Something I wish had not happened

1. My bishop met with me for an update on my mental health. I assured him I'm not as crazy as my doctors say I am.
2. He told me that my non-acceptance of the RS president calling last year was one of the best things I've ever done for the ward. Thanks, Bishop.
3. He told me that he was sure I'd continue to make progress toward putting everything behind me. Funny, I didn't know that was the goal. If I had, I never would have entered counseling in the first place. I've been "putting everything behind me" for many years.
4. He told me that one day I'd be grateful for all that I've gone through and would see a great purpose behind it. Then he made the unfortunate mistake of comparing my experience to one he had years ago, in which he lost much of his right hand in an accident. He kept talking about how painful that was, but how he's had so many opportunities to help others because of what he learned through the misfortune. The metaphorical application, in my mind was inaccurate and insensitive.
5. I became angry. When I could no longer listen to what I felt amounted to denigration, I finally told him that he could be right. Someday I might get over the fact that when I was eleven and helpless, an older person raped me repeatedly, night after night, with more imagination about how to cause pain than one person ought to have. I said that when I finally finished paying for his acts--monetarily, because I was never able to carry a baby to term, physically, because my body will never be normal, and emotionally, because obviously, I'm still working through the aftermath--I might consider how the crap I've been through will be helpful to others, if I'm not dead first. Then I told him I wasn't even close to considering a mission in sainthood because for years I didn't believe that God could exist--because no God would allow a little girl to go through what I went through, no God would allow her to be hurt and tired and confused, and yet left alone to change and wash herself and clean up the mess left behind--unknown fluids mingling with her own blood--so that at some point she would be able to sleep...
6. I cried. I've never cried before in front of him.
7. I've never seen him look so horrified.
8. He apologized for being insensitive and for making me cry. He said he had no idea how much I'd been through, or that the abuse had been so extensive. I said that even if it had only happened one time, even if he considered the abuse "mild", each person heals at his/her own rate. It was not up to him to issue a time-table or to tell that person how to feel about the abuse in the end. He apologized again and thanked me for "setting [him] straight."
9. I feel terrible that I screamed at my bishop, who was only trying to help me.
10. Somehow, it seems that no matter how much I talk, no matter what I say, the people around me view this whole thing I'm going through as a tiny step that I'm afraid to take, but that when I finally stop being a coward and take it, all that bothers me will disappear in a puff of smoke, and life will be perfect.
11. One day I will be able to look at my past without feeling that I'm being strangled. One day I will be able to talk about what has happened with the knowledge that it does not make me less of a human being. One day I will be able to manage emotions, not avoid them. One day people will love me even if I never forget, don't "put it behind me", but instead, learn to live my life beautifully while accepting the fact that something horrific and life-shattering happened to me, and I survived.