Fate.
Fate (and its supporting quotes) has always caused me significant turmoil and many a sleepless night.
Why is it that “Everything happens for a reason”, even though I can’t see a reason other than for me to suffer?
How is it that “Whatever happened happened because it was supposed to” when I am still hurting from it and may never fully recover from what happened?
How can I say that “The past is the past” when what happened in the past affects every single day of my life thereafter?
The only quote about the past I can think of that actually makes sense is, “Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.”
Yet, I was taught as a child to specifically not learn from the past. I was taught to forgive people for the things they do and then let them do the same things to you over and over for eternity because you’d forgive them every time.
How is that just? How is that righteous? How is that in any way a good way to think?
Basically, “let people do what they want to do to you because you can’t stop them, so you’d might as well not even try to”.
Then there’s the idea that, “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission”, which essentially gives abusers free reign in the world.
The phrase “it’s easier to forgive than to forget” is just more salt to the wound, because there would be nothing to forgive and no bad memory to forget if the situation had been prevented in the first place.
When I think of my past – my childhood, youth, and young adulthood – I can see that the vast majority of my problems were specifically tied to these ideas: I should let people do what they wanted to do, even when it hurt me, because I had to forgive them anyway.
I truly believed that everything that happened was supposed to happen, so I had to just suck it up and deal with it. I learned to be impotent, I learned to be helpless, I learned to be an eternal victim, I learned that I was Nothing.
Against my own instincts and my own soul, against my own feelings and my natural responses, I allowed the words of others to overwrite my own thoughts and feelings.
I allowed myself to be hurt mentally, emotionally, and physically so that other people would not be denied their desires.
I believed that anyone could be forgiven for the things they did to me, but I would never be forgiven for judging and rejecting their wishes (do not resist an evil person who strikes you, instead turn the other cheek; do not seek revenge because God will deliver you; if someone wants your tunic, let him have your cloak as well; give to anyone who asks you, and if anyone takes that which belongs to you, do not ask for it back…).
That thought makes me sick. I feel physically nauseated when I think about that thought process, how I felt as a result, and the things that I allowed to happen in my life as a result. I feel like I want to die from the shame and embarrassment and, most of all, sadness.
I mourn for the me I could have been.
I mourn for the innocence I should have had.
I mourn for the strength and confidence and wisdom I was born with but which I learned to deny because I believed I was “sinning” if I did what my heart and soul told me to do.
I mourn for that little girl I still am somewhere deep down who is afraid and confused and hurting and sad and truly believes she is guilty and who truly believes that all bad things are supposed to happen and who truly believes there is no hope.
I was broken before I had a chance to form.
I wake up every day and have to fight the urge to slip back into that old mentality and those old behaviors.
When I encounter an uncomfortable situation, I automatically go into “subservient mode”, where I forget how to make eye contact and I become very quiet and put on a simpering smile and get ready to do whatever other people tell me to do.
I hate this.
As a result, I sometimes hate myself. I hate that I cannot control this behavior without mentally forcing myself to act differently. And, still, I feel fear and anxiety and believe that I am acting wrongly. I feel like I am doing something wrong by acting like I am an equal. The truth is, I don’t know if I will ever believe I am an equal or that I am worthy of respect.
I mourn for my self-worth, because it has taken me so long to find it and I still cannot and do not always believe in it.
When I ask myself, “Who do I want to be?” The first thing that still, still, pops into my mind is, “Who do they want me to be?”
Sometimes, I can’t handle it. I want to give up because I want so badly to change, but sabotage myself with my feelings of inferiority and insecurity and fear of failure and fear of admitting to other people that I am not who they want me to be or who they think I am.
I ask myself, “Why am I like this?” and there is never an answer other than, “Because you’re worthless, you don’t deserve to feel anything better than this.”
And, I know I am lying to myself.
I feel myself lying to myself.
Why do I lie to myself and tell myself that I am worthless?
So that nobody else can.
If I already believe I am worthless, nobody can hurt me by calling me worthless or any other name.
Indeed, when people attempt to insult me, I think it is amusing. I actually begin to laugh because they are trying to hurt me, but I don’t feel hurt. From my perspective, nobody can think any worse of me than I think of myself… so, their attempts at hurting me are just silly. And, truly, I begin to laugh when people try to anger me because they just look silly all angry and the situation is bizarre and I’m completely detached from it all.
I detach and dissociate from volatile situations very easily. I go into one of two modes, depending on the situation:
1)”Logic mode”, where all emotional responses from others are met with stone-cold logic and fact – I survive because I refuse to be worn down and so outlast everyone else by default. Then, I leave.
OR
2)”Shuttered mode”, where I am not even present in the present because I feel powerless and do not want to acknowledge the resulting emotions, so my body and mind operate on auto pilot – I survive because I don’t die. I do whatever I must to survive relatively unscathed. I stay indefinitely, until I am kicked out for being too pliable.
In either case, I realize that I have no control, so I the only control I can have over the situation is to survive it.
I am tired of surviving life. I want to live life.
And that, my friends, is where I am stuck because I am teetering between surviving and living. I can survive and everyone else will be happy, or I can live and I will be happy.
I am stuck because I do not know how to be happy, and I don’t think I deserve to be happy. My happiness will cause suffering for other people, yet their happiness will cause suffering for me. I still believe I am that of lesser worth, so that is why I have such a problem getting off of this scale.
I am stuck between a rock (Loving Myself) and a hard place (Fear of Losing Love from Others), and I cannot see any middle ground.
When I think of Fate, I think that it is supposed to be a learning experience. But, it seems that I can never quite grasp the lesson I am to learn.
I suffer if I choose to hurt other people. I suffer if I choose to hurt myself. Is my fate to suffer?
I feel like it probably is, because I can’t seem to learn enough from the past to escape a future of repeating it.
I am tired.
And yet, there is hope.
I see that my past gives me a clarity of mind and introspection into the minds of other people’s suffering. I see the root of their pain, because it is also the root of my pain. I tell them I understand, and sometimes they Hear me.
My suffering brings me understanding because it is not unique. We suffer because we suffer. I don’t want you to suffer, so I try to help you out of your suffering.
Still, though, I cannot always escape my own suffering. I get stuck at times, when I start to wish that I never had to feel emotional suffering. As much as I hate my suffering, I am also thankful for it because it has helped me to survive. My pain has taught me to help other people and to feel empathy. My pain is infinite, but their pain does not have to last forever because they have the power to escape it.
Perhaps, someday, I will realize that my pain, too, does not have to last forever.