* Dear Tee: thank you!

Dear Helcat:

“Wishing you good health and peace!“- thank you!

“I am less willing to discuss more traumatic incidents, I think that is understandable considering that many of these events are triggers. This conversation has been triggering for me“- yes, it is understandable. I figured that having a conversation about your traumatic incidents of abuse as a child would be triggering to you. This is why I wrote to you on Sept 15: “maybe you wouldn’t like to read your own words in regard to painful emotional topics (ex., your mother’s abuse of you), and maybe you wouldn’t like me analyzing your words, and come up with my understandings. Therefore, I ask you: would you like me to proceed and submit a post to you in a couple of hours or so?”

I proceeded with my Sept 16 reply only after you answered my question as follows: “Hi Anita Please feel free to analyse away and share your understanding. I appreciate the time and effort that you put into your messages“.

After I submitted my Sept 16 reply, in your most recent post here, you wrote: “You might have good intentions when you question people asking them if things really happened, but it is hurtful. It’s very similar to accusing them of lying“- I am very sorry that you felt that I accused you of lying.

That was not at all what I had in mind when I wrote to you “At first, when I read this, I  ‘heard’ myself  asking you incredulously: did it REALLY happen? I was surprised that you didn’t share such a severe traumatic detail in an original post on your first or second thread“- you  know how sometimes something happens that is so different from the ordinary,  so terrible, that you question: did this really happen? I was sharing with you my honest, natural reaction to how terrible indeed is the abuse that you that you suffered. In my reply, I did not AT ALL think in my mind or suggest in my post that you lied about the abuse that you suffered.

I wrote that I was surprised that you didn’t share about it earlier because the abuse was so severe that it requires being addressed, but I understood yesterday as I still understand, that it was too traumatic to address, at least on a public forum.

“I have experienced issues with feeling powerless. I felt powerless as a child and at times as an adult. When I was raped, I felt powerless. When I was unable to walk for 6 months and felt like I was dying due to health issues, I felt powerless. I hated and blamed myself for being powerless… I don’t know how to make peace with feelings of powerlessness. For me, it is intrinsically tied  to severe trauma. It would be like, forgive the hyperbole ‘accepting the feeling of being raped’“-

-this is a very meaningful paragraph and I want to take my time and process it before I respond, if you’d like me to respond to it, that is.

“I would suggest you stop asking this question on the forum. It is understandable that you have concerns about truth on an anonymous forum, but it isn’t helpful to share that… Wishing you good health and peace!… I would just like to know if and when you are safe“-

I would like peace and a feeling of safety in my life, including in the context of my participation in these forums, and I am sure that you do too. This is one reason why I have never criticized your replies (or any other Responder’s replies) to other Original Posters (OPs).

In the above paragraph from your most recent post here, you mentioned my replies “on the forum“: that is, my replies to other OPs. I have an issue with your critical and confrontational posts directed at me and/ or addressed to me in the various threads of other OPs, seven confrontational post beginning on August 4 in KP’s thread, and ending on Sept 3, in T.K’s thread. There’s been an 8th critical post on Zeeza’s thread on Sept 11.

I get the sense that I rub you the wrong way, and I’d like to understand why, so we can engage peacefully in the forums. If we can’t engage peacefully, I’d rather we don’t engage with each other at all.

anita