Sorry - from 'Homeless' written 17/12/2011

I feel like saying sorry. Well I am always sorry, I have spent my life being sorry, and everyone else has enforced that by telling me it is all me, even when it can't be.

No, the sorry is because I spend my time in the library reading when I am not on the computer, and I read about what other people have been through, the abuse they have suffered in the church.

I grew up in cult-like circumstances, and what I suffered did amount to abuse, emotional, mental, physical and sexual abuse, but I know from the accounts that I read that other people have been through more severe abuse and neglect and haven't been allowed childhoods, people who were left in the hands of church-based convents and boarding schools and orphanages, people who were kept from the outside world and abused constantly and degraded, my own upbringing was traumatic, and my adulthood vulnerable to abuse because I needed support and safe people and ended up abused and destroyed by the church, but I know that some of the stories I have read about church based abuse are worse than mine in violence and constant sexual abuse.
So I am sorry, sorry that I am such a drama queen, and sorry for what all those survivors went through and how no one heard their cries for help and they were made to feel that they deserved it and that there was no hope.
And most of all I am sorry that their abusers were working in God's Name and seemed to believe that their unchristian and criminal actions towards the children and vulnerable people in their care were acceptable and that God would find their actions acceptable.
Those abusers will never say sorry or accept responsibility, they delude themselves and make out that they were doing what was in the best interests of those in their charge, just as those who emotionally and sexually abused me did when I was a vulnerable adult in their care.
To be honest I am not sure that my parents understood what they were doing to us at all.

None of the children who were put in that convent or boarding school and denied their lives and emotions and even denied their reactions to what was happening to them were to blame.
And there are still people out there who can't speak out because they were abused and persuaded that their abuser, who was 'close to God' could not possibly to blame and that if it ever came out the victim would be shamed for their own behaviour, as I was, it affects people for their whole lives, leaving them isolated by their own reactions, flashbacks and distresses if they never speak about it, admit it happened, and come to terms and know that it wasn't their fault. It is never the fault of a child or vulnerable person if someone preys on them.

I am sorry for this mess where survivors have to come to terms with God, someone who allows these people to work in His Name and yet do such atrocious things and blame the victims and tell them that they (the abuser) has only been kind to the victim, kindness? God? Survivors can end up very confused and damaged by that perspective of God from the abuser. And in an isolated abused world, who else can the child or vulnerable adult turn to if God is on the side of the abuser?

But all the sorry in the world won't put things right.