6/8/2021 I feel forced to lie again, about an obvious truth, or lose the friends I love and the community I spent years findingRead Now As a child I was sexually abused by an adult for many years. He told me to lie to everyone around me, to keep 'our' secret, that I'd be blamed if I told the truth. I believed him, and I struggled for years to recover from that. Not only the abuse, but the lying.
Now, as an adult in a very progressive city, I am being aggressively told by an obviously male, straight man in my circle to refer to him as not only female, but a lesbian. My friends support him, even those who privately acknowledge it's absurd, and expect me to do the same. I feel forced to lie again, about an obvious truth, or lose the friends I love and the community I spent years finding. It feels dangerous to speak, though I'm ashamed of my cowardice. The cognitive dissonance is painful, and it has damaged my relationships. I feel like I'm right back to that childhood trauma: lie, or lose everything. Be complicit in your own abuse. How is that ok? I don't understand how we got here. Comments are closed.
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