Sensitive topics are blurred. Hover to reveal at your own risk. These are written for myself and this is my confessional for all the things I don't want to but need to confess. They're extremely painful to write about, but usually it's just me trying to overcome shame surrounding my own trauma.
Guilt and Shame
I have issues just saying things. A lot of things. It's hard to admit when I'm starting to feel the creeping desire to hurt myself, I am devoured by guilt when suicidal ideation possesses my mind, and I am way too harsh with myself when it comes to anything having to do with being sexually assaulted. If I were someone else, even someone I loathed, I would not be half as harsh or hurtful towards them for struggling with the same issues. This is probably because I had been raised to consider myself of little to no value. My mother tied my value to what I could offer the best she could and successfully created a painfully dysfunctional adult who needs someone to periodically tell them that they deserve to just be alive.
I tackled the whole being raped thing in a vent fic and I actually threw up. I wouldn't say the whole fic was carefully written out of any kind of respect for myself and other victims, but it made me think about what hurt more. What really just fucked me up so bad that I ended up like this. It's the aftermath. I don't think I would have been okay afterwards, but I don't think I would be this broken if things didn't get so bad. Being shamed into silence, my mother sexually harassing me, my ex taking advantage of me when I clear was not in an okay state of mind, my peers accusing me of being on the road to becoming my abusers, my first therapist calling me a liar and telling me there's no point in me showing up, and just the way the few people who do know talk about it. All of that just comes together to put holes in my sense of self. It's like I'm trying to preform human kintsugi but I am missing a lot of big shards to this vase that is supposed to be me because people kicked them into the gutters, assuming whatever they pleased about it.
It's the reason I was careful to refer to Layle as a man in Under No Obligation. That was a very conscious choice because most people try to minimize me. Make me small, weak, and pathetic when they talk about this. At the time, yeah, I was in that environment where my mom's ex had unrestricted access to me until I was about three to four I think. Right now though? I'm a grown ass man. I am a terrified, grieving, grown ass man. Despite it all, I am married and I do have sex because it matters to my husband. Because I trust him with this kintsugi'd vase that is supposed to be me in all my glory and being, broken but complete, and that extends to the trust I have that he won't put me on a high, precarious pedestal. I deserve to be respected as I am and that's more than the holes in my vase.
Nov 01 2025
An Awful Mother
This is a confession and refusal to keep defending my mother at the expense of my own sanity. I feel the need to be on her side even when she's wrong and even in the silence of my own mind. No she does not deserve benefit of doubt and implying that much is an insult to the child I used to be. I deserved better.
As a kid, my mother was extremely neglectful. She nearly let me die of collapsing lungs as a baby, leaving me in a box at a hotel while she partied until my grandmother stepped in but my lungs still haven't fully recovered, often making any kind of labored breathing extremely painful and forcing me to spend years breathing into a machine. My collarbone is broken in a way consistent with being yanked around as a child but poorly healed because she likely did not get me any medical help. My ankle is healed wrong after being crushed because she didn't want to take me to a hospital despite being unable to walk on it.
My mother taught me from a young age to know and understand what rape is because that's the reason I exist at all. Rape followed by an unsuccessful attempt to kill either just me or both of us. These were the kinds of discussions she'd have with a kid who couldn't even spell their own name, dumping all her worries, burdens, concerns, and pain onto me while letting me fend for myself. She'd been in the other room when I'd been strangled and sexually assaulted by her ex and pretended not to know while praising me for being the first person in the family not to be raped, forcing me to keep it all in just to feel like I'm worth something.
She beat me senseless for 'sexual behavior' when I didn't even understand what that meant. No one stood up for me until she beat my uncle and even then they'd pretend not to see it when it just involved me. As I grew up, she made uncomfortable advances and I didn't know how to stop them other than to hide from her. She gave me lingerie and pressed me for information about my sex life and interests at fourteen. The last time she got close to me, she kept trying to kiss my neck and grab me as an adult. I know some people think it's a normal show of affection in some places, but I'm the only one of my siblings she would do this to and my ex at the time picked up on it and put himself between us whenever he could without me even asking.
On a less depressing note that I really just need right now, my husband is a saint. Kind, patient, and willing to understand. He dug me out of a very deep and dark hole. He's my sun, moon, and stars. I'd give him my life if he asked for it, but I also know he never would, so I want to spend my life with him.