I don’t know how.

I just wrote a guest post for Black Box Warnings. Yay! Sorry, you won’t get to read it for a while. Boooo. Anyway, I asked Mr. Le Clown if it was alright to swear since I can’t seem to talk about abuse without doing that. Consider that your warning that this post will contain swearing, too.

Fuck.

When will abuse ever stop making me angry? Is it because I got no justice? I’ll never know. The arrest warrants have all expired so I will never get justice and that just fucking pisses me off. I have so much rage because nothing I ever do will bring them to justice.

But would justice really make me feel any better? Do people who testified at trials for those who have wronged them actually feel better because the monsters are sent away? Does it make any difference?

On this side looking in, I think it would help. If I knew that Monsters #1 & 2 could never hurt anyone else ever again, I think that might make me feel better. As it is, the pedophile and the abuser and still free. Both of them have had a lot of freedom after what they did to me. Neither one of them has ever been held accountable for their crimes.

Some say that we, the victims, need to forgive. I can’t forgive. I just can’t. When I think about it in abstract terms, I think, well, maybe… but then their faces flash in my head and that’s that. I cannot forgive. How can I forgive without justice? Neither one of them has served a single day in jail. Neither one of them regrets anything they’ve ever done. Neither one of them will ever be punished for what they did to me. Both of them are free to create more victims. How the fuck can I forgive that? Forgive an active pedophile? Forgive someone who is, right now, creating more victims? Are you fucking kidding me?

This is where some of you say, but, Goldfish, holding on to that anger and hate is only hurting you, not them. And you’re right. I know that this anger of mine is only radiating inside of me. It doesn’t come close to hurting either of them. I know that. I’m well aware that nothing I do can touch them.  But my hatred is warm. It is familiar. It radiates from my center like the sun. It drives me forward. It keeps me going. This hate of mine is what keeps me alive.

Yet, at the same time, I know that I will never be free of them until I get rid of it.

I know that, if I ever want to help anyone else going through what I’ve gone through, which I really, really do, I need to shed it. I need to find a way to turn these negatives that drag me down into positives that can lift up others. In order to do that, I need to let go of the hate.

But how the fucking fuck can I not hate a pedophile who tied me up and tortured me, who stole everything that was innocent about me?

How in fuck can I forgive a monster who beat me with his fists, strangled me with his hands, belittled, abused and destroyed me?

These are questions I don’t have the answers to.

I don’t want this hate any more. I’ve had it for far too long. It has held me back. It has stopped me from helping myself and others, but I just don’t know how to get rid of it.