What "They" Say

A dear friend recently spoke of one of those, "you know what they say"s. She said that "they" say, "an abuse victim will often say to her abusers, 'I'll show you, I'll hurt me.'" She warned me against this.

When I think about where the trajectory of my life has taken me, I know a good many people who would say that this is exactly what I've done. I feel the judgements, though they are rarely voiced to me (because I'm not "safe" to confront... DAMN RIGHT). But I know Christian community, and I know what you're saying. That's part of what depresses me about it... that there's very little authenticity in your responses. So much of it is guessable, because apparently, ya'll gots everything figured out, brah. Life is so simple when you're a Christian. Or a Calvinist, or a Dispensationalist, or whatever dogma you hold most dear.

I refuse to shut the religious voice out completely though. Or the "faith-filled" or whatever stupid term we have to use in order to communicate that you got a big spiritual boner for Jeebus. As much as I can deal with post-traumatic triggers and episodes, I continue to read your blogs, your comments, your prayers, alongside all the atheist or agnostic ones. I don't have much patience for the highly simplistic faith that I described above. But I find a beautiful faith in those who refuse to be simplistic. I also find a beautiful doubt there.

And on that point I find atheist, agnostic, and believer to be alike.

It makes me think that doubt and faith are an essentially human experience. Which is not saying anything too new on the state of humanity, I understand. But perhaps I am just experiencing it as new.

Part of me gets offended at the assumption that I might be hurting myself as a way to get back at my abusers. Haven't I spent hours in therapy trying to rewrite the unhealthy patterns I learned because of abuse in hopes that I would not hurt myself and others anymore?

Well yes, but the sad fact is that I have a lifetime of rewriting to do. I am eternally impatient at the fact that my childhood has unapologetically shaped who I am and I cannot escape it.

I suppose the accusation that I am being reactionary is fair.

And I submit that it would be dishonest to be anything other than that. Sure, sure, I can comfort myself with "new" gospel truths, you know, the nice stuff, about Jesus loving me and tralala but it does not rewrite the old stuff.

Can anyone understand my reluctance to take on a new dogma after all the shitty "truths" I once believed, adhered to, submitted to, with every ounce of my being?

It's a painful question for me to ask, and it's a painful admission for me to say that at 25 years old, when I am asked what I believe, I say that I don't know, or maybe I do know, or I'm in a period of transition, or that what I believe changes with the wind, or that I just have no good answer and all my life I've believed that my answer to that question determines my fate, my standing with God and humans, and so I'm A LITTLE FUCKED UP ABOUT IT.

It's just kind of hilariously tragic when all someone wanted was a simple answer.

As "they" say, for the abuse victim, nothing will ever be simple again.