A journey towards change and letting go.

So recently I've been thinking lots, I know I've talked about healing and a recovery journey, and I've been thinking about what this means to me. One of the thoughts I've had involves me, "letting go" of the past, but for some reason I actually find this a scary prospect. For so many years, all I wanted was to go back to the me I was before being raped, but as the years pass me by, this vision of me gets smaller and fades away further into the distance, in fact I don't think I even know who she is anymore, I barely even remember her, it's been so long since I knew her. Because, being raped, over the past 16 years has become an enormous part of who I am and what I am, I'd even go as far as saying that it's become me. I spent so long convincing myself that I was fine, that I would NOT allow being raped to become a part of who I was. I failed miserably. It really is who I am, some days I still see myself as a victim, mostly though, I'm a survivor. But it's had such a massive impact on my life, affecting so many of the decisions I make, affecting how I think, how I act, who I am. I'm a completely different person since that happened, I find it so much harder to trust people, and almost impossible to trust myself, instead, relying on others to make decisions for me. The part that I find scary though, is that if I let go of all the feelings, all the guilt, hurt, blame and pain, then what, if anything will actually be left of me? I allowed the rape to consume me, to become me, I lost sight of the old me, the girl I was, she disappeared long ago. If you take rape away I am nothing, because I don't know how to be anything else, this is all I know, this is who I've been for 16 years. I don't know if I have the strength left, to create a new me, to become someone else, someone I don't actually know, someone I've never met. Because it's up to me to change, it's what I need to do, I know in my heart that I simply cannot continue to carry all this with me forever, the burden just grows heavier as time passes. After a long talk a couple of nights ago, probably one of the most, frank, honest and open discussions I've had in 16 years, I've come to the conclusion that there are 2 major things I need to deal with (and probably lots and lots of smaller ones, but hopefully these will fall into place as I worth through the others) The 2 big things are T and M - I have to come to terms with what they both did. Both are entirely different incidents, which have their own entirely different set of issues - maybe that needs it's own blog post though. The smaller issues involve; trust, touch, letting go, relaxing, cutting, triggers and flashbacks, just for starters. So for now the journey is underway, a journey I've been taking for 16 years already, but this time I'm choosing a new path, I need to move away from the bad coping mechanisms of the past, and learn new, healthy ways to deal with things, and that is what this part of my journey will focus on.