Sharing a lil sketch I made in group therapy

TW for discussions of grooming

It was an assignment we were given during an art therapy session and it makes me feel complicated things so I felt like maybe it was something I really needed to express and didn't realize that I had in me idk. It's not like an amazing drawing or anything they gave us like 10 minutes to do it, I just think it means a lot. The subject of that week was radical acceptance so the prompt for our art expression was to represent either an example of radical acceptance, or opposingly, an example of turning a blind eye to something/denial/ignorance/etc. This is what I made.

It was meant to be an expression of how it felt for my groomer to isolate me and corrupt me. You only really notice in hindsight just how perfectly calculated and well played the whole strategy was. I was already vulnerable and still in the developmental period so all that love bombing really leaves a massive impact. Makes you extremely dependant. But it's hard to notice how bad it feels when no one else in your life associates your existence with positivity. It made me really desperate to maintain it. He made me a really bad friend to other people and made me push them away in order to maintain it. He ingrained it in me so badly that even years after I cut him off I still struggle with those behaviors and I've hurt people all on my own. Sometimes it still feels like traces of him are on me. Not just metaphorically like in my coping mechanisms and trauma responses, sometimes it feels like his eyes are on me. It makes me really uncomfortable knowing what he thought about me in terms of physical attraction. Though, I think what makes me most sick is how I desperately played into it for so long. I convinced myself it was normal and that it didn't hurt me. I used innuendos and flirty sayings. I took pictures that, while not necessarily sexual, were 100% questionable and inappropriate for our relationship and I knew they were and did it on purpose. I ignored people who warned me and defended him CONSTANTLY and with my full heart. When those people wouldn't back down and it came down to choosing him or them, I chose him and they left me. Often it makes me feel like I was at fault. I wanted the attention so badly and the actions I chose did technically get me that attention. And as much as it hurt me I did enjoy it. I still sometimes miss it. I struggle a lot with hating and blaming myself more than hating and blaming him. I still don't really know how to fix that. I feel like I'm making progress though. Recently my feelings about it have become more episodic. I go through periods where I feel all this hatred and resentment towards him. Not in a way that makes me wallow though, I feel empowered and confident that he's a monster and that I deserved so much better. But then the alternative periods I feel that resentment towards myself and I really want to go back to how things were. Haven't gotten fully better yet but I still think it's progress that I don't hate myself ALL the time. I feel like exercises like this and interacting with art and media that relates has helped me change my view a lot. It forces me to think about it, because I am notorious for ignoring my feelings until they explode and then not being able to process them. I hope eventually I'll be able to feel like it's his fault and I'm better than him 100% of the time. 

(Song playing is One Day You'll Die (I do not like this) by Milk In The Microwave)