It wasn't my fault!
I really get it now. I see what others have seen for a while now. But now that I can say that, I crumble into a pile of broken each time those words leave my lips. As strange as this may sound, I want it to be my fault. I'll get back to that in a minute.
When it hit me that it was not my fault in the least, I panicked. I know it is supposed to be a good thing to understand, freeing even, but it wasn't. It has taken me months to get to the place I can write about it. I have wanted to write, but it has taken time to begin to process this truth. There is more to process, but some of the dust has settled.
Let me try to explain where I am. Bearing the guilt for the wrongs done against me, that I am not guilty of, is a heavy burden to carry. It is a crushing weight to live under. It leaves me hunched over in an attempt to stand and live with what is not, and never has been, mine. However, that weight also serves to dull the pain of what was done to me. The heavy burden of guilt that I have carried all these years hides the pain and reality of how profoundly I have been hurt.
So what now...now that the weight has been lifted? When the burden of his guilt was removed from my shoulders, the pain of how deeply he violated me tore through the very core of my heart and soul and body. Somehow, maintaining blame for myself, being at fault and part of the cause for the abuse, made it less violating, less painful, less invasive. Finally being able to see that it really was not my fault, that I really did not cause it to happen, meant all of it happened to me completely against my will. That reality is brutal and painful and something I have not come to terms with. It doesn't leave me shaking violently with anxiety anymore...well most of the time.
This leaves me still desperately clinging to the guilt that isn't mine. I want it to be mine. I want it to dull the painful truth it masks. I want to keep that heavy burden. It has been lifted, but I still reach out for it. I still try to put it back on my shoulders and live with the comfortable weight I never could stand under. Because it's easier to live with that weight than it is to feel that pain which demands to be felt when the weight isn't crushing me anymore. I've been crushed by the weight of his guilt for so many years, I don't even know how to stand up at all without it. The painful reality that rips through me in its absence leaves me too weak to stand, so I fall to the ground in agony.
I don't know yet what comes after the pain that sears every part of me. There are still wounds I refuse to see, words I attempt to define out of my story because I can't bring myself to accept the truth and implications they bring with them. For now, the burden of guilt that crushed me for years is getting farther and farther out of reach no matter how hard I try to bring it back to me again. So I finally say it was not my fault, and I fall shattered to the ground, waiting...trusting...desperate for God to bring healing to this unbearable hurt.
