Dear Survivor, Please Stop Downplaying My Pain Because You've Had It 'Worse'

Dear survivor,I am writing this letter to you to tell you all the things I should have told you earlier on but didn't have the right words for until now. I am writing to you because in some ways I am a survivor and I know how unsettling this tag of 'survivor' can sometimes be. I also write to you because I know that surviving something that shook the core of your existence even before you knew who you were is a very rocky process, yet does not—and should not, justify invalidating another person's abuse, pain and experiences, because you had it 'worse.'
Dear survivor, I want you to imagine this scenario. Imagine you and I embark on a car journey from Lagos to Ibadan. During the course of the journey, our car hypothetically collides with a truck all of a sudden. In the span of a few seconds we think, 'This is it. This is the end.' But a few hours later, we open our eyes and find that alas, we are still in the land of the living after managing to survive by a hair's breadth. A nurse comes in and injects you as you writhe and wince in pain and then another nurse comes in to inject me where I lay on the bed opposite you. I scream and I cry and I bawl about how much pain I'm in. You snicker and tell me that you are bandaged all over your body and I only have my legs bandaged so I have no good reason to scream. Dear survivor, what you don't seem to understand is that whether you are bandaged from head to toe and I only have a leg bandaged, I am still in pain. My own pain. I applaud you for your ability to stifle your screams (if that is what you are looking for) but when you think about it, does your own pain—or my pain, for that matter, go away or subside when you point out that you have it worse? 
I know you do not have bad intentions, but when you think about it, whose condition does your pointless statement help?

Dear friend, I remember how difficult it was for me to tell you what happened to me. How I pondered upon the words to use for nights unending and went back and forth on whether there was any point in telling you. You listened to me patiently when I told of how I was so afraid I thought I would faint. Your attention never swayed as I painted the pictures of having my clothes removed in a haste and of feeling hysterical after waking up to find that I was being groped in my sleep. Your eyebrows contoured in deep reflection when I expressed the guilt and shame that came with not being able to save myself. 
I said it all in one gust of breath only to have you say, 'But at least you weren't  vaginally penetrated, right?' I sniffled and said 'No, but almost. I really don't want to talk about it,' while wondering if the fact that I wasn't vaginally penetrated somehow made my experiences invalid and feeling unsure as to why I wanted you to validate my pain so bad. 
Dear friend, even though you might have had it worse or it comes as a relief to you that I'm still technically a 'virgin,' I'm sorry I ever told you all these things in the first place. You just don't understand. You don't understand that my pain comes from having my humanity ignored just to be someone's source of sexual gratification for two measly minutes. My pain comes from the fact that I didn't save myself. That it happened over and over again with different people. That all these people knew I wouldn't report to someone that could actually do something. That these people mostly gave half-baked apologies when I finally had the strength to confront them and that their two minutes of self gratification have forever changed the way I see some things about myself, my clothes, my body, other people and just the world in general. You just don't understand, do you?
Dear house captain, I came crying to you that Sunday afternoon. I told you that Senior Bebe kept calling me demeaning names, because in her own words, '[She] just didn't like [me].' Was I meant to have been living with her venomous words for the remaining two years of her stay at the school? 
Dear house captain, you kept on ringing that, 'There is a chain of command. Come to me first if you have any problem.' I came to you but you were of no help. You laughed and said, 'Is that all? It's part of life. I also had the same experience as a junior. You are lucky she does not even hit you. You'll come out of it just fine.'
I am sorry you had to have it that way in your own time, but did the cycle of abuse really have to continue? Did the fact that you had it worse take away the fact that the emotional and mental abuse of Senior Bebe was eating me away? 
Dear house captain, you might have thought that you came out of it all just fine, but if you really think what Senior Bebe did to me all those years was fine enough for you to completely ignore, then you didn't come out of your own abuse 'just fine.'

Dear mother, I love you and I understand that you're already formed, but it's never too late to let go of some things and change for the better. They say 'spare the rod and spoil the child,' but there were times you could have corrected me without sparing the rod. I know it all came from a good place, but you didn't have to justify every swift stroke of the cane with, 'You should be lucky that it is not my own mother who trained you. She would have beaten you black and blue. My own is just the tip of the iceberg.' 
In your head, you're a saint compared to your own mother and the red throbbing on my hand from your cane is nothing compared to the scar on your thumb that your own mother gave you many years back. 
Dear mother, I'm sorry that you had to have it that way and if I could go back in time to save you, I would. Now the power is in your hands. You don't have to make this a generational cycle. Please don't convince yourself that I will look back on my childhood and thank you for all the times you spared the rod. I may not have any lasting physical scars from your cane strokes, but the emotional pain resurfaces whenever the memories come flooding back or whenever I see another parent that is quick to spare the rod on their child. 
Dear mother, you may look at me now and self-assuredly smile at the disciplined woman that I have come to be but what you don't know is that your eager nature to spare the rod has taught me that I deserve pain, that I should endure and be grateful for unnecessary pain. Even in the little things like when I would come back from the salon with a headache and say my newly made hair was too tight, you would say, 'Beauty is pain,' and make me endure nights of head splitting pain. 
You have normalised pain for yourself and everyone around you. You have normalised women enduring loveless or abusive relationships. You have normalised enduring mental abuse from bosses, and with every time I've expressed pain and you've told me that I should feel otherwise or not feel as much, I've learnt to distrust my feelings.
Dear mother remember I love, and will always love you (even if I don't have to), but I won't let you do this to my children. Let's break this cycle of normalizing and downplaying people's pain together.

Dear older sister, do you remember that night that you called from school and I burst into tears? Remember how I told you I was tired of daddy yelling at me for every little thing and never feeling like I was enough? I'm sure you remember. I'm sure you also remember how you chuckled over the phone and told me, 'Is that all? You're lucky daddy is even growing old. He doesn't even have as much energy to shout at you or even hit you like he did when I was your age.' 
Dear sister, I'm sorry you had to have it that way but your experience doesn't change the fact that I hate that I'm constantly yelled at, belittled, compared and even ignored. I know you were trying to paint a picture where I should feel grateful that I apparently have it better, but abuse is abuse and my pain is my pain. So, dear sister, even if I don't need an apology from you, I want you to see that your statement was of no help to both of our situations—either in the past or present.
Dear all, I want you to know that I understand that you may also be nursing your own wounds or not even realise that you've been wounded. I want you to know that I don't feel entitled to your sympathy or apologies for my own pain. Whatever might have happened to you was, is, and will never be your fault but remains your responsibility to heal from.
While I find words like 'trauma,' 'abuse,' 'victim,' 'damaged,' 'broken,' 'trigger warning,' and 'survivor' very heavy, and even problematic at times because they make me feel weak or powerless, I acknowledge that I have been hurt and impacted by people and experiences in lasting ways. While this fact is true, I don't like to make these experiences define me but see them as major chapters of the unfinished book that is my life. You should also know that this decision doesn't make me any better than survivors who choose to be completely defined by their own experiences or the experiences of others that they witnessed. 

Finally, everyone reacts to their experiences in different ways and calls them different names. I would love to live in the utopian world where I say it doesn't matter how you choose to react but I know that would be a harmful lie. How you choose to react after everything sets in, is a choice that affects you and others. If you feel like forgiveness would be what sets you free, or therapy, or self-love, or God or a mix of various healthy coping mechanisms, then continue taking the baby steps in those directions to find the liberation that may come with trying to find healing. 
Although I am not sure what complete healing is meant to look or feel like or if it is even attainable, I know searching for healing is a journey worth embarking on.

XO, Dudu.Want to Save for later? Pin the images below