Responsibility

“We are not to blame for what happened to us as children, but we are responsible for what we do with our pain as adults.” – Geneen Roth

Too many people believe that how they were brought up is the deciding factor of their lives. If they were beaten or abused, they will always behave as people who were beaten or abused, but that isn’t so. Or at least it doesn’t have to be so, not if you don’t want it to be. There are a lot of people out there who have been beaten or abused, but you don’t know it. They live productive, happy lives, things that some victims believe is impossible for them to obtain. I call them victims, not because they were abused or beaten, but because they still allow those abusers to run their life.

I was physically and emotionally abused, but I haven’t gone into drugs or hooked up with someone who beats me. Yet, there are people who say “my father beat me” as a justification for their doing drugs or beating on their own kids. As if they were not in charge of their own lives but still dancing to the tune of the abusers of their childhoods. How long do they get to claim this? How long do they get to get of scott-free in their own minds because of what was done to them ten, twenty, thirty years ago?

Am I blaming them? Yes. Being beaten sucks, whether it be with a belt, a hand, a stick, what have you. Being emotionally abused, used, blackmailed, etc., also sucks. But it doesn’t have to be a prison, unless that’s what you want to see. And I know that you’re screaming, “I don’t want it! How dare you suggest that I do!” I dare because there are ways out. The ways out are just scarier and harder than staying in your prison. I know that’s been true in my life.

And I can hear some of you saying, “It was easier for you. You weren’t sexually abused / raped / nearly killed / beaten as bad as I was / treated the way I was.” Pick one or make up one of your own. What does it matter? Maybe it was easier for me when I was a kid than when you were a kid. Maybe it was harder. This isn’t a competition, no matter what some of your friends think. This life is not a game of “one-down-manship”, where you don’t keep up with the Jones but rather insist that you’re the biggest victim. Sorry, but I just don’t care who out-victims who. I think it sucks that someone hurt you. I think that what happened to you was awful, but you do not get the right to do what you want because of what they did, and you do not get to blame them for your life right now. I care about you and your life, but what others have done to you when you were a child does not matter a much in your life as what you are doing right now. I would rather hear about how you are building your life than about how someone else tore it down.

Is the abuse still going on? Get out. Leave the situation. If you’re living with the abuser, leave. If they won’t let you leave, that’s kidnapping and call the police. If they say they’ll kill you if you try to leave, leave and disappear. It’s possible. Find someone who can help. It may take desperate measures, but if you don’t think you’re worth it, it’s not likely anyone else will either.

Do the memories still haunt you? Find a way to get them out without destroying yourself. Alcohol and drugs only stamp the memories and pain down. They don’t get rid of them. Ditto for eating, gambling, and shopping, when they’re used as therapy. They’re just distractions, not true help. Get the memories and the pain and the hurt and the words and music and sights out of your head. Write. Dance. Pull weeds and destroy them, putting your abuser’s face on them as you tear them to pieces. Volunteer. Go to therapy. Share your story with researchers, with other volunteers who are trying to help young people, who are in the situation you once faced. Draw. Somehow, get the memory, the feeling, the everything out of your head, out of your body, and make it real. Make it tangible. Create it in this world out side of your body so that you don’t have to carry this by yourself.

I care more about your future than about your past, and I care more about your present than I do about either of those. Start where you are and make tomorrow better than today, and make the rest of your life the best part of your life. It is up to you to do so, no matter what happened in the past, the present and the future are up to you.