
There are no celebrations or hereo's parades...It is not openly discussed. Nor are there stragedies in keeping away from evil...instead, life goes on remarkably the same.
How?
How is it that we don't have a better response to the abused?
There is no way I am being treated different, kinder or unkinder. I am just an example of one of the abused, and I am verbalizing the treatment I have recieved.
To all who feel justified in their silences, I want you to know, you are not part of the solution but a huge part of the problem.
Not only are you not delivering cards or cheers of support, but you are actually and figuratively continuing on where the abuser left off....lowering their sense of self.
Reducing them again, to someone who IS not seen.
The abuser does not see our needs or what is good for us.
He is selfishly acting out his desires.
I see the silent majority doing the same.
For personal reasons, fears, anxieties etc....they keep silent and restrained.
If I could only articulate the emptiness and cold space we are left in by you all, I would feel successful. I lived in the empty space you all left me in. I also grew and reclaimed my Self without you.
And, in hindsight...and with experience. I can see how you all could not be there for me, for you all were in your own dark space just trying to survive.
I don't blame you...for the quote comes to mind. "Forgive Them, They Know, NOT what they do."
However, I am speaking for the ones on this side of the silence.
I am speaking out.
I am telling you how it feels.
While the family continues to gather, while the church pews continue to be filled, while life goes on as usual, your usual is denying.
Being denied, being the one unheard or believed...watching your actions of sameness IS what messes with our minds.
What we expected or believed is that we would matter.
We would matter enough for the whole system to lurch to a halt.
Instead, our brokenness, means nothing at all.
Or, it means we are mental for we can't get back to life as usual.
