Skip to main content

Dear Cousin


I started off having a really great morning. I was laughing, singing, making jokes, and having a good time at work; but all that changed with one message; Hi. It seems like a harmless word and under normal circumstances it is. However, the person who sent this one seemingly harmless word is someone I have been avoiding for quite some time. Recently they tried to add me back on facebook and I haven't accepted them. The problem is this person triggers my PTSD. All the things of the past come crashing in like a tidal wave and I am helpless for the time being to do anything about it. 
It started simple enough, just a comment on how my working out inspired them to work out again, eventually it changed to "that one picture" with the hiding monkey face. I brushed it off but comments like that became more frequent and I quickly began to get uncomfortable. I thought if I just ignored him things would be okay that is until that one little word. So I decided to write this letter. 

 Dear Cousin,
You probably don't mean any harm by the comments that you make but they make me feel uncomfortable. They take me back to a time when one of my cousins who shall remain nameless tried to force himself on me, not once but multiple times. I hope that bringing the impropriety of your words (and emojis) to the forefront helps you to understand that what may seem harmless to you is actually very triggering to me. Maybe you will read this and maybe you won't either way I hope that one day if you haven't read this I get the courage to speak up for myself now since I wasn't able to speak up about something that happened to me in the past. Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope we can move forward with a better understanding. 

 Love,
Nicole

 Disclaimer: To family members that may have read this. Please don't ask who it is or was I will not talk about it and I will not tell you. Just know that I'm on a path to healing.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is therapy REALLY working?

At this point I have to ask, is therapy really working?    I've been in therapy on and off since I was about 14 years old... maybe one or two years younger than that. That being said, I never really got much out of it in the teen years because let's face it, as a teen you really don't want to cooperate with any adult, let alone a "Shrink". I would go and talk about nothing of importance, pretending to sleep when it was my mother's turn to come in for the session with me. How this woman knew I wasn't sleeping was beyond me. I did what I was required to do and got my Doritos every time I went, so I was happy. Looking back at my first session, I can see the pattern that started even way back then. I have the hardest time finding competent therapists. Let me explain, from the moment I read an article in Teen Magazine about depression, I basically diagnosed myself. My being in therapy wasn't even the result of my mother thinking I had depression; it was bec...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why I Didn't Have a Bucket List

Random conversations at work tend to be the best sort of conversations. One such conversation occurred last week that has been on my mind ever since. In true ADHD fashion, I cannot tell you how this conversation came about. I can only tell you that by the conclusion of that conversation, I have been contemplating deeply on my bucket list. Two of the three of us had bucket lists, can you guess which person didn't have one? Yes, that would be me. Oddly enough, during my recent vacation to Tennessee with my best girlfriends, the mention of go-karting as something on one of their bucket lists didn't get this sort of response out of me. In fact, I thought it was cute that that was one of the things on their list. So, why was last week's conversation different? Why was that the moment I thought about what was on mine, and did I actually have one? It's taken a week to figure it all out, but this is what I came up with. First, I didn't even know what should go on my bucket ...
Post a Comment
Read more

90 Days

  Appearances will keep you bound. I share so much, yet so little, of my life. Whether it is out of "pretending" to be a private person or shame or both I couldn't tell you. Even now I'm almost certain it's that I'm not going to tell you. I have to explain some things about alcoholism . It is not as black and white as you might think it is. See my issue with drinking started back in 2010, 2011. I drank because it was fun. I drank because it was an escape. I drank because my life at that time was difficult, but I didn't drink daily. I've always been a binge drinker . I could party on the weekends and go to work like the weekend didn't happen. I even recognized back then the possibility of a drinking problem. The clearest incident in my mind was one night I had been drinking, I got sleepy and decided to go to bed, now, an alcoholic doesn't waste alcohol. I had my cup that was still about halfway full, I didn't want to guzzle the e...
1 comment
Read more