Let the Dead Bury the Dead

ciation is your fate. You were a dead man walking the moment they strapped your victim’s dead weight to your back.

Here’s what I want you to see, modern reader. All too often, we assume our attacker’s punishment. We strap the dead weight of our experience onto our backs and attempt to live a normal, healthy life carrying that rotting corpse as it (literally and figuratively) sucks the life from us. You see, when you carry that dead weight, you become a two-fold victim.

The real solution to your recovery from assault is to cut yourself free from your incident and assailant. The ultimate form of justice occurs when you separate yourself from these things that bind you into cycles of torment. The moment you release that dead weight—this punishment you were never meant to endure—your recovery (and you) will thrive.

LeT The DeaD BurY The DeaD

Lately, I think a lot about why so many people cling to the details of their assault and assailant. I wonder whether survivors would release the dead weight if they could see how the consequences of holding on hurts them more than they have already been hurt. I wonder all these things because I’ve lived these experiences and lost some time walking with the dead. Looking back, I wish someone had walked me down a different path toward my recovery—a path free of unintentional selfharm and self-destruction.

Much of my own self-harm and destruction come from being a nonconfrontational person by nature. For me, it was easier to dismiss an incident or conflict than to put all that energy into fighting to be validated, understood, or believed. Better to make myself smaller—invisible even—if it meant avoiding making myself vulnerable to more conflict. Better to shut up before things got heated and no one was left standing next to me. Sound familiar? This is exactly how I lived my teen and young-adult years: as a ghost of myself, haunted by my prior hurts and trapped between the living and the dead. I lost too much time during my teenage years and twenties carrying around the dead weight of my assaults. I carried these burdens as though my identity was tied to them and refused to allow anyone around me to remove or share the load.