[ananke]

I'm going to a candle lighting ceremony next week for victims of DV. I'm a little scared. Therapy has been better but more difficult. I'm making progress but some days I just want to hide.

[gumby_cc]

Maddy, I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to "come out" to your family....especially with it being someone your did is so close to. How did people respond to your letters? What happened after your grandfather got his?

My mom is so flakey.....when it happened I dropped out of school for the rest of the semester and then moved away for one month, and she thought it was all due to stress. I just haven't ever been able to share important stuff with her because she overreacts or treats me like a baby.....and this would definately make me think that SHe would think I can't take care of myself....esp living in the big city and all. One thing my doctor told me was that if you wait a really long time to tell important people (like parents), they might get really resentful that you didn't tell them right away because they'll think you shut them out of your life.....I just don't want to deal with that. One of my brothers knows. When he found out, he was like, "I'm gonna break some kneecaps!" It was sweet because I didn't think he'd freak like he did.

I ended up confronting my rapist in a letter. After the incident, he started emailing me wanting to talk but they'd say things like "I was so wound up, you couldn't possibly expect me not to," and shit like that. I ignored them all and then he started sneaking into my school (EVEN THOUGH IT HAS A SECURITY GUARD BY THE DOOR!) and leaving letters in my mailbox saying shit like, "sorry for being such a sleeze"....but he wouldn't stop doing that and I felt so unsafe just going to school so I ended up writing a letter back to him.....but only out of necessity---I would have never done it if he had left me the fuck alone. I just told him how I really felt about it and what i thought he had did and shit. His response, "I don't think we should talk anymore." and that was the last of it. It infuriates me because even when we were just going through talking about it , he was in complete control of that....like he got me to write a letter to him even though I didn't want to, and then when he was ready to not talk to me anymore, then the conversation was over. I think that's the part that upsets me most. But I guess you can't expect much from a rapist.

I have never gone into so much detail about this with anybody in real life. It kind of feels good! Thanks for listening guys. It sucks so much that so many of us have been in situations like this. What a fucking epidemic.