Repercussions

Well, I'm home on holiday and thoroughly enjoying being with my family again, but one thing has been brought home to me.  Pretty hard in fact. When I made the decision to reveal what had happened to me as a child and named my abuser publicly, I knew that I would lose a part of my family.  And for the most part I have lived happily with that decision.

Okay, maybe not happily, but I have accepted that they have cut me out of their lives and can fully understand why.  But there are times that I wish things could be different.

This weekend for example.  I have not seen much of my eldest son for the last year or so, as between us we have worked away from home for much of that time.  So it was with great happiness that I found out he would be home at the same time as me.  And I got a great deal of pleasure out of spending a week with him, before he returned to work.  Then I found out he was off this weekend and immediately assumed he would come home.  However, instead he chose to go and spend the weekend with a part of the family that has cut me off.  And like an idiot, I encouraged him.

I made my choices and went through what I did, but at the end of the day, the only people who know the truth of what happened are 'Alex' and me.  Everyone else has had to make a decision based on whether they believe me or not.  And obviously, his family will believe he is innocent.  That is to be expected, unless of course he decided to do the right thing and admit it, which is never going to happen.  So that leaves me out in the cold where they are concerned.

But that does not change the fact that I was close to his parents for most of my life and the way I feel about them has not changed.  His mother, in particular has not had a good few years and to my mind, if I cannot be there to support her, the least I can do is let her spend time with my boys, who were just as close to her as I was.  So I actively encouraged him to go and see her, sacrificing my own chance to see him.  And now I am feeling just a teensy bit bitter.  And blaming myself.

Should I maybe just have kept my mouth closed and lived with it in silence?  The damage I have done to familial relationships is irreversible and I seem to be the one on the losing end.  It just doesn't seem fair.  I have lost family that I truly cared about and I can't help but wonder if they still care about me, even just a little.

I know I will probably never get answers to these questions, just as I will probably never get any form of acknowledgement or apology from 'Alex'.  And I know I need to accept it.  And mostly I have.  But there are always those times when I sit and think 'If only I'd kept quiet'.  

And then I look at where I am now and who I have become and I know I did the right thing.