Cassidy,
I’m so sorry for what you went through as a kid, and I’m very proud of you for not going down a darker path despite enduring such horrific and dehumanizing forms of trauma at a very vulnerable stage of your life. The idea that hurt people hurt people doesn’t apply to every person who has been through trauma, but it tends to be true that people who have grown up in abusive environments face issues of some sort; if it isn’t violence towards others, it can be self-loathing, substance abuse, not being able to trust people, viewing the world as dangerous, etc.. So I don’t think the author is saying that all abusers are victims, and that because of this, they are innocent of any wrongdoing, but more so that many people who resort to being cruel and violent to others have learned it from somewhere. The fact that you haven’t gone down this path means you’re a kind and strong person, and I hope you know that about yourself. 🙂

You are welcome. I am doing my best to offer anything I can to transmute the pain that exists here.

I could barely see in the box what was being typed so some of that came out pretty messed up that I still believe that most people would be able to understand what I was trying to say they want to fix so I just had to apologize and make it clear I couldn’t even proofread this before I sent it I guess it’s my phone I don’t know. And I commented way too much sorry.

I do not watch the show that y’all are talking about but that is irrelevant to my reply. Somebody saying “hurt people hurt people” you think is just a normal mentality for people with a rough upbringing. It sounds like you’ve been watching too much gangster paradise, boys in the hood, don’t being mean to society movies or some crap. Yeah everybody I will admit has a different idea of what a rough upbringing is now that I will say. I was born with physical problems and had to continuously have surgeries due to a neglected mother which at the same of course came along with an abusive stepfather whom didn’t leave marks. Still I wasn’t taken from them I was abandoned being left on my grandma door step for her to take care. Whom I thought was over protective I was so far from wrong try a controlling miserable toxic horrible person. Who made sure to remind me every day starting at 7 I was a burden & my on mother didn’t want me. My grandpa’s I thought of like a dad used me to see another woman working at a kids place yes I still hear about it. It was like a pawn in a game of chest till I left going back 2 my mom please husband have left her she was depressed so I took care of what I could at 13 while trying to have a social life falling in with ppl society would have considered upper class just to be set up drugged & rapped by 15. Now at 39 I’ve had probably 10x worse done to me. And before that there were other things that happened I couldn’t type think it would take me all day and probably would be a book point being I don’t find that to be your typical upbringing and I never had a mindset to just go out and purposely hurt people for kicks or sorry I mean because I was hurt not someone anything of course! To take up for people that they see being done like they were. Right now you’re saying that because I had a rough upbringing my mentality should they go hurt people because I was hurt? That’s crazy & as far as retaliation gang related killings go that’s not proof and someone being raised in a horrible upbringing I’ve had my fair share of problems with gangs 1 mostly. And I won’t say I didn’t think of doing something to that effect after what was done to me cuz I had nothing to do with my upbringing. Just like my poor little cousin who was a spoiled little brat who had mommy, daddy and both sides of his family ppl. Who gets in a gang, trouble, goes to jail gets out to my grandparents giving him a truck & blah blah blah. And yes he played a part in some crucial things hanging out with a gang. But as I said the whole gang thing might have the effect as far as why someone would get into something like that coming from a bad home but as far as what they do when there in it. Ain’t nobody going to tell me that comes from a bad up bringing no that comes from trying to look like a bad A**..
I get so tired of hearing everybody tries to make excuses for anybody that does something wrong if the parents fall they were raised wrong. My step daddy started putting my head in my own vomit in the toilet at 4 years old I wasn’t going to say that b/c I know how much people like to try to say others are lying but I really don’t give a s*** I know what happened to me and the point is that’s something I never forgot but I didn’t go take a gun & blow his head off because of it. There are people out here everyday children being beaten, neglected emotionally abuse causing tremendous psychological damage. If all of them decide to retaliate because that’s their mind set SMH you think the world’s bad now yah. You sound like somebody who either had it made or can’t or want grow up & take responsibility 4 some horrible things you may have done. Which I feel like it doesn’t really matter what your mind set is if you got the B to go out & purposely hurt others then get enough B to reflect on what you’ve done. Okay I probably shouldn’t said all that & maybe this won’t even be submitted I already feel bad for saying the things I said I hate being that way. I can’t apologize for how I believe but i can apologize for speaking my mind. It may came out harsh cuz I got irritated but I’m not rewriting this so if I made u feel as if I was talking down to or trying to make you feel stupid I truly am sorry. As 4 any other feelings that I may have made you feel I don’t apologize for but those I do. If this goes through thank you for letting me express my opinion I do agree with a lot of what you said & hope everybody has a nice day! 🙏

Hi Valerie:

I am glad you commented. This writing thing tends to be therapeutic. Your words punctuate that most important line: The line that people cross, as if they own the right to your story … the lack of reason why others seem to be entirely unaware of their own behaviour, their actions and the consequences of both, continues to elude me.

