Since I have opened up about my experiences with physical, emotional, and sexual abuse inflicted by a former partner, I have had countless people reach out to me full of support and some were even looking for some advice themselves. I am more than happy to assist anyone in their recovery process; this is the best thing that you can do for yourself. However, as someone that has struggled quite a bit, I cannot allow myself to sugar coat the process. When it comes to recovery, there are aftershocks. You may have removed yourself from the situation, but it still happened. You need to acknowledge and accept this, or you will never move on. Recovery is never easy.

I have had my fits with self-harm and caving into my mental illnesses. I have struggled through the process of recovery more times than I can count; sometimes relapse is inevitable. After you fall, you need to force yourself to get up. Staying down only keeps you vulnerable. It’s okay to have bad days, but you cannot keep justifying bad days for preventing you from helping yourself. This is self-handicapping behavior, and it is so common that many people never fully go through their recovery, which is a shame. Life is too short to suffer, stop justifying those bad days. Look for a reason, any reason at all to get out of bed. I promise you that you will not regret it. Some days are going to be worse than others, but that also means that some days will be significantly better as well. You may as well go find out for yourself.

It has been years since the last time I was put in a situation as awful as the relationship I was in, but I am still recovering. You do not walk away from rape and brush it off; you do not escape abuse and laugh about it. This is the dark that I know all too well and the pain that I felt on day one is the same pain I feel now, I just got better at coping with it. The aftershocks still hit me, there are still days I blame myself for what happened, and the flashbacks are a cold and cruel reminder that it happened. For me, the hardest part of recovery was learning that sometimes the pain will never go away and neither will the memories. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about what I went through. Being raped and battered is not something someone like me can walk away from, it’s something that I have to live with forced into my memory.

Everyone heals differently, and no one feels pain the same way. While I hope my ex-boyfriend never has and will never lay a hand on his wife, I cannot help but wonder if that is the case or not. If it is, I know that her pain is much different than how I felt mine as there is a new level of intimacy between them. Pain is based on perception, and I believe she and I have very different opinions and feelings on the subject matter. I hope that she knows that she can reach out to me anytime to talk about things, I would never wish harm on her or anyone for that matter.

The hardest part of recovery is that there are so many different ways to try and achieve it. For me, going to see a therapist and taking medication has a helped a little bit. What I truly needed was to be more open about my circumstances, and now that I have done just that I feel a great weight lifted off of my shoulder. If you are struggling, talk to me. I want to help you find a path that works best for you.