Tonight is a selection from my poetry. This was written when I first started realizing what the abuse had cost me.
If you were made to pay
For everything I had lost
Would you be able to?
Would that be enough?
How do you put a value on what you took?
How do you price innocence, choices, safety?
How much are those worth?
At times, it’s worth a life.
At times, little more than nothing.
How much are the days worth that I was tormented by you?
How much are the days worth when I have to relive it?
What kind of person would I have become if you had not done these things?
We can never know.
I can not take them back.
You can not pay them back.
I paid a price by force,
No choice of my own.
I pay the price daily.
Some days more, some days less.
Hopefully, some days not at all.
At times I cry for who I was.
At times for who I am.
Nothing stays the same.
That is my skin.
The pain will not kill you.
That is my mind.
I have lived through your dark times.
The dark times you inflicted on me.
I have lived through the innocence you took away.
I have lived through the choices you took away.
I have lived through the safety you took away.
That is my heart.
Every time the scar tissue is ripped away,
Making my heart heal by the blood,
I become stronger.
Not because of you or what you did.
I become stronger because of me.
That is my soul.
Living with CPTSD 
Oh, Dear C: I am breathless, reading this. It is so true and so real and so strong. We who survived are so strong: but oh, who would we have been if all that strength we spent on survival, and on looking “normal” (i.e., hiding what was going on inside us), could have been used for ???????? And I think of those of us who were not born so strong, and did not survive childhood, or adolescence or maturity… . Love to all who did not survive. Love to us who do. TS
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