Free Speech

At the second group meeting I attended we were instructed to “write our story.” We were told to write it again if we had already written it. It could be a specific incident or a summary. The idea of this terrified me to my core for a couple of reasons. I had written down the bits and pieces I had remembered and had emailed these to my therapist. Other than when I was being questioned by the police at the age of 16, I could not recall ever saying the words out loud. I may have said some things out loud to my therapist but I certainly had never written my complete story or read it out loud. Besides the terror the suggestion caused, my thought was “when hell freezes over.”

I saw my therapist the next morning. I mentioned the group “homework” and he encouraged me to write it also but to take it slow and not force it. It took me 2 days to start. I had stared at blank paper several times with a pen in my hand during those 2 days. I made the decision to just write about one specific incident, the first one.

As I started to write what I remembered about the first time more details started to pour out. Way more detail than I wanted. Halfway through writing it I started to feel it happening all over again. I felt panicked, sick to my stomach, and could hardly breathe. As I looked at the 3 pages I had written I felt sad and guilty. I closed the notebook and started to watch something goofy on TV to distract myself and hopefully make it possible to sleep. The next day I typed it up and sent it in an email to my therapist. I was still dazed and overwhelmed but also relieved I had gotten it out of the way. In a sense, I felt free from that memory. It was out on paper, partially out of my system. I was giving myself the voice I never had as a child.

Eph 5:11 Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them

My abuser may never hear my words or even realize I never forgot. He may not even care. I have to learn to live with that. Writing the small part of my story released it. It exposed what I had gone through and I came out victorious. I survived.

Reading my story to the group turned out to be agonizing. Saying the words out loud, realizing people were listening to them and opening myself up was so difficult to say the least. The story was out there and I could not bring it back in. I was exposed and raw. What is the most aggravating thing about all of it is that my abusers needed to be exposed and raw, not me. They should be feeling the shame and guilt, the panic of being discovered, and the insomnia from reliving the incidents.

I still have so much of the story to tell. I have written down every incident that came out in a flood during group. I have typed them and sent them to my therapist. Now I am facing reading my story out loud again. I have yet to determine what I am going to share. I want to face it this time without the shame, embarrassment, and panic. I want my abusers to be exposed, may be not publically but certainly for what they did.

The best part of sharing my story with others is that I am also sharing it with God. He already knows what happened, but when I write it down and say it out loud I am admitting it really happened and that I need help to deal with it. He is with me always. Just like I have to confess my sins out loud to him, I have to tell him what is troubling me, to seek His help. I need Him to take care of those who need to be held responsible. It is out of my hands. The Psalm below speaks of this. He can vindicate me from the shame and guilt I have carried for years that never belonged to me. He is a breath away. He is my champion.

Psalm 35:22-26 Oh Lord, you have seen this; be not silent. Do not be far from me, O Lord. Awake, and rise to my defense! Contend for me , my God and Lord. Vindicate me in your righteousness, O Lord my God. Do not let them think, “Aha, just what we wanted!” or say “We have swallowed him up” May all who gloat over my distress be put to shame and confusion; may all who exalt themselves over me be clothed with shame and disgrace.