At the end of my rope

shock_the_monkey wrote:i have a very bad habit of telling people things that they don't want to hear. so, you have been warned.

I wish we could talk.

joedeb1941 wrote:I wish we could talk.

Nevermind.

While I don't think the position is a helpful one I can understand that desire to only be judged by the good and the morally consistent when you feel the stakes are life and death. But I think you have to try to just humble yourself and make the leap of good faith that those saying abusers should be killed are victims who have never themselves abused even while this is unlikely to always be the case. We are super privileged to be alive and free at the end of the day. We have reason to keep our heads bowed and not get self defensive however tempting. Like... I struggle when I think there must be thousands of guys who have also abused but fail to recognise the fact since I know that could have easily have been me if I hadn't then dated someone into feminist blogs who got me reading. It is hard not to envy that blissful self ignorance when you are really really unhappy and feel bitter that your own victimization is negated in the eyes of society. But this painful self knowledge however much it feels like having literally lost your soul is what has stopped you and me and others here from ever abusing again. That is worth the pain a thousand times over. And in