This blog deals with some ugly, shocking, disturbing, and painful subject matter -- because that's what rape, incest, and abuse are. Sometimes the language I use may reflect this ugliness. I don't use "bad words" lightly or easily; in fact, most of the people in my life have never heard such words cross my lips. Early on in therapy, as I began processing my sexual trauma, it was quite a dilemma to choose the words that best reflected my experience. It seemed inappropriate to get all clinical, and at the same time, I didn't want to use euphemisms because years of minimizing the truth had proven harmful rather than helpful.
For years, I have found the word "fuck" to be horribly offensive, because it tells a lie about how God designed sex to be, by reducing something loving, intimate, beautiful, potentially life-giving, and meaningful into something ugly. That's exactly what rape and incest does. Neither rape nor incest is real sex, but something ugly and twisted and abusive, a hideous opposite of what sex is supposed to be. To be honest, shouldn't our words reflect that? Please forgive me if my vocabulary is so limited that I have to use actual obscenities to describe the obscenity of sexual abuse.
This isn't just a language warning. It's also a trigger warning. I'm debating whether or not to put "trigger warnings" on some of my posts. The problem is, I don't know what your triggers are. For quite some time, I could not read or hear the words "power and control" without panicking or dissociating. Even typing them now, I have to fight to stay grounded.
So...my warning to fellow survivors...please be careful. I'll try to do the same.
