✨ Letting Go: A Letter to My Past Self

Content note: This post discusses sexual trauma, shame, and healing. Please read with care.

Sometimes, healing looks like writing the words you were too afraid to say for years.

This letter is a moment of release — from pain I didn’t ask for, from shame I never deserved, and from a version of myself I’ve outgrown. If you’ve ever felt trapped by your past, this is for you too.

Dear Past,

There’s something I need to say. Something I’ve carried for far too long.
You don’t get to define me anymore.

You took things I didn’t even realise I was giving up. You wrapped shame around my body like a second skin. You made me feel like my pain was somehow my fault — like I was complicit in my own exploitation. But I know now: I was vulnerable. I was hurting. And I was trying to survive.

Those looner sites? They weren’t liberation. They were a cage dressed up like control. A performance, a coping mechanism, a moment of disconnect from everything else that hurt. But behind every click, every comment, was a version of me who didn’t feel safe anywhere else — not in the world, and not in my own skin.

And I grieve for her.

But I’m not her anymore. Not fully.
Now I am choosing healing. I am choosing boundaries. I am choosing a future where I don’t have to justify my trauma or apologise for my past.

So here it is — my goodbye:
To the looner sites.
To the men who thought I was a fantasy, not a person.
To the warped echoes of control and desire.
To the guilt and the silence and the sick feeling in my gut.
To the part of me that thought this was all I was worth.

You don’t get to follow me into this next chapter.

I am allowed to heal.
I am allowed to feel safe in my body.
I am allowed to feel joy without shame.

I survived you.
But I won’t carry you any longer.

Goodbye.

– Asten

💬 If you’re on a healing journey of your own, you’re not alone. You’re not broken. You’re not too far gone. You are worthy — of love, of safety, of peace.

Actually Asten