Help
Welcome to Pandora's Aquarium, a rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse survivor message board and chat room.
If you've been a victim of any type of sexual violence, you belong here. What you see below represents just a fraction of the resources and survivor support available. Register now to join our community and take full advantage of what this online support group has to offer you as you heal and recover, or sign in to remove this message.
You are not alone, we can support you as you heal, and you've made an important step toward recovery by reaching out. If you are unable to register or have any questions, please contact the staff or view our home page.
Before becoming pregnant with my second child & right around the time when I had gotten engaged to my husband I decided to put my career on hold to have more time to spend focusing on important things I'd had to neglect for a really long time. When I met my husband he had a stable job & investments and could comfortably provide for me and my daughter. He was in the position to give me something I'd never had: time to myself.
But all of this has been hard for me, and I'm not accustomed to having such ease & so much time to myself. My whole life has been centred around pain and hardship. I went from being in a terribly abusive situation as a child, to being in an equally abusive relationship as a teenager, then I left and was pregnant as a result of that relationship. Finding out I was pregnant changed everything. I struggled and worked as hard as I possibly could to find a way to pay for school - I spent years in school AND working and being absolutely broke all while spiralling into major, major debt to pay for the school. I had some help from my extremely supportive partner at the time, but nothing in comparison to what my husband has been able to give me now.
I've felt really blessed and fortunate, and it's meant that I've been able to focus on my now 13 month old son and my nearly a teenager (yikes!) daughter, but it's also left me with this strange feeling of being... a failure? I feel like my self-worth for so many years and depended on my ability to keep going, to keep pushing toward my end goal of finishing schooling and the first few years of grunt work in my career to build a comfortable life for myself and my daughter.
I've never wanted to ask anyone for anything, although I've often had to. But I've never been in a position where I felt I wasn't contributing or building towards a "future" in a financial sense. It's likely that at this point I won't be able to return to the career I'd put on hold and part of me feels really devastated by that.
I don't want to feel like a failure, and I'm trying to better understand where these intense feelings of not being 'good enough' or 'strong enough' are coming from...
-M
But all of this has been hard for me, and I'm not accustomed to having such ease & so much time to myself. My whole life has been centred around pain and hardship. I went from being in a terribly abusive situation as a child, to being in an equally abusive relationship as a teenager, then I left and was pregnant as a result of that relationship. Finding out I was pregnant changed everything. I struggled and worked as hard as I possibly could to find a way to pay for school - I spent years in school AND working and being absolutely broke all while spiralling into major, major debt to pay for the school. I had some help from my extremely supportive partner at the time, but nothing in comparison to what my husband has been able to give me now.
I've felt really blessed and fortunate, and it's meant that I've been able to focus on my now 13 month old son and my nearly a teenager (yikes!) daughter, but it's also left me with this strange feeling of being... a failure? I feel like my self-worth for so many years and depended on my ability to keep going, to keep pushing toward my end goal of finishing schooling and the first few years of grunt work in my career to build a comfortable life for myself and my daughter.
I've never wanted to ask anyone for anything, although I've often had to. But I've never been in a position where I felt I wasn't contributing or building towards a "future" in a financial sense. It's likely that at this point I won't be able to return to the career I'd put on hold and part of me feels really devastated by that.
I don't want to feel like a failure, and I'm trying to better understand where these intense feelings of not being 'good enough' or 'strong enough' are coming from...
-M
Share This Entry:
