Dear past neighbors and bystanders: Thank you for doing nothing all those times you heard or saw something. Thank you so much for not helping me to escape, for not calling the police, for not giving a damn about the little girl with big scared eyes and long dark hair. At first, I meant this in sarcasm and now, I mean it genuinely. Thank you for being so terrible and neglectful because you taught me that I had to rescue myself that I can rely on NO ONE.

Submitted by Anonymous

I’m tired of fear, shame, self-hatred and secrets. And no, mother, you have never prove yourself a protector or someone trustworthy for me to stop keeping this a secret. Unless it’s toward a man and he hurt someone. Then you’ll give him all the protection and support in the world. If you ever wanted to start a Christian ministry for abusers and rapists where you can tell them how they’re wonderful and how you’re totally on their side through all of it, and how you’ll totally help them work their way back into situations where they have ample opportunity to abuse because you just care so much about them, you’d be real good at that. Not even a half-hearted, insincere apology needed! Not for the poor abusers and rapists in this world who might actually have to suffer for what they did. What a travesty if that happened!

You as good as told him it was okay. In fact, it was almost explicit – you let him know that he could do whatever he wanted to me because you would never hold him accountable. You would never see me as human either. So you are as much to blame as he is, and I hope you realize that one day – one day, when I stop having to have secrets – and you suffer everyday of your life with the knowledge.

But, knowing you, you’ll probably just join that theoretical ministry and feel the utmost pity for yourself that anyone could dare hold you accountable for what you’ve done.

Dear Dad,

You fucked up. A lot. You drank too much and enacted corporal punishment out of rage. It happened to me because it happened to you, both at home and in parochial school. Violence towards children was normalized for you, so you didn’t grasp that it was wrong until it was far too late. I understand that. And while there are a lot of things I will never understand (like why you’d always hit me but never my sister), at least you understand what you did and why. You’ve made major efforts towards becoming a better person; you quit drinking, you cut the caffeine out, you started practicing Zen Buddhism…and you apologized, not so that I’d forgive you but because, as you said, you “fucked up. And when a person fucks up this badly, the least they can do is apologize, and try not to do it again.”

It’s because of these things that I’m able to forgive, if not forget. Because you did all this, not in an attempt to earn my trust back (because you rightly understand that I will never wholly trust you again) but because you decided you were never going to be that person again.

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To my mother:

You know, when the man who beat me bloody apologizes for it, it’s not really a good response to tell me it never happened. I remember, quite clearly, screaming for help, pounding on your locked bedroom door while dad kicked me over and over again. You locked my sister and I out of the house for hours, in the rain, in the snow, in sub-zero winter and 100+ degree heat, so you could talk on the phone. If we had a snack after school, you made us skip dinner AND breakfast the next day. You forced us to wear shoes so small our feet bled. You punished your autistic children by forcing us to walk around in crowded, noisy shopping malls for hours (IN THE TOO SMALL SHOES!). I remember. My sister remembers. What’s more, dad remembers it too. Are we ALL “imagining things?” Do we ALL have “false memories?”

Somehow, I find that unlikely.

While dad makes efforts to become a better person, you become worse.

You are a monster. I can’t even bring myself to write anything more than that.