She may or may not have told you- maybe you are suspicious that her past and what she brings to the table is deeper than she has yet told you. Maybe she has been vulnerable enough to tell you, or maybe she wants to but is scared to death of the impact she feels it will have on your relationship.
Loving a survivor girl. What you don't know is how much she wonders if you are going to understand. She wonders if she tells you- will you still hold her in the same esteem and think of her as normal but with curves and edges. She wonders if you can handle it. She wonders if you will ever want to have sex with her again or will you be haunted by her past. Often we want so badly to tell our partners where we have been, the places we come from. But we understand what a heavy burden this knowledge can be and we don't want to share it with you. We don't want to share it because we don't want you to ever feel that burden too- we already know that it is a horrible burden no one should have to carry. We may want to protect you from that. It's like being in the garden of good and evil- you may end up with knowledge but you will also end up with knowing the terrible darkness that comes with it. We are so afraid that you won't be able handle intimacy with us- because we feel that you will always be thinking of "it" even when we have strived so hard to heal and forget and forge a new life complete with safe love and intimacy. Some of our partners unfortunately will not only balk at this past but they will label a survivor as damaged goods. We don't know which you will be until we tell you- no matter how good the relationship has gone up until that point- there is often just something so incomprehensible about abuse that normal people buckle under its weight or cave to disbelief. We generally expect you to. We are usually always braced for this disappointment. We want to forget, we want so badly to be normal and not have to feel that we instead stand between two worlds- one light and full of hope and the other a night that is dark and full of terrors. We often want to protect you as much as we want to just feel normal. We want to protect you from things no person should have to know- we have been forced to eat an apple in the garden a knowledge mostly of humanity's dark side. Sometimes we feel like gatekeepers and what we know about the other side makes us weary, sad and older than our years and we want for you to continue to be innocent and bright- even though we also feel incredible loneliness from not telling you who we are. Other times we might wear the past as a defense and tell you straightaway to see if you will run or stay- because we think that if you were going to run you were always going to run anyway.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Nora JulietI am a former country girl and abuse survivor. I enjoy blogging because I find it personally therapeutic. It also allows me to share my experiences with others, and bring to light issues of abuse. I write under a pseudonym for my personal safety as well as to negate any potential legal trouble over sharing my story. Archives
March 2017
Categories |