Confronting the Past: Facing Old Wounds at High School Reunion for 05/15/2024
Dear Annie: I have my 20-year high school reunion coming up, and I'm planning to go, as it's a major milestone reunion and we've lost some people over the years. However, I will be running into some issues with it. The biggest issue is that I am in ongoing therapy for sexual assaults that happened in high school back in the early 2000s, and the response from the school officials was quite firmly in the "boys will be boys, deal with it" era. In other words, they accused me of making up the situation the first time so I never bothered with reporting the second time, especially since both times it was by members of the football team. One of the assaulters is in my graduating class, and his was the one I didn't report. I have to keep him blocked on social media, and an assault situation at a job by a client (I was working in a mental health care facility at the time) made me realize I needed therapy. These assaults still affect me to this day. I won't date or involve myself in romantic relationships, and the assaults severely affected my mental capacity for well-woman visits.Updated: Wed May 15, 2024