Yesterday I put into words something I’ve been struggling to articulate for 10+ years – why I still feel ashamed after being abused. Everyone tells me it’s not my fault but the thing is I know and accept that. For me, the shame goes a lot deeper than just self-blame. To summarize, what I stated was that I feel ashamed because I don’t know if the good in me outweighs the bad. If the light outweighs all the darkness. Instead of blaming myself for the abuse, I internalized it, questioning whether the darkness and evil that was in my abusers was passed down to me. And I questioned whether I would ever be good enough, whole enough, or pure enough after all the things I’ve seen and experienced. After realizing that, here’s the conclusion I came to:

(Note: what I’m about to say may not sound theologically correct. I realize that we’re all sinners by nature and nothing we can do can change that. Only Jesus can redeem that. But that’s not what I’m talking about here.)

The conclusion I came to is that being good enough, pure enough, whole enough, is a choice. And being filled with light instead of darkness is a choice. The good inside of me outweighing the bad inside of me, again, is a choice. Now I’m not saying that those things that happened don’t exist or didn’t change me. But change is inevitable. Pain changes people. But it is up to people to decide whether that change is good or bad. 

When I say it’s a choice and that we choose the type of change we have, I know it’s not as easy as I make it sound. But. Everyday we wake up and we make decisions. Every day, I personally, wake up and make a decision to take what happened to me and help others. There’s that light. Every day, I wake up and decide that I, in fact, want to be nothing like the person that my abusers made me out to be. There’s light in that as well. There’s light in choosing to be kind. There’s light in choosing to love. There’s even light in choosing to forgive. Darkness can’t exist in light, so I came to the conclusion that if I want to be “whole” or whatever word you want to place there, then I wake up everyday and I make decisions that fill me with light and push out the darkness little by little. 

Again, I know it’s easier said than done. I still struggle with my trauma, sometimes, like now, more than usual. I still sometimes feel defined by my trauma and my sexuality. I still struggle with the intrusive thoughts, the flashbacks, low self-worth, all the things. But. I choose to be better than that. I choose to at least try to bring more light into this world than darkness. More healing than pain. And that’s what matters. That’s what defines me.