I don’t want to hate anymore. Help us forgive

NEW HAMPSHIRE
Berlin Daily Sun

Frank Laferriere
Berlin

To the editor,

I speak not from hate, but from hope.

When I was diagnosed with PTSD over my priest rape, I thought it was bull. I believed that the ONLY people whom could be classified as someone with PTSD were soldiers or those in war zones. Then my therapist started explaining to me what a person whom they diagnose with PTSD goes through, what their life is like…it was like they wrote most of that definition for me.

Yet people still think what I went through can simply go away if I just get over it, forgive the priest, forgive the church, forgive those whom harmed me. That if I just forget…somehow this will make me all better.

To those who think this way do you may not realize, for 33 years I hid what that priest did to me. During that time I tried to forget, but it only made matters much, much worse. I felt guilty, I hated myself for what he did to me. I even called myself the Antichrist because of it. I actually took the name of Damien from the Omen series for my name. This is a fact. This is how evil I thought I was for what the priest did to me.

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