while i don't believe there's an answer that will satisfy anyone who isn't myself, i think you're asking in good faith, so i will do my best to explain. it sounds like you've fully left the space for good reasons, which i 100% respect, so our views on some things might differ here. this is all just my own personal (and very abbreviated) thoughts, informed by my own experiences, and they aren't any more right than your own.

you put it just about as straightforwardly as possible: it was an awful experience, and doesn't bear repeating. the period during which i chose to step away also coincided with a very dark one in my personal/home life, and the crushing isolation during that time was ruinous. losing an entire network of friends and distractions plus regaining suppressed trauma on top of that only made it worse. it was a long, lonely, and frankly dangerous 18 months of misery, and that will make you think about things.

when "the truth" video came out and accusers began to admit to fabricating allegations, it became a lot easier to see that most of what happened that october was the fault of individual people. it's easy to condemn an entire space as radioactive when it feels like everything is coming from everywhere, but distance grants perspective. shitty people are always around and they're always louder than anyone else, but i still cared about individual people from that space, and i think that was my first sort of reconciliation with the whole ordeal. i was also in therapy around this time and did some incredibly brutal personal writing, both of which helped me get a better handle on my trauma and put some emotional distance between what i recovered and myself.

on top of that, i still had a lot of writing left unfinished, and that really bothered me, too. there was so much that i was SO excited about, tens of thousands of words sitting on my computer, and i could never really swallow the idea that some people with a frankly concerning amount of explosive hatred they chose to misdirect at me were responsible for me losing that. it was the principle of it, you know? i wanted to find that same excitement and joy i once held again. maybe it's futile nostalgia, but only time will tell.

things are still tentative, and i will never engage in the way that i used to here. i still only really talk to people i know because that's the main reason i logged on again, i heavily curate the type of content that i see, and mute any involvement in "drama," which has been very intentional. it's honestly been nice being back in a way where i have completely cut myself off from an entire side of the fandom where people intentionally engage or get in arguments with other subtwts. that's not an indictment of them whatsoever (i used to love doing it, it's often justified, i get it), just something i needed to do for my own sanity. it's like i'm experiencing a completely different place now.

the long and short of it is: people were what made me leave, and people are also what made me come back. for better or for worse, i did love being in this community. i missed it: it's home to some of the most talented artists/writers i've seen across half a lifetime of fandom, and a lot of people i feel privileged to have been friends with over the years. that ultimately outweighed what i experienced in the past here (that isn't something everyone is going to agree with, and that's fine). i'm very careful now and i put my own wellbeing first, which is something i'm still very much learning how to do. if that necessitates leaving permanently down the line to keep my victimhood safe, then so be it, but things are okay for now.

this is probably way longer of an answer than you wanted, but i'm...really not great at condensing stuff lol.