Years have gone by since I wrote this, and I am still grappling with the topic. I have received some new insights and appreciate your comment as it echoes those new insights. Sometimes it feels like we are here to heal ancestral or familial wounds .. even those of others .. by virtue of the fact that we are able to feel and forgive. It feels as if there is some kind of twisted destiny at play. Perhaps I feel and think that as a means to manage the lack of sense this all makes; like a way to make myself feel better about the fact that the pain and cruelty of others (even if only in the form of lack of awareness about the difference between theirs and others’) seems to be a perpetually fed stream in the consciousness realms.

To forgive is not something we can just do, is it? It takes enormous courage and self-reflection and if done, it has to be real. Not just words. So, for what it’s worth, in my opinion, you are both courageous and far larger than the pain that attempted to capture you. This is no small feat.

But this pain we feel from this imposed and foreign feeling cruelty and indeed, sadistic psychopathy … it seems as if it is more than an idea pathogen … more than a cyclical pattern or even a genetic propensity. It seems to be something else to me. Like a possession of sorts that attempts to predate and seep inside the vulnerable, sometimes making itself seem seductive, glamourous and cool. Other times, it just dumps a truck on you out of nowhere. The media would have us believe that this is normal: That it’s cool to be a sadistic, evil asshole, essentially, that obsesses over greed and ‘owning’ others emotionally and otherwise.

I have come to believe more and more that this whole is a giant pattern and we are here to choose which patterns we embrace. So many seem to have become settled in the sense that being either a victim or a predator are the only options in this strange world. They do not have the courage and penetrating discernment to call their own egos out and to see the darkness within as a training ground, which is how I see it.

Instead of seeing that they are comprised of light (literally in terms of physics) – by virtue of being here – and are capable of harnessing and growing that light (in your case, finding it yourself to do what you needed to do in order to comprehend the why of it), instead of falling into utter despair over the sense that it’s simply not enough amid all this darkness. I know this darkness: This deep, anxiety-riddled and sometimes alluring sense that not only will I never be able to truly see the five w’s inside this multi-layered thickness, but that I perhaps not designed to.

Why are we capable of communicating about this pain? Why are we able to see it but not be it? Why are we able to reach out in the darkness and continue to find the courage to believe that we are not alone in our seeking … our seeking to discover ourselves – as we truly are in a loving, kind and real way … despite myriad reasons to simply throw up our hands and say, ‘Fuck it. If no one else cares, why should I?’

What I have discovered is that it does not matter if it seems no one else cares. First of all, that is simply not true; it is just how it appears sometimes due to our tendency to metaphorically focus on the one nail head out of thousands which is not hammered in perfectly; flush with the medium it finds itself in. Second, even if it were the former that only punctuates the fact that those who do care have enhanced special excellence. Even if they do not entirely see themselves, as I often do not, as that impressive or special at all. Third, if one has the ability to care, forgive and not become the hate that seeks to make this separating hate the ‘new normal’ one is here for a reason. One has a meaning and a purpose that goes beyond anything that could be evaluated by typical means.

Our most precious currencies – time and energy – have the most worth and value yet they cannot be bought. And to use these – despite all external or even internal (as in the form of addictions, etcetera) attempts to abuse, devalue and use us as if trading commodities – to enhance love, self-knowing and the power of the innocent and pure wisdom seeker, is to become a Master of something which indeed, not too many have the courage to even consider or truly contemplate.

So thank you. For being the light. For doing what you are doing, to practice and master something for which there is no guide book.

I had a bad experience when I was just 14 yes old a outsider who is a family member crossed the line of disclosing something about my mother who was physically abused by her stepfather and conceived me and another sibling it was very hurtful to find out this way now she want
To be friends years later I keep away from her because she caused me other hurtful lies I could not get over the fact this girl had the balls to disclose this to me I forgive her but it took years of felling pain I say away from her I still don’t get why people can’t mind their own business this world is full of sadistic and psychotic people it still haunt me but if God can forgive me why should I worry about what others think it’s been a struggle