In which I give you a case of the Friday sads. Sorry.
I wasn’t going to end the week on a rant, but there’s this incurably smug bitch who shall remain nameless who was talking about mistakes other people have made in their marriages and dating lives (despite her having no firsthand experience of either), and going on and on about how you can’t regret having a cheating husband or an abusive husband or whatever (even though that will never, ever happen to her), because what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And oh, if I could ban that fucking cliche.
What that goddamn sentence/song/dickhead thing to say is really saying is that you SHOULD be stronger after you live through a terrible thing, and fuck you. Most of the time, what doesn’t kill you leaves you fragile, or sicker, or permanently fucked up, and no one should have to feel like a failure because of that.
The circumstances of my childhood left me with a whole slew of weird phobias and behaviour quirks and real difficulty dealing with stress. I never know quite when I’ll be able to sail through a rough day just fine, and when it might shatter me into a sobbing, irrational mess. A former boss noticed my tendency to leap out of people’s way as if I have no right to exist in space, and that’s because I was trained to do that or fear an attack.
So, maybe it left me more empathetic. It definitely left me fucking angry, which I haven’t always managed to confine to the appropriate targets, and if I was a dick to you at some point because my rage spilled over on the wrong targets, I’m sorry. I had no call to turn it outward indiscriminately like that.
Any strength I have is the strength to keep going after the breakdowns, and THAT’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH. Don’t fucking tell a survivor of a trauma that it’s good for them. (I’m looking at you now, Quiverfull assholes. Read #6 on that fucking handout, please.) I’m going to stop before I just descend into inarticulate screaming.
Neurotic Owl 