#and i just dont wanna get into it

I don’t want to get involved in the whole debate at all but tbh I am really sick of seeing everyone on facebook acting like they’re an expert on abuse during the whole Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial. Just yesterday I saw a post going around claiming Amber was obviously not abused because she didn’t remember some things, and abuse victims ‘remember every detail of their abuse, no matter how much they try to forget’.

That is blatantly false. I would know because I myself have experienced abuse and trauma. Some of it, I do remember painfully clearly. Other parts are hazy. Some things, I remember the moments before and after, but the actual trauma is just a blank space in my mind, probably where my brain blocked it out to protect myself. This goes for my childhood trauma and trauma that I experienced as an adult, too. During a conversation with my mother recently, she brought up something abusive that happened to me when I was a child at the hands of my stepmother that I genuinely did not remember at all.

Everyone reacts to abuse and trauma differently. Everyone has different body language, different ways of responding to trauma, different thoughts and feelings regarding what they’ve been through. But suddenly everybody I’m friends with on facebook is an abuse and body language expert and has an opinion on why someone is lying or why someone is traumatised, everyone can ‘just tell’ a real abuse victim when they see one, and I’m tired of it. If it’s that easy to tell, why did no one know it was happening to me? Why do so many abuse victims suffer alone?