Now that I’m sort of wrapping up the “advice” part of this, I thought it was important to talk about how who knows anything anyway.
I feel like I sought out a lot of advice as I went through this.
I felt a lot like I was just spinning down this hole or something. I don’t know. It has been really hard, and I didn’t know what to do (for kind of a long time, and about some things, in some ways, I still don’t).
I’ve read books. I’ve seen a therapist. I’ve talked to friends. I’ve tried some different things on my own.
And some stuff worked, and some stuff didn’t. And some stuff worked sometimes and didn’t work other times.
(It’s been kinda a rough road.)
People have said all sorts of things re: advice and moving forward and such.
When I said it felt like an avalanche was falling on me, someone said you have to feel the whole avalanche hit your face. You’ve gotta stand there and take it until the snow falls past you. Whereas others thought you more try to avoid the snow. Lots of people had different takes.
And I think we could definitely make a case for why I didn’t really have to do Project 882, or definitely, even more so, why I didn’t have to go try to have experiences just to feel things (e.g. going to Safari Park and Sea World and stuff). Those things were as fun as they could’ve been in that headspace. But, it was a lot of money, and I was chasing a feeling that swimming with dolphins probably wasn’t going to truly help. (But I didn’t totally know that.)
I don’t know that it’d be even worth making the arguments as to whether I should’ve done this, or that, with all the decisions I made over the past year and a half, because I don’t think any of those things truly hurt me, per se.
Could things have been better, and could I maybe have made smarter decisions and had some better times? Sure, maybe, I guess. I dunno. But would I have magically “healed” any sooner? Probably not. Hard to say.
And nothing suuuuuper irreparable-seeming has happened. (I mean, some crappy stuff has happened, but, as of now, that I can see, nothing hella-hella life altering (as far as the decisions post-assault, of trying to figure out how to move on/keep living went). So, it all is what it is, I suppose.