Author’s note

This piece was originally written for a creative writing class, where the theme was “Abusers.”

It’s not a story about what happened — it’s about what remains.
The words come from all of us, but the voice is a blend of Midnight and me.

❖ ❖ ❖

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The Fam asked me to write about this topic for everyone.
Yet how can I?
How can I express every voice, every experience, every feeling?

We discovered there is a term for what we lived through: RAMCOA.
The acronym alone is chilling. We can’t even type out what it stands for. Google will oblige.

I am not one of those who went through it directly.
Yet my hands tremble as I try to string letters into words, words into sentences.

The roar inside is deafening.
And yet, every voice is clear in the cacophonic symphony of our Brain.
Every sensation and feeling comes into awareness—
each one distinguishable under the lens of trauma’s microscope.

I cannot speak of abusers,
but I can speak of the effects of their actions.

Random hugs, occasional treats, rare smiles—
those were enough to normalise the exploitation.
To a neglected child raised on hate,
whatever happened in between those gestures of pseudo-kindness felt like a price almost worth paying.

That set the standard for most of our life.

We learned to think like them.
Judge like them.
Shame like them.

We internalised a way of being that was far removed from who we truly are.

But over time, our inner light began to shine through the tenebrae that had enveloped us.

We are unlearning.

We are breaking through the mind control of incongruent religious ideals—
those that spread intolerance and loathing in what should be a peaceful and caring world.

That’s how we came to understand that forgiveness is not ours to give.
Let the gods deal with that.
That’s above our paygrade.

We are not broken.

Our plurality allowed us to weather the storm that lasted most of our life—
while safeguarding our littles’ innocence,
while preserving something sacred even in the bleakest of days.

So no, we will not delve into the abusers.
Let them be nameless. Let them be gone.

Instead, let us celebrate our authentic selves.
Let us heal those who endured.
Let us refuse to believe we were born to pay some karmic price for uncertain sins in uncertain past lives.

In recovery, we meet others like us.
So many of them wrestle with an existence devoid of hope.

But we can help.
We are qualified.
Because abusers, unwillingly, taught us how to survive.

Made of love. Forged by hate.

We hold hope for others.
We support them on their journey.
We help them overcome.

After all, light can only glow in the darkness…

And we carry that darkness, because it is part of us —
inextricable and indelibly woven into the fabric of our identities.

We honour our darkness by embracing it with our light —
in a perennial dance of hope and despair, forever entwined.