Yes, I have been neglecting this site.  Not for any really good reason.  I guess because I pretty much finished my story, I kind of stalled on how to proceed.  The truth is my story is nowhere near finished, not really.

Today marks the second anniversary (there must be another word that I could use that isn’t so ‘positive’) of my sexual assault and the first anniversary of this website.  I was curious to see what I had written last year in my journal about the launch of this site, and because I was doing my best to clear the clutter out of my house, that particular journal got put in a box in my garage, which meant I had to go and find it.  Imagine my surprise when I saw what I had written!  Nothing.  Nada, zip, zilch.  Really?  How can that be?  Well, last year at this time, though I was close, oh so close, to being finished with my therapy and dealing with my attack, I was still very much in it.  The closest date to today that I wrote was on 28 September 2012 and all I wrote was:  “Mostly, I feel like a big, fat fraud, pretending to be happy.”  Clearly, I was still struggling.

And if I am truly honest with you, and with myself, I still am, to a degree.  Oh, it is nowhere like before, and I definitely have more good days than not, BUT I am still dealing with the aftermath.  I am working on forgiving my attacker, and believe it or not, forgiving myself.  I have been told my numerous people that I am too hard on myself, and this is one example of that.  On the one hand, I KNOW I did nothing wrong; on the other, though, I think I somehow blame myself for what happened.  Still.  And this drives me crazy.  It seems so illogical.  Yet it is still there.  Not always, but enough to make me aware of it.

I have been feeling ‘off’ the last week or so, and waking up this morning there was no question of what day it is.  I wonder how long this will plague me.  Will I always remember this day?  Or will it fade in significance over time?

This is what I wrote in my journal this morning:  As I was drawing my angel card this morning, I ask that the perfect card be given to me, and my reaction to drawing ‘COURAGE’ was, Oh My Gosh!  This is the one word that has been used over and over to describe me and my reaction and/or handling of my attack.  And the one word that I have trouble seeing myself as being.  It feels surreal, like it didn’t even happen and at the same time, it is ever-present in my life.  It’s not that I necessarily or particularly dwell on it, but it is definitely there.  I think physically I feel it the most.  I still have a lot of neck pain, and though it is not debilitating, I am still very much aware of it.  I realized this morning, too, that I haven’t completely forgiven myself for ‘allowing’ it to happen.  That’s what I tapped on this morning – forgiving myself, Bill, the police, the EMTs, the D.A., his attorney and my attacker. I must forgive, not because any of it was right, but for myself, for my peace of mind, for my emotional health and well-being.  I DESERVE to be pain-free, emotionally, physically and in every other way.  Two years of my life have been dominated by an event which, in all likelihood, was just a few minutes long.  How is this possible?  How can 2 or 3 or 5 minutes out of a lifetime be that important?  525,600 minutes in a year and I continue to let those few minutes determine how I feel?

All I can say is I am doing my best to continue to heal what is still left to heal.  It is an ongoing process.  I am hopeful, however, that in time it will be less and less so ‘present’ in my life.  It is just one event in a lifetime of events, it is in the past and I choose to live in the present.  I choose, as Milton said, heaven.  I choose to release the regret, the blame and the guilt.  Through love I am made whole again.  I choose love.