Today, a more personal blog post. A little more from the “I”.

It’s been a while since I last wrote – and that’s actually a good sign. It means I’ve been doing well. I needed some time to simply be in that space of better days, to land gently in the present. Writing, while often healing, tends to pull me back into the past. And for once, I needed to be fully in the ‘now’ – because my body and mind needed that.

One of the final, valuable lessons my psychiatrist shared with me still echoes in my mind:

Today, I find myself in one of those downs. I link it to something that surfaced during my last EMDR session. Although I haven’t yet written in depth about the darkest chapter of my story, today I’ll lift the veil just slightly…

In 2023, I didn’t want to live anymore and I acted on that. There were many reasons behind those suicide attempts: complex, layered, tangled. Still, the psychiatrists and psychologists highlighted one key event as a major trigger – a conflict with my parents.
After I cut contact with them – a boundary they refused to respect – a confrontation erupted in my own living room. After this confrontation, my father told me, with cold precision, that I would “feel the consequences” (without specifying what they would be). That moment shocked and traumatized me. I feared not just emotional damage, but financial harm – not in the sense of losing an inheritance, but in the sense that they might deliberately hurt me, somehow. After all, when you’re in a fragile state, your mind stops thinking rationally.

But was that shock – the threat of unsafety – alone enough to justify me trying to end my life a week later? According to the professionals – yes. But I was never entirely convinced.

In EMDR, I’ve already processed a lot: the abuse, the emotional neglect, the distant and rejecting family dynamics. But I could feel something in me resisting. One piece of the puzzle remained untouched: the suicide attempts themselves.

So I went digging. Gently opened that mental drawer. Took out the box. Lifted the lid. And looked inside. I shared how people always point to that fight with my parents as the main cause. But still — I wasn’t convinced.

I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but with EMDR, one memory flows into another through eye movements. Those associations led me somewhere else entirely – to a different 2023 moment.

After months of waiting, I had finally received word about a legal case I’d filed – one where I had reported sexual abuse by an identified adult perpetrator.

He was interrogated. Claimed he “didn’t know I was only fourteen” at the time.
Said he thought I was older. Legal. The perfect excuse to escape accountability, to sidestep being labeled a groomer or pedophile. Of course, he did know I was underage – we initially met through an online childrens’ game and he used to pick me up after school.

Eventually, the public prosecutor made a decision.
They concluded that the facts were indeed proven and gave him… a warning.
A warning. Provided that he agrees to cooperate with mediation services.

In the grief process, there are several stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. What few survivor-victims have ever shared with me – but what I want to say now, out loud – is this:

I’m stuck in the anger.

Utterly frozen in it.

The idea that this man will grow old without ever being held accountable for what he did… It loops in my mind like a broken record. Even now, two years later after the warning, I haven’t moved past that second stage of grief. And I don’t know how to get out of it – except by initiating a (legal) mediation process and by confronting him directly, myself.

Because if no one else will –
If society leaves survivor-victims out in the cold –
Then maybe we have to seek justice for ourselves.

And for some, facing their perpetrator might feel empowering.
But for me, it will always feel like abandonment.
Like everyone else turned away. Yet if no one else will,…

My appointment for mediation is being scheduled.

To be continued.