As We Approach A New Year...

how do you feel about the things you are sorry for as the new year approaches? Time for a fresh start? Time to be thoughtful about it? What else or different to that? I tend to view new year as a fresh beginning - which is even more so for me now as moving and starting a new job in the new year. So just wondered how you all felt at this time of year.

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas and peaceful and good new year and 2015.

Hugs

Cracked

For some things I have done I will just try to start over. There are other things that I can't forgive myself over. But I always get far more depressed this time of year. I don't get along with my family, except my brother. At least he has been here to help me out.

I hope you and everyone else have Happy Holidays and a good New Year!!

Thanks for starting the thread CG. It should prompt some interesting replies. I wish some of the one time posters would return and say how they are doing. I sometimes get caught up in other people's stories on here and wonder how they are. For instance, I hope Vespertine and Lionchaser - both of whom I exchanged some pleasant emails with - are doing okay. I'm really glad that you are feeling positive about the future as I know it has been a dramatic and difficult year for you. You work wonders here and I have a lot of respect and admiration for you, which isn't something I'd normally say about people on the Internet I essentially don't know!!

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I'm still very much defined by my remorse I think... in as much as it still dominates my thoughts on a minute to minute level but (and this is important) I've been able to take a little pride in my achievements this year, especially with my volunteering. I found my weekly volunteering at a community hospital in Devon very gratifying... they were so in need of volunteers and the condition of the elderly patients was such that whether I felt 'worthy' or not of helping out became somewhat irrelevant. I worry a lot about my good actions being tainted by my previous bad behaviour... or that for me to volunteer is to act in bad faith and deceive people, but at the same time, it has brought me some of the only peace and real happiness I have experienced in recent years and has been - at a simple, utilitarian level - useful and helpful. Good work is good work.

Also, I think that volunteering with Sexpression has been a good thing to do. They're a charity that teachsex education to kids, with a focus on healthy communication and consent. At first, I was very worried about the idea of working with children, being a statutory rapist... but since T (my ex partner / survivor) was 16 and all that is the age of consent here in Britain, I feel like it might be acceptable for me to work with British children, especially as I am always supervised, or working in a pair with another volunteer. Moreover, all the kids are under 16. T would have been in sixth form / college here in Britain when we were together, whereas these are all secondary school students. Since I've never so much as kissed someone under 16, I don't feel so awkward or skeezy working with children of that age. Moreover, while I don't think it would be right for me to work with victims of abuse directly, I like the idea of helping to ensure that kids don't exploit or hurt others in relationships and are aware of issues of enthusiastic consent... obviously it is impossible for me to know if I would have behaved differently when younger if I had received good sex education and had been aware that rape is not simply intercourse achieved through force or restraint, but any sex without free, engaged, mutual and informed consent and the fact that I did not receive this information in no way excuses or mitigates my behaviour one jot. But I like to think that such teaching might prevent even one young man from messing around with a girl under the age of consent or being pushy with regards to sex. I hope so.

I certainly still think about suicide a lot and have made plans to do so... but at the same time, I feel that it would be an act committed for my own sake - an attempt to escape feeling so guilty - rather than a genuinely act of accountability or something that would help T or other survivors. Also, suicide cannot undo the past. The world and its history will continue without me. Sometimes I tell myself that time heals all... that meaning and suffering are both only temporary as eventually all humans will die and even the Earth one day will cease to exist.

Yet, even if there is no-one left to remember the past, it doesn't stop the past from having occurred. As humans we only experience time temporally. Any act of betrayal and abuse stays fixed, unchanging, in time, at the point that it occurred in the past. However that doesn't mean that individual perpetrators can't change... only that change is hard and must be continual and processual. I will always be someone who abused a 16-year-old child, but I certainly can be a very different kind of person to the perpetrator of this abuse. Someone that gives me faith in this regard is the (apparent) scientific fact (?) that the male brain continues to develop and grow until one's mid-20s. As such, my brain should be different today to what it was over 6 years ago. I am thankful that I came to the realisation of the absolutely inappropriateness and horribleness of my behaviour sooner rather than later through reading feminist blogs and other online sources, while my brain was still able to change.

Finally, some people have sent me some very kind, compassionate and useful messages this year. I don't want to excerpt much, but I thought the following were good things for me to bear in mind:

You've been given a fresh start though by this girl's grace, and you need to accept it, take a deep breath and try and let the fear and shame leave. Not everyone who's done the exact same thing as you gets a break like this - some are punished, and worse, some people have to live with knowing they've irreparably hurt a precious and valuable person, as people respond differently to the same incident some people take more hurt than others.

