Lal

Welcome! As one new member to another I'm glad you're here and so sorry you have reason to be. It's really, really rough when these things come back up after so long. Everyone here is so kind and I hope it helps just knowing you're not going through this alone.

It's really nice to meet you! I love dogs, not allowed to have one in my apartment but I dogsit for all my friends the image you gave was lovely and comforting.

Welcome! I'm so sorry for what happened to bring you here. I'm new too here too, and new to trying to deal with old things as well. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to confront and I understand and hope things get easier for you.

Oh man, exactly. I was in therapy for other things and any time they'd ask anything that could possibly lead to disclosure I'd just freeze up and say no as fast as i possibly could. It's not like I was dragged into an alleyway at gunpoint, so who would believe me anyway, who would care? But whatever your feelings are I'm telling you, right now, point blank, they are real and they are justified and I'm sorry that they are and you had to ever go through what you did to have them in the first place.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to respond here yet but I just. I want you to know it didn't come out weird, and I know how hard it is to even talk about these things, and you're really brave to do so.

Thank you both so much for your kindness and understanding. It's a big sigh of relief to just be able to say a thing was real in a way that is not so scary, and to not-- to not be, i don't know, feel like you're wrong or bad. Like you'll bother other people or make them uncomfortable or look at you like you're a sad dog forever. And it means a lot to me, more than I can say, what you've both said.

First of all, thank you so much for having something like this available. I never knew this sort of thing existed. Some things happened well over a decade ago and I just never acknowledged or wanted to think about it, and I didn't think it "counted" anyway! And then somebody said something completely unrelated the other day and it was like it was brand new and terrible again so I thought, hey, probably best to do something about this haha. Thanks for allowing me to be here, I really look forward to meeting you all and learning more about how to move forward.