Flowers Grow Back Even After They Are Stepped On, So Will I. @haleybaileyyy - Tumblr Blog

Anna Akhmatova, tr. by Lenore Mayhew and William Mcnaughton, from Poem Without A Hero and Selected Poems

Pablo Neruda, Ode to a beautiful nude

Admitting you were abused is hard for whole multitude of reasons, but one that hit me most was the fact that I had to admit to myself that abusers have managed to really, really hurt me. Really badly. That all their efforts to get to me, to make me doubt myself, to make me hate myself, were successful, no matter how much I fought, and pretended not to be hit by it all. I didn’t manage to defend myself. I didn’t beat them. I got hurt. I couldn’t get out of there. I couldn’t get away from them. I continued to get hurt. For a long long time. I was at their mercy. They could have done anything to me. They did anything to me. Nobody stopped them. Nobody fought for me. Despite all my efforts to keep myself sane, to keep myself okay, I am filled with wounds and trauma and damage too vast to even asses. They got what they wanted. And I lost big parts of myself to it. I’ve been lying to myself when I tried to be okay. I wasn’t okay. I needed help. I wasn’t unbeatable. I wasn’t quite that strong. Humans aren’t made to be that strong. Humans aren’t made to survive in environment where they’re tortured and abandoned completely. I wasn’t made to withstand that either. I got broken. I lived in an illusion that this was okay. It wasn’t. I was scared. I was alone. I thought it was my fault. I could have died. It’s a miracle I’m still around.