A Letter to My Abuser

I forgive you. And I pray with my whole heart that God does too.

To the person who abused me,

I used to hate you. I used to blame you for everything bad that had ever happened to me. I was an addict because of you. I was depressed because of you. I was suicidal because of you. I was single and terrified of intimacy because of you. I was terrified of everything because of you.

My blame—and my hatred—made a certain amount of sense. What you did to me hurt. You left what I thought were deep scars on my psyche.

But here's the thing about memory. The past isn't real. It was real when it happened; when I was being abused, it was real and it hurt like hell. But the past is no longer real. Only the present is real.

Memory can strangle us like chains. These chains can bind us and suffocate us and hold us back. But here's what I've learned about the chains of memory. They feel so thick and so heavy and so real in order to distract us from the reality—-that they are insubstantial. They are mere wisps on the breeze. Once I was no longer being abused, I was the one who gave these chains weight and heft. I was the one who let them strangle me and hold me back.

And then one day I stopped. And I looked around. And I realized that these chains that I once found so binding don't actually exist—they are mere wisps on the wind. I could blow them apart with a single breath of air.

And I did. And I was free.

I still think of you, often. I think of you a lot like Ginny Weasley in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Ginny was a fierce, smart, and fundamentally good-hearted girl who was possessed by the spirit of evil incarnate—by Lord Voldemort. While she was being possessed, she did a lot of damage to the school, its pupils, and its teachers. But here's the thing. Once Ginny is freed from the spirit of Lord Voldemort, and for the next five books, no-one ever mentions what she did under Voldermort's direction ever again. It almost never comes up.

It took me a long time to understand the full weight of this. Finally I realized: the reason that no-one mentions what Ginny did is because everyone fully healed from it. In the immortal words of Albus Dumbledore, as he comforted a terrified and guilt-ridden little girl who had played havoc with students' lives for a year without ever intending to, "There has been no lasting harm done."

That is my message to you as well. I know that you never intended to hurt me; what hurt you did cause was a product, never of malice, but always of the pain that overflowed its bounds inside your own heart. And so I hope you will receive solace to know that: there has been no lasting harm done.

I am 33 years old; and in this moment, I am well. I have a beautiful life and an amazing wife. I have the career of my dreams. Far more important than any of that, I have a deep and lasting connection to a God who loves me perfectly.

In this present time, I lack for nothing. The scars that I thought that you had inflicted on me turned out to be no more substantial than the chains of memory. Both are gone now. I am whole, and healthy, and healed.

There has been no lasting harm done.

I have a second message for you as well.

For years, I wanted you to suffer for what you had done to me. A pastor once told me that the existence of a loving God required the existence of Hell. After all, he said, think of Hitler, of Stalin; do you really want those people to be wandering around the afterlife in peace and contentment? Is that justice? No. A loving God, this pastor said, is one who punishes evil-doers.

That resonated with me, in part I think because of my own experience. I wanted you to suffer. I wanted you to hurt as I had hurt.

But I don't want that any longer.

I know how much you hurt in your own life. I know about your own awful childhood, and the demons of fear and guilt and shame that infested you and took you over from a young age. That knowledge brings me, not the grim smile of schadenfreude, but a deep and profound sorrow. You are a beautiful and cherished child of God, and I wish on the deepest possible level that you had never suffered as you had.

And so my prayer to God is that, when you finally meet Him, He will not punish you—either for your actions or for the fact that you so rarely knew Him. Instead, I pray that God will treat you the way that Dumbledore saw fit to treat a lost and scared little girl who had never intended to hurt anyone.

"This has been a terrible ordeal for her. There will be no punishment. Older and wiser wizards than she have been hoodwinked by [their personal demons]....Bed rest and perhaps a large, steaming mug of hot chocolate. I always find that cheers me up."

Bed rest, peace—and a large steaming mug of hot chocolate. I think that would be a fitting punishment for what you did to me.

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