You know you don't need to file charges if you don't want to or if it feels like too much. If it's something you want to do then there is support available to help you with it but it sounds like you're being pressured into it rather than you making a decision of your own volition.
Right after I freed myself from the situation I wanted really badly to file charges, and I expressed that, but at the time I was in a pretty extreme state. I was extremely hypervigilant, totally full of adrenaline and who knows what. In a two week timespan around that time I probably had about two days worth of sleep. I was out of my mind in so many ways.
Now, thinking about filing charges makes me really anxious, and also makes me think of the specific details of what was done to me, which is really distressing to think about. Even typing that last sentence made me think about some of said details and triggered a flashback. I typed everything before this sentence last night.
In the time just after I freed myself, I was extremely afraid and paranoid that he would try to find me and hurt me. He had threatened to kill me in the past, countless times, and over much less. He was (and is) still free and on the loose, and I wanted him to be locked up away from me for my own safety. After the long term restraining order hearing, I became less worried. While I have become less worried about that, I still strongly worry about running into him in public, and I do still worry sometimes, that he will try to find me.
It all affects me strongly, still. It's not even been two months since I freed myself, so I imagine that has a lot to do with the difficulty level of the subject matter. Until recently I have been ignoring it and wishing it would go away. While my mother and others have been pressuring me, they aren't exactly "twisting my arm" so to say. They are being reasonably gentle with their pressuring, I think. Almost as if they are reminding me "hey, that is still a thing." I do have a desire to have him locked up - it bothers me that he is free. It bothers me that he is likely working on obtaining his next victim or victims. At the same time, it is so f*cking hard to talk about what happened to me, or even think about it.
It's like this: not doing anything makes me feel bad, but doing something about it is really difficult for me. I have a huge desire for it all to just go away, but I know that that's highly unlikely. I really just wish the whole thing would go away and resolve itself, but logically I know that isn't going to happen. I don't really know what to do anymore, but I know I do want to file charges, at least eventually. The longer I wait, the stronger the "this is wrong" gets. It feels wrong that he is free.
I felt really good about things right after the long term restraining order hearing. I was overjoyed at how he majorly incriminated himself. He even said a very obvious lie on court record - he said that he broke my ribs by rolling over me (totally ignoring other instances of him breaking my ribs, too) - nobody breaks someone's ribs by simply rolling over them. That made the judge roll her eyes. She reminded him multiple times "this is just a restraining order hearing, that's the only thing we need to talk about, you don't have to keep talking." He didn't even want to contest the restraining order. He was fine with it, but he's a f*cking psycho crazy person so for some reason he had to argue against the ~3000 words I read off in court describing what I could, about what he did, and in the process he incriminated himself.
I felt really good about things then, and really confident that I'd be able to get justice, but since then my anxieties surrounding filing charges against him have increased greatly. It feels like he still has control over me in that aspect - I'm letting his manipulation continue to affect me. I see that, in a logical sense, but emotionally I still have fear about pursuing charges against him. I think that's an irrational fear, when I look at the facts, but it's still there. On top of that I have the difficulty of the subject matter working against me.
I don't know what I should do. It feels very wrong to be letting him f*ck with my head still, with his lies and twisting of things. Yet it's really hard for me to talk about what he did.
This ^^^^^^. Don’t do this if you’re being pressured to do it. I suggest doing it only if you feel that it will help you move forward in your healing. If you do this for the wrong reason it may backfire on you.
I know that if he were behind bars right now I would feel better, but I also worry about going through the process of accomplishing that. I don't want it to backfire on me. I do want it to happen - I do want to file charges against him, and I want to do it for myself. I have people pressuring me, but if I didn't want it myself I think my reactions to them pressuring me would be a lot stronger. When I feel really pressured by someone now, and I don't want to go along with what they're suggesting, I tend to react really strongly - I overreact. For example my mother once kept insisting I cut up an apple differently, and I pretty much exploded and yelled at her "quit micromanaging me!!!" When she suggests that I get on with filing charges, I have a really tame reaction. I either go "yeah..." and drop the subject, or talk about how it's a scary prospect in a few short words, and we drop it. I don't have an explosive reaction like I do when I feel like I'm being pressured in a way that is strongly against my will.
I certainly don't want it to backfire though. If I have the desire, myself, to file charges - even though it's a very difficult thing to do that is very triggering - is there still a chance of it backfiring on me? I don't want to keep waiting, but I also don't want to harm my progress - though for all I know this will -be- progress in regards to healing. But there is also the chance that it's too soon and that it will only hurt me. I do feel like it will be helpful, but I also know it will cause me to feel and relive a lot of things that are extremely difficult to handle, and that might kick up my symptoms even worse than they are now.
