I’ve been wanting to write these words for eleven years now. We haven’t spoken for a long time.
Time has run out and the years have been burned. We never met again and I don’t know what happened to you. Yet you still exist in me. Involuntarily. You are a part of who I am and I will always be a part of you. Two strangers whose existence is tragically linked. Sometimes I think of you… Less often now, much more often.
You know, I wasted a lot of my time wondering why this happened. I have rewrote history thousands of times, clumsily searching for my faults and humanly trying to understand yours. I dreamed of revenge, fantasized about your suffering and tyrannized your existence in my innumerable sleepless nights. I screamed silently and cried and could not make my tears flow with satisfaction.
You poured a part of your darkness into me and stole a part of my being. You have broken me into more pieces than I will ever be able to assemble and branded me more intensely than anything I could have imagined. I felt empty, completely hollow and dispossessed.
It still hurts sometimes and I keep filling this hole with everything I can. I’m afraid of silence, I keep him busy all the time. I don’t trust people, I rarely let them approach me and even more difficultly love me. I have trouble sleeping and you still control my dreams sometimes. I have not owned my sexuality for a long time, it will never look like what I would like.
Sometimes I still see my mother again find those e-mails you sent me. I remember her crying when she read what you asked me not to tell her, your sister or anyone else.
I know that it could have gone much further I know that I could have suffered more and maybe you congratulate yourself for having only wanted me at the time. But the truth is, what you did to me broke me in those 11 years.
Except for my mom who saw the e-mails, nobody believed me. No one understood why I fell so low in the years that came after. But we both know it’s no longer time to count the points. My childhood and teenage years have passed, I speak as a woman of what has followed me all these years: shame.
You know, I’ll never know who I could have been if we’d never met. Sadly, but fortunately, I became who I am. Tormented, anxious and completely distrustful, but so much more courageous, powerful and empathetic. I won’t erase anything, neither what you put me through nor what I had to face to get over it. I am happy and proud of who I have become.
I hope time has done its work and that you have understood. I hope you advanced and found the light somewhere in you. I’m convinced it exists. I hope that your evil life has stopped dictating your conduct and that you have been helped to heal.
May this letter send you back to a past that I will never think of again in my life.
Dear Anonymous
Thank you for your letter, which bears witness to what a monster has done to you!
You say you’re proud of the person you’ve become : courageous, powerful and empathetic ! I’m sincerely happy for you !
You sent that message like a bottle to the sea so you’d never think about what that dirty guy did to you again.
I hope you will succeed !
Good luck my sister (I was raped at 6 and a half for almost 4 years) !
I hope that from now on your life will be full of happiness and joy !
Dear Anonymous
You wrote : “I’ve been wanting to write these words for eleven years now. ”
It’s good to have done it ! It helps to heal !
I believe you, I understand you, I know what you may have felt and what you feel, I know what you have been through!
You wrote : “It still hurts sometimes and I keep filling this hole with everything I can. I’m afraid of silence, I keep him busy all the time. I don’t trust people, I rarely let them approach me and even more difficultly love me. I have trouble sleeping.”
You are describing my life !
I’m dead for over 30 years! And to fill the gaping hole, I ate and I continue to eat !
Maybe I should do what you’re doing to end it once and for all with my pedophile rapist: write it all down and send my own bottle to the sea!
Thank you, your letter makes me feel good and gives me hope that one day I will be able to turn the page as you have done it !
Dear Anonymous.
Thank you for your throughtful and humane post. You convey very brightly the deep feelings from your soul, heart and mind in a touching way. We see and feel how your humanity has been denied by the darkness of your tormentor. Your testimony is even stronger because of your deep yet very calm exposition. I read strong traumatism, and the classic feeling of rape and abuse, that mark the attack to your soul, your humanity. I think you should consult, and I advise a psychoanalytic and trauma specialist.
courage and support, all the best.