Is the best way to deal with your past, or should you just take a leap?

Content warning: this writer describes dealing with personal trauma in her past.

Dear reader, here’s a little fruit for thought. Is it possible to move on from your past but not fully let it go and can ‘not letting it go’ be right thing for you.

I always find myself in the same place at certain times of the year when I feel particularly low. Each time I usually dwell over the past. I think about all the people that have hurt me, whether they remember, whether they’re aware they hurt me so badly and whether they would even acknowledge it now. In fact, so often I’ve attempted to write to one or two of these people, but I’ve always thought that I’m better off waiting. Waiting for a time where I can really show them. When I can show them how well I’ve done, how well I look, how happy I am and how wrong they were about me. But time keeps passing and I’m never feel fully satisfied enough to tell these people either individually, or as a group, how much they hurt me but how much I am the better of it now.

Recently I was having one of these low periods. Nothing serious and nothing near how I have felt in the past. Just one of those sporadic hiccups where I have that reoccurring dream where I’m stuck in a place with all those people and I can’t find my way out. You know, the usual. Anyway, out of curiosity I rummaged through an old scrap book for a poem I vaguely remembered writing the year before. I think it was my last little PTSD relapse if you may. Or dare I even call It that. Well actually, one psychologist (not psychiatrist) described my state as one of PTSD, among other unaimable terms that were far too serious for most other people around me to come to terms with.

Anyway, as I was saying, I went back and read the poem that I had written the year before. What was and is striking about it is the fact that I feel the exact same way now, another year on. The problem Is, nothing has changed, no one is aware and I’m still ashamed to admit it.

For reference to how I’m feeling now, how I was feeling a year ago, and how I suspect I will feel in another year if I don’t do anything about it, I will dictate the poem. I’m sure it’s probably terrible in most respects but I understand it and I understand that poor vulnerable girl that felt that way and still feels that way so often: –

You can take the girl out of the school, but you can’t take the school out of the girl

7 years on and the demons still shine
Shine like a flicker all up my spine
Making me mad moody and slow
All for the sake of those 7 years ago

I’m still nowhere better, not for the time,
Nor for the talking the rhythm or rhyme
I’m nowhere near cured from all of that pain
That was inflicted for each of their gain

Its easier now to put blame on them
For all of the bullying and paedophile men,
But what about me and what about now
Perhaps I’m the reason, the culprit, the cow.

I wrote this poem in August 2018 and it is now September 2019.

At this point in my life I’m 8 years on. 8 years on from what I will give myself the credit and worthiness of describing as severe emotional abuse. Since I left that situation I’ve excelled in many ways and I wonder is it because at the back of my mind I’ve always fantasised that one day these people would hear about me and think how wrong they were and be reminded of how badly they treated me.

But now that I’ve achieved all that I set out to achieve, I’m sort of stuck. By writing to a person to simply let them know that they hurt you but that you’re the better of it, is that the right thing to do? By telling that person how much it still affects you, does that make you too vulnerable? And by doing nothing at all, will that only make it worse?