advice needed from ex or current proshippers
Before I start I want to preface this by saying that while I do not have issues with the proship community in general, my time in the community severely traumatized me and left me feeling morally bankrupt and like I have skeletons in my closet. I met many wonderful people in that community, people who share the same love for fiction and hatred of censorship and harassment that I do.
However, my ex (a very proud proshipper) severely traumatized me through encouraged consumption of media that dug up my past traumas, made me feel like a disgusting person, and generally leaves me feeling like I have done deplorable things that will ruin my life and current relationships if they are known about. This goes not just for his encouragement of media labeled as specifically darkship, but also several other things he did in the relationship, which I will not be getting into.
During our relationship, he fully acknowledged my CSA trauma, trauma which is also tied to ince$t. He encouraged me to consume fictional media containing both, separately and combined, during which I did. At the time I don't think I realized that I was doing this to harm myself and to relive what happened to me to understand why but it always left me with a sour taste in my mouth and my heart filled with guilt.
Occasionally, I wrote stories with these topics but the way that I wrote them was an exploration of the effects they leave people and characters with. The only time I wrote or created anything sexualized with this topic was another instance of sh with him encouraging me to create it. For him, however, I don't think there was any instance were it wasn't sexualized and he would not only encourage me to consume media like this in a sexualized context but push it on me during sexual situations between the two of us when I could not handle it.
Now, I am left feeling like I am just as bad as my abuser. I'm left feeling like I will never be able to tell anyone publicly what he did to me if I ever felt like I wanted to, because I'm afraid that if I do he will use screenshots of me saying things I was heavily influenced and encouraged to say and do to attempt to discredit me. I'm left feeling like I'm carrying a reputation and life ruining secret. I especially feel this because I do not for sure have concrete evidence to prove my abuse as many of our harmful interactions do not exist in text and at the time I was unaware of how I was being influenced.
I just want to know if anyone who's been in a similar situation knows how I can stop living in fear and in shame. I feel so disgusting for the things I engaged in and consumed to harm myself under the encouragement and influence of someone who hurt me so greatly I didn't know who I was and dissociated so heavily I believed someone else was in control of my mind at times. I do not wish to start or reignite discourse of any kind, I do not want harassment in the notes of this. If you wonder where I stand, I'm heavily anti censorship, anti harassment, believe people should have the right to consume and create what they want including shipping what they want. I recognize that while it was the opposite of a coping mechanism for me, consuming media containing topics related to peoples trauma may be a coping mechanism for them. You are allowed to be grossed out or hurt by something, that simply means it's not for you and you need to ignore it. People will do what they want with art and fiction, you cannot police it and trying to do so makes you an asshole.
Whoever jumps in here with their input, thank you. It is greatly appreciated in my journey of trying to figure out how to navigate moving forward and entering the next chapter of my life.












