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That's how I feel about my experiences. Everything I did and didn't do that played a part in him being able to continue abusing me, must be examined. And I have to have a very good reason for it. The one voice, the punishing one, tells me everything I did wrong. The other voice tries to come up with reasons why I did what I did, in order to shut the first voice up. This has been going on for ten years now. And I'm so tired of it. It's bullshit. It is. The very idea that I have to have a scientifically proven explanation for everything I did that didn't help me get away from him is bullshit. It's only meant to blame me. It's only meant to keep the focus on me. And that's unfair.
You see, it doesn't matter if the things I did and didn't do can't be explained, not when it comes to figuring out who's to blame. I mean, it's interesting in the sense that I can learn from it. But really, after ten years, I'm well aware of what I should do differently next time something like this happens to me. And almost everyone participates in this. They all tell me I was young, I was inexperienced, and so it's okay I acted the way I did. I have an excuse for it. But even this actually implies that there are certain conditions attached to being granted sympathy. I didn't know any better. I'm forgiven.
I, and with me every other survivor, deserve sympathy because I was hurt by someone who didn't care about what I wanted or felt. What does it matter how I dealt with it? Does that change that fact? Instead of looking at my (in)actions through a magnifying glass, to establish if I deserve sympathy, isn't it better to focus on the fact that someone used violence against me? And to acknowledge that's bad in itself, apart from the way I dealt with it? To me, the so-called helpful: 'You didn't know any better', 'You were still so young', 'You didn't have a lot of life experience', 'You didn't have any control over your freeze response', can immediately be replaced by: 'It doesn't matter what you did or didn't do. He was the one to blame. He was the one creating this situation. And he should never have done that.'
Written by: Fenna Vlekke
Country: The Netherlands
Social media:
Twitter: @FennaVlekke
Facebook: www.facebook.com/fvlekke
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