Wherein I talk a lot about actual serious business

[bunnymcfoo]

So I've decided to stop automatically posting under friendslock for a little while, to see how it feels.

This is, I suppose, as good a place to start as any, particularly considering that this post would have been unlocked regardless.

Let me say first and foremost that I agree with Kita to the fullest extent of my abilities. If you come to me

Comments

Trigger warning - comment re: physical and emotional abuse

[unfilthy]

I replied to a comment you made in harmonyfb's journal, and then found that it was automatically screened, and since I'm not sure if you'll get it or not, and really it wasn't about her at all, I figured I'd repost here, and hope that it doesn't feel like I'm randomly invading your space.
My original comment:

"by the time he held me down on the bed, whispered that he loved me, totally ignored my crying and shaking, and hurt me badly enough that I was bleeding after, he had skillfully undermined my sense of self-worth to the point where I didn't think he had raped me."

My boyfriend didn't rape me. He hit me with various objects, he locked me in and he locked me out, he shoved, dragged, restrained, slapped and punched me, broke things on my body, and threatened to kill me. Still, I find myself, almost 20 years later (I was 16 at the time), almost automatically starting to type "and I have the scars to prove it." Which I do, but that's not the point. It's never the point.

Of all the things he'd done to me, including the ones that left scars, the most damaging by far was exactly what you described in the quote above. He undermined my sense of self to the extent that I could no longer trust my own judgment, or separate mine from his. Bit by bit I was isolated from my family and friends, at first because it was easier to not go anywhere or talk to anyone than to get into the inevitable fight that would ensue when he started questioning me about it, and then because I was so lost that I started internalizing his accusations and paranoia. I would constantly doubt myself and my behavior, even when he wasn't around. Maybe I was constantly flirting with other people? Maybe I was lying to him? I would literally keep my head down to prevent accidentally making eye contact, that I knew meant that I was "making eyes" at people. I knew because he told me that was what I was doing. By the time he started hitting me, I was so broken down that I also knew that I deserved it for being a lying whore. Which is why, like you, when I see someone else being intimidated, I do everything in my power to help her feel, and be, safe.
It's also why I find the attitudes expressed by [that] journal's owner so destructively ignorant.

I guess I just wanted to thank you for speaking up, and to say that I'm sorry you went through that, that I understand, and that you are not alone.