Renee Fabian

[M]y therapist pointed out there’s a huge discrepancy in the way I present myself. On the one hand, I am a successful working person who seems fine and normal. On the other hand, I have a hard time with basic self-care and very often experience dissociation, depression, and anxiety as a result of sexual trauma and PTSD. And between these seemingly different people is a huge gap occupied by denial.

Supposedly, the happiest people are living in the moment, seizing the day, and generally living like it's their last day on earth. It all sounds inspired, wonderful, and profound. And simple. Who wouldn't be on board? Me, that's who. And somehow I suspect I'm not alone.

[CN: cutting, dissociation, auditory hallucinations] I struggle with the need to have physical, visible proof of my inner world. That’s when I realized tattoos can replace my scars. I can reinterpret what my scars stand for and transform them into something beautiful, something worth remembering.

Dear Suicide, I don't know how to start this. I want to write something deep and life-changing, but that's just too daunting. So I'll start with the facts before I have to do the hard part of breaking up with you.

I feel I got the short end of the stick because of emotional and financial costs I am still paying for what he did — the grooming, the mind games, the violation of my body and my agency, the disregard for my mental and physical well-being, the purposeful isolation from friends and family. I have already spent a decade in therapy trying to find solid ground, struggling to revive even a shadow of the person I used to be.

Trauma has a way of breaking people down. It's consumed almost every moment of the last 15 years of my life- from the mental health consequences, such as PTSD and years invested in therapy, to the trouble I have connecting with other people and opening up.

Individual “parts” of my system [...] have become dysfunctional as a result of trauma. Some of these parts are stuck as young children or teenagers, while others carry individual emotions like worry or anger. They’re all still parts of my whole — not full-fledged personalities as in dissociative identity disorder — but they are separate enough to take on a life of their own to protect me from harm.

The fear of my parents getting killed driving me there or back loomed around every decision. I always went with my parents on every errand possible, pretending I liked the grocery store.