Background: My story is quite long but involves extreme gaslighting, emotional blackmail and other aspects. When I initially tried to open up for support, because my story was so long and unique, the health practitioner didn’t bother to properly learn about my situation, and wrongfully diagnosed me as delusional, despite no history of mental illness. I was left without any kind of support, and had to battle on my own for years to try to gather enough evidence in order to have a chance of opening up again and being believed, and escaping from the position of ongoing harm that my abusers left me in. Gathering evidence has been ridiculously hard, because the abuse was almost exclusively psychological. I could’ve easily gathered it at the height of my abusers activity, but as with many other cases of emotional abuse, I hadn’t initially processed the activity I was facing as abuse, and even when the situation became clearly abusive, for a long time I was still trying to believe the best in my abusers and trying to chalk their activity down to miscommunication or misunderstanding, or else straight up ignoring some of their activity that was openly malicious, with the hope that these were just a few bad eggs in the group, because I couldn’t fathom that any group of people could be capable of acting as unaccountably and inhumanely as the group of people behind my abuse did.

I recently got to the point where I felt I had enough evidence to try opening up again. And in the moments before I hit the send button to the agency I was planning to approach, I was terrified. Part of that was because of the specifics of my situation and the power imbalance that exists between myself and my abusers, but another part of it was because, to everyone else, my years of psychological torture haven’t happened. Life has progressed normally, and outside of their abuse towards me, my abusers lives have probably gone on normally too. No ones cared that I’ve been trapped. So even though I’ve been the victim of some things that should never be done to fellow human beings, and even though I’ve had to fight in isolation for years to get to this point, I’ve had to struggle against feeling like I’m a nuisance for opening up. It’s almost like the boat is steady for everyone else, and I’m rocking it, and I’m in the wrong for not just continuing to keep my abuse to myself. The abuse as a whole has been of a severity that has left me numb, interrupted only when spikes of raw pain manage to leak through my blanket of suppression, and I find myself having to suddenly keep tears from spilling out. The torture was so extreme and so relentless that at times I had to resist slamming my head against the wall so that I’d black out or die, and everything would stop and I’d finally get to rest for a while. But on the outside, I’m normal, and have remained normal throughout, perhaps apart from some redness of the eyes. I can joke, laugh, and you’d never know anything was wrong with me unless I told you about the reality I was having to keep hidden. Sometimes I wish death would find me so that I didn’t have to rock the boat, and so that I could be free of the position my abusers have left me in without having to fight my way out of it, and without having to deal with all the repeat disbelief and invalidation that will likely follow from people who expect victims to be able to produce impossible levels of evidence, just because the abusers chose not to impart any physical scars.

It’s done now, I’ve submitted my attempt to finally escape this hell, and all I can do now is wait for the outcome. But while this was happening, I was thinking about people who’ve had to open up when nothing’s wrong for anyone else, who’ve had to rock the boat and risk looking like the problem for daring to speak up, people who’s abusers have been so clandestine in their conduct that it’s been left to the victim to figure out that they are even being abused. People who are trapped and unable to speak out, for lack of evidence, fear of their abuser or of being disbelieved and labelled as crazy, or both. People who, despite their own pain, have still cared about their abusers and have tried to keep seeing their actions in the best possible light to avoid bringing the scrutiny, judgement and justice upon them that they actually deserve. I’ve read a lot of stories of victims going through things like this, both here in this sub and elsewhere.

And I want to say that you are so ridiculously strong. You are strong for opening up. You are strong for rocking the boat, and for not letting your abusers dictate your reality or suppress your story, and your right to be heard, your right to heal. If you haven’t been able to speak up, you are so very strong for continuing to endure what you are, for being trapped and still managing to keep going. For those who’ve ended their lives along the way, I’m so sorry if nobody ever saw and acknowledged your strength, and your incredible resilience. People hand out medals to athletes for putting themselves through extreme stress. You never asked for your stress. You didn’t volunteer for your pain. But you’ve fought and/or are fighting a battle that’s every bit as worthy of a gold medal as those who are actually awarded them for challenges that they’ve voluntarily taken on.

You are amazing for being so strong. If you are still stuck, if you are still hurting, hang in there. Your reality is your reality, your abusers can try to hide that but you know the pain you’ve been through. And even though, when you’re pushing through the worst of your hell, you probably don’t feel strong, you are. You absolutely are. You are incredible for enduring all that you have 💛