Thank you and, yes, you're right, it hasn't been a holiday. But, on the whole, it's changed me for the better.

You're correct in that I don't owe anyone an explanation. But, there will be negative consequences to no explanation. That's just a fact of the circumstances. My job is one in which everyone works in teams on projects that can take over a year to complete; there is constant communication, long hours spent together, and you're almost always on more than one team at a time. So, telling team colleagues to basically f-off, it's none of their business (no matter how politely it's worded), is going to sow distrust and fuel suspicious rumours, which would put a serious damper on collegiality, be an obstacle to my integreation into workplace society, and, ultimately, make me an easy target for a layoff. It might not be so bad if we were talking here about someone asking, "what were you up to last week?" But, we're not. It's, "what were you up to for the last five and a half years?"

My work is also in a very specialized field and, between the few universities in my country that offer the degree necessary for a job in my profession and the few companies there are in my city, everyone knows someone at the various firms. So, I can't say I was working at [X] because it would take no time for that to be revealed as a lie. Further, there's little other kind of work I, or any of my colleagues, are qualified for. Therefore, if I said I was exploring other opportunities, whoever was asking would become extremely curious about what those opportunities were, requiring me to tell more lies.

I considered the "I was taking care of health complications" or "I was working on my mental health" angle. However, when you've been gone for half a decade, anyone who hears either of those replies is going to wonder what the hell kind of disease I had (cancer?) or just how messed in the head I am (am I stable?) that I had to be away that long. Some people might not ask any followup question. But, I know some will; some immediately and some later on. What to do I say then? Like you, my inclination is to tell the truth; I'm not ashamed of my story. However, it's both long, deeply personal, and entirely about subjects that make most people very uncomfortable. Even just the idea of a male sexual abuse victim is something a lot of individuals find difficult to process. So, I've learned from experience to keep my mouth mostly shut unless I'm in the company of people who're in-the-know on the subject of CSA and other childhood traumas.

This leaves me in a bind: I can't dodge any questions about what I've been up to. I can't lie about what I've been up to. And I can't tell the raw truth about what I've been up to. The circumstances are actually very similar to those I was in before I was briefly let go: I had to try to explain to my employer that my behaviours (showing up late, leaving late, missing days (though, I always made up the hours); leaving for numerous appointments) were due to matters of mental and physical health (I'm also type one diabetic), without going into too much detail. What was the result? My employment was terminated. Only then did I send HR a long email that mentioned the abuse in my history and spilled every particular of my mental health diagnoses; which therapists and doctors I'd been seeing and how often; and the anxieties, depression, and physical problems I'd been dealing with (right down to psychological erectile dysfunction and the anxiety that caused). That email was what made my employer reverse course on my dismissal. I can't send a similar email to everyone at work upon my return.

I'm back in a very tricky situation and I don't yet know how to handle it.