Time Doesn't Heal

Everyone has always told me time heals. That no matter what I was going through, no matter how bad it hurt, that within time I would heal, that it would be okay, that I would stop crying over it. But guess what there’s still some situations that happened 19 years ago that I still can’t heal from. This seems to be a conversation I have with the person I consider to be my mentor, every week when we talk. Let’s go through some of the events that have left me feeling like time really doesn’t heal.

#1) My mom abandoning us. At the age of three my mom chose drugs, and whatever dude she was with at the time instead of her daughters. After DFS got involved, when my mom was sleeping and my sister and I got into chemicals under the cabinet, and almost died. Even now, this pain has continued. The relationship is only even still there because of my younger sister. But even then, the guy she’s married to now, is now just enabling her to continue to choose drugs over her kids. Mind you I had to beg my mom to come to not only my high school graduation, but also my college.

#2) Sexual assault. I’m going to leave this one being a general time, but there’s a lot that goes along with this. But starting at the age of 7 and most recently happening at the age of 21. Time doesn’t heal this. This is a pain that I will carry around for the rest of my life. It will be something I forever remember. And I would even say that it makes healthy relationships seem impossible, but we will get to that later.

#3) Ex boyfriend #1. I would say generally speaking he was the least bad of the two. But he was still pretty terrible. I don’t want to say he was the first guy I fell in love with, but he was the first guy I was ever serious with, and the first guy I was intimate with (willingly). For those of you guys who’ve been there, that first guy will always mean something to you. Well he was abusive, manipulative, and it just wasn’t healthy so that ended.

#4) Ex boyfriend #2. This is the one I’ve talked about the most often. And probably the first guy I’ve ever loved. I often still think about him, and think about going back to him, but there’s many of you have helped me to not go back to that. I loved someone who lived hundreds of miles away that I never met. He used me, he abused me, and well I would go as far as to say he ruined me. But man do i still love him? Absolutely… so now what?

#5) The leaking of explicit images, that almost two years later still continues to haunt me. Now before someone says, this is your fault, you shouldn’t have done it, believe me I get it. This has continued to happen for two years now. To say that this has ruined any bit of self esteem I ever had would be an understatement. It’s led to a whole lot of other issues, but I’ll get to that here in a few.

#6) College. College sucked. I didn’t enjoy it. I hated it. I still hate it. For those of you who didn’t know, I was able to walk in May, but I had to take two courses, and then do an internship before I would get my degree. I failed my first class, am going to fail my second, and haven’t even stated on my internship. It’s a 210 hour internship and I have less than a month to do it. I feel like a failure. Ready to give up!

#7) Doxxing, ddosing, swatting etc. All of those things you hear about on the internet of people doing to bigger streamers, and you say oh that would never happen to me. Yeah I said the same thing, until it happened, and well it’s continued to happen. Everything from my address, to my phone number, my employer, and their number. Not only did they leak this info of mine, but also of my parents and my siblings.

#8) The person who means the world to me. Let’s just call them W for privacy sake. W was a dear friend of mine, someone I cared a lot about. (maybe even too much). Unfortunately things happened, and we are no longer friends, and we’ve went separate ways (my fault not his). But this has been tearing me apart, cause well I cared about him, and I spent all my time with him, so now I have this overwhelming sense of loneliness, and while I’ve been going through so much, he was the person I reached out to.

#9) Recovery. Goodness gracious recovery sucks, and it’s hard. And if you find someone who’s in recovery and genuinely says that I’m wrong about that, please send them my way cause I want to talk to them! Recovery sucks, it’s a nasty process, and I’m over it. I’ve found myself relapsing more then I want to admit in the last few weeks, to the point that it doesn’t even feel like I’m in recovery anymore, and well I don’t have the energy to fight from square one again.

#10) Guess this one doesn’t directly go with all of the above, but really just been struggling with my walk with God, mostly because all of these things listed above. As I said in the beginning, with all the people that say time heals, where’s my healing, cause I’m drained, and without the healing I’m bleeding out, and I can’t keep doing this. Something has got to give.

I’m sorry for this long rant, and if you read it just know I appreciate you!

anonymouse,

Dude, I get this so much. The “I don’t have the energy to fight from square one again” I think pegs what’s the center of this post…when things are “going good”, it’s easy to put some of this behind you, but when recovery crashes down, it’s so easy to think down on yourself, have all of your pain resurface, and just get swallowed…

I’ve been in recovery for longer than I wish that I could say I’ve been in recovery…I’ve been wanting to seriously break free from my addiction to porn since 2011. There were years where I took it really seriously and dedicated a lot of time to healing and growing, and there were other years when I had that same mentality – I don’t have the energy to give a shit about this right now, and I’m so discouraged I don’t even want to fight…I wish it wasn’t a fight, and since it is I just don’t even know what to do. I totally get that…fighting for your life really is just that…a fight…and you have an enemy that wants to keep you down and out, to hold you at sword point and tell you that you need to stay down. This is a real war – your heart really matters, your body really matters, your soul really matters, you really matter. And because of that, you are opposed. I know it’s easy to give up when you’re down, to be held at sword point and just surrender for a while…but I want to encourage you – the only way that the enemy wins is when you give 0%…even 1% effort puts you back in the fight. It’s what I call “the courageous middle”…the space between 0% and 100% (0% is giving up, 100% is hiding in perfection)…the 1-99% is where you are “the man in the arena”, where you exercise your courage, and where the enemy doesn’t have you completely pinned, because you’re giving something.

Even more than that, it’s important to re-ground yourself with what is truest about your identity…here’s a chunk of verses that I always land on:

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[i] have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”[j]
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

You are accepted, you are defended, you are the beloved child of God. Win or lose, God’s fighting for you, and He will win this war in you. Stand back up and keep going. You got this. Time won’t heal if you have surrendered to the enemy…but over time as you fight back, you will reclaim your healing with God.

-Nate

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