To Love and Be Loved After Abuse

​“I wonder if you are ready for a relationship.” 

How simple a statement, filled with sole curiosity and no judgment. Yet, it has consumed a large part of my spinning mind since feeling the first signs of attachment after abuse. 

There are not many moments I find my face involuntarily streaked by tears anymore. The nearly two-year expanse that I have thankfully collected has helped fill the gaps between then and now. Time has helped cover the wounds which once mercilessly poured out the pains of memory. However, when I remember that no matter how great my efforts to remove traces of my past from the present, there is no amount of healing capable of erasing the non-negotiable imprint of what has been, and this is when the legs, that have tried their best to stay standing, lose any and all ability to walk. I cannot disentangle myself from any of the experiences, no matter how gut-wrenching, that now culminate into an existence that is mine alone. 

I do not wish for the person that caused me to crumble to have the power to force new love to fall apart. 

I fear their influence. I fear the places inside of me that they will fill forever. The tender spots in which they hide, with crevices too deep to ever clean completely. Though I can live with knowing that they are inside of me, as I must, I cannot live with the pain of knowing that they have an ever-present effect. 

I fear that I will be stained forever by the moments that define all of my worst memories. I am terrified that I will remain tainted by the person who always preferred cruelty to kindness. How terrible it is to feel them sitting quietly across the table while at dinner with a new love. How awful it is to watch them keep reaching their calloused hands between these two present plates, yet feel every muscle keeping me upright tighten, as my body attempts to battle the unfair, conditioned fear of intervention.  

To have lived through the present of pain is one thing, but to reconcile with the notion that you will live with its impact forever is another. 

I wish that I could provide some insight that may point out the irrationality of this fear, however, I have yet to find any. I do not know where the past ends and the present begins. I do not know how to anticipate a future where the past does not have such an impenetrable, unconsented influence. I have only faith in the promise, and consistency of change. 

There is no permanence to be found in the experience of existence. There is no point in time, nor state of being, that can outrun the involuntary attacks of temporariness. There is no moment in time capable of leaving a stain that does not alter. Whether it spreads or shrinks, fades or darkens, every passing moment will leave the mark different than it was before- no matter how slight or sightly the alteration. We will never be the same as we once were. What a comfort it is to know that you cannot remain living a life always haunted by the same present pain. How petrifying it is to know that you will never be able to hold onto what feels good now, forever. 
​
You will never be prepared for the pain of gentle, and tender kindness after the violent distortions of abuse.
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But there is no better time than the exact and very moment this kindness is presented, to accept and embrace its warmth. To be ready is a myth. To be prepared is undeniably, and inarguably impossible. But there is one truth that wholeheartedly defies life's promise of semi-permanence, and that is: You will always and forever be deserving of a pure, kind love- and no abuse, no matter how cruel, can take this truth away from you. 

You will forever be ready to be loved kindly.



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