Throughout my life, from as far back as I could remember, I felt extreme guilt. I felt anxiety and paranoia wherever a man came too close to me. I felt a sadness that I thought came with being alive. I was in a constant fight or flight response. I still have flashbacks that take me back to a place in my mind I do not fully remember. The image of hands flash in my mind and I want to throw up. I feel everything all over again. It is dark and I am confused, I am scared. I am two. I have PTSD and I was sexually assaulted by my father at two years old.

I call this part of me Little Girl Blue, after my favorite Janis Joplin song, and this is for her.

I forgive you. I know you don't think you will every hate anyone more than him, and I cannot answer whether or not that will ever change, but there is someone you will slowly grow to hate almost as much. That is yourself. Everyone will tell you how irrational this hate is, and it is, but you won't stop feeling it. You won't stop feeling more and more like you could have done something, like you were weak, like you are just as bad as him. I have accepted your hate for him, but there is one thing I will not accept, and that is the hate you have for yourself.

I forgive you for not screaming. I forgive you for freezing in a world of fight or flight responses. I forgive you for torturing yourself for fifteen years, Mindy. I forgive you for everyone you slept with trying to mask the pain. I forgive you for staying with someone who beat you because you just wanted to be loved by a man who wouldn't disappear. I forgive you for disappearing into yourself for long periods of time, fighting a monster in your head, long hours spent building wall upon wall around your broken heart. I forgive you for hurting your family as they watched you fall apart time after time. I forgive you for being two years old and just a baby.

I am your soldier now. I will take care of you, Little Girl Blue, and you will never be left in a dark again. I will not let you hurt yourself anymore.

It was never your fault. What he did is not a reflection of who you are. You did not deserve this, but you deserve all the strength you will make of it. You will take these seeds of grief and grow a garden of love, strength, and forgiveness.

In all the years you spent trying to better yourself because you felt like no matter what you did, you were the worst person alive, like you were no good, you were tainted, you were going to become a monster, you were blind to the fact that you were striving. You have always been a blooming flower convinced she is dying. You will not hurt anyone like he hurt you. You deserve to know who you can be when you are not constantly running from your past. You are a callused soul. You are good. You are good. You are good.

You will create the answers to all the questions he could never answer. You will fill the hole in your heart he created by his actions with things, memories, and people far greater than him. Your life will always be too full to contain him, there is no room in your life for him. You are too complete, you are too happy. You are too good.

You are too fulfilled to go seeking out love where love will never be. You have it here. You have it with me.