For the past few weeks, I have been counting down the days until my screening appointment with the psychological therapies team and I’m petrified! It’s this Wednesday and I have no idea what to expect (a lot of questions I suppose, but what questions?). 10 years ago, I had a pretty disastrous experience with counselling and I have been using that experience as the reason I am so scared to go through counselling again.

Reading this, I recognised the real reason I am afraid. I’m afraid of letting go of my lies, dropping my many masks, hell, I don’t even know what’s a lie and what’s the truth anymore, or if there’s any truth left in me. I’m embarrassingly aware of one or two of the lies – not just told to myself, but also to others – and I’ve lived them for so long, I don’t know how to give them up. I don’t know what truths the removal of the lies and masks will uncover and I’m really scared that the people who love and care about me won’t like the truth.

In Christine’s words, I reacted to those lies by trying to ‘prove’ they weren’t true. I knew they were—they were true to me—but I was hoping people would be fooled by my facade. I KNOW people have been fooled by my facade, my husband, my sister, my children, my grandchildren, my friends, my staff, my customers (oh, and me). They are all I have, what am I if not a sum total of my lies? And why should these people still love me, care about me, have respect for me, when they find out our entire relationship has been built on lies?

Louise really got me blubbering with “it’s like I don’t want to exist and there’s a big part of me like that. I would rather be sleeping, or unconscious, life is too painful. What a difficult thing to realise. I only had this dream last night and then I read your post. It relates because I don’t remember my childhood up till I was nine, and now things are coming back. I’m 32″.

This post relates to me so much too. My sexual abuse started when I was a toddler and continued until I was in my early teens to be replaced by psychological abuse, rape and three abusive relationships. At 28 I met my husband and it took another 3 years for me to consciously acknowledge some of what happened to me. Now, 10 years later, most of it is still in the fog and I’m quite happy for it to stay there at least a while longer – I’m having a hard enough time dealing with what has come back and still don’t remember anything concrete about my childhood until around the age of 14. Even after that, there are periods in my life which are a complete blank. I have learnt to dissociate to the point that I ceased to exist on the emotional and intellectual planes – there in body, most certainly not in spirit or mind. Someone else was always there in my stead and I agree completely with Louise, that really is exhausting!

Thank you so much for letting me pour my heart out here, I don’t know how I would have gotten through the last few weeks without all of you, your stories, your encouragement and most of all, your understanding and empathy. I am so happy to no longer feel alone on my journey, though devastated that there are so many of us. Hugs to you all