Let's assume that you still feel like what you did with T was an evil thing, and you're wholly responsible for it (I tried to argue against it, but I would understand if you held onto this view). You've contacted her, you've apologised profusely and you've done as much as you can to make amends. You paid her back, and you even tried to offer yourself up for legal punishment, but that was more than she wanted. You did as much as necessary to gain her forgiveness. She told you you were taking it too seriously, and you've gone ahead with other actions to make amends to the world at large through your work with sexpression etc.

In my book, you have been forgiven by your victim. You said you thought child rapists were irredeemable. Well, that's possible. A victim might turn to her rapist and say that her life has been ruined, and she can never forgive him. In that case, the rapist is unforgivable. You might feel like what you did SHOULD be unforgivable. In fact, I think you do feel this way - you think she should want to prosecute you for what you've done, but for some reason she doesn't. She doesn't think you're unforgivable, and you've been forgiven.

On an intuitive, emotional level I still feel that I am past the moral event horizon and essentially self-identify as a 'child rapist' (even though my victim explicitly rejected the label of child molestation) and then, in turn, apply everyone people online say about child rapists (i.e. they they / we should be tortured, executed, suffer infinitely in Hell) to myself and feel like my suicide would help people, be a form of justice, or even simply make a few people on the Internet happy.

Yet I also feel strongly that the opinion of T as an individual is massively important and I know that I have had a lot of support from many kind people online, who recognise that what I did was wrong, but feel I deserve a second shot at life. The difficulty is still convincing myself of that.

I sincerely hope the one-time posters haven't returned because they are now getting on with their lives and not spending so much time ruminating their past. I'm confident that everyone who has felt motivated to post on a forum like this is determined to change for the better, and part of making that change as positive as possible is to evolve beyond the shame and self punishment.

You simply cannot change in any meaningful way if you condemn yourself to be the person who did what you regret for the rest of your life. You have to realise the potential of your rebirth in this moment. That actually goes for everyone, not just those who have dark pasts.

I was in an exchange earlier this year with a guy who was so deeply ashamed for something he did. It was more gross than harmful, but he was convinced that he was irredeemable. The last message I received from him was not positive and laden with the subtext of his previous suicidal sentiments.

Who is to say the world would be better off without people who do and regret bad things? It is remorse that fuels often more good than if the remorse had never had a chance to be felt. Progress often demands sacrifice. Awakening often follows a crisis. Anyone who studies history will be aware of this.

It's all very well for people with pristine consciences to sit on their high horses and shout "off with their heads". But they do not realise (nor I think many are willing to admit) just how much fortune comes before will or intention, fortune being a combination of brain chemistry and circumstance. Responsibility does not require that people self destruct or live a life of perpetual and crippling shame. Responsibility is about DOING, making amends, turning things around, making good from bad.

I think if you do something that hurts/potentially hurts someone, then it is between you two and you two alone. It's not even about forgiveness, in my opinion. It's about making real, positive changes that butterfly out beyond the limits of your perspective.

Think for just a minute about how little we are able to measure and weigh up the effects of good and bad actions in this world, over the course of a lifetime, and you will soon be struck with the realisation that nothing in life can be said to be inherently good or bad. All we can do is make efforts to minimise suffering and love with all our hearts in the present moment - the only moment that truly exists.

If bad things are necessary to wake people up, then so be it. I am not proud, but I am grateful that I have a mind that is capable of feeling remorse and turning that energy into something beautiful. How wonderful that, at any moment, I can use this remorse as fuel for immeasurable good.

"Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely" - Chinua Achebe

Thanks for this Cracked.
I disappeared for a couple of weeks but I'm back now. Blessings to all out there who enjoy the season and to whom it happiness brings.
For myself this is the worst time of the year - not because I never got a pony, but because the adoptive family managed to make this time of year especially exclusive of me. I was more and more of an outsider each year.
It took me a long time to realise that it was belonging that I missed and that I could never recreate.
I dislike new year's resolutions as well, nobody ever keeps them.

True thing you say there Epiphany, the only time we are in control of is the present. I believe that providence, fortune, destiny, chance and fate all influence the choices and the decisions we make in the present that affect us in the future. Sometimes the choice is between crap and crappier. Things happen for a reason although God alone knows why some things happen, I think he allows evil to balance goodness. Thus we must have one or we cannot have the other.

I seek peace between myself and the people I have hurt, they don't have to forgive me, I will settle for a laying down of arms. And it's only just as I am not a very forgiving person, so I am prepared to declare peace between myself and those who have hurt me. It's a step in the right direction and I don't have to wait for a calendar change to do it.

Hugs

I love people with true remorse (all is forgiven). The slate has been wiped clean. I feel a fresh air; and the future remains to be seen...

Is this year working out for you as you want so far wrt this kind of stuff?

Hugs

Cracked