This is getting way ahead of myself, but I felt a sudden urge to post it.
I know what it's like to hate your rapists. My brother and I even tried to kill one of them. Yes, it is extremely ironic that my former longterm sexual abuser would attempt to murder my rapist.
I think there are levels of forgiveness. I also see a difference between forgiving someone and restoring them to full relationship. There is no way I'd ever want to hang out with my rapists, even if I could. I don't think forgiving my son's sexual abuser means I should ever give him free access to my hypothetical grandchildren. Forgiving someone does not make them worthy of our trust.
My therapist has said that he sometimes wishes my brother had pulled the trigger when he had the older rapist at gunpoint. Rationally and morally he disagrees with revenge killings; he even thinks that it is wrong for him to wish such a thing. But his outrage at what my rapists did, not just to me but to other women, cries out for justice and vengeance.
I used to feel the same way, not that long ago. Many times my rapists were my imagined target for kicks, punches, large wooden sticks, swords, arrows, bullets, etc. Sometimes I wondered if my anger at them fueled my more violent hobbies. I believe in hell, and I'm ashamed to say that I took pleasure in the thought that my older rapist surely must be roasting in eternal torment.
I'm not sure what changed that. We haven't really talked about forgiveness much in therapy, and never in connection with my rapists. If anything, since I'm realizing and admitting how awful the rape was, and how I am still scarred by it in every way but physically, I should be more angry at them. And I have been angry, almost frighteningly so.
But recently I found myself, through no effort of my own, free of the desire for vengeance. What they did was horrible beyond words and almost destroyed me. But I have survived. I have experienced love and joy and the births of my adorable babies. They didn't steal everything from me. And it dawned on me that I would never ever want to be them. To me, that would be a sort of hell in itself. I surprised myself by praying for the older of the two, now most surely dead, "God, please have mercy on his soul." That was surprising on a number of levels, especially since my faith tradition does not include praying for the dead.
But, to me, that's forgiveness. I've tried to will myself to forgive them before, but it never worked. This time it happened without me noticing until it was a done deal. And it feels good...surprisingly freeing.
Getting rid of the hate, anger, and frustrated desire for revenge hasn't made the memories of my rape any less painful. It's just made me feel somewhat cleaner and lighter inside...and part of me is more free than I've been in way, way too many years.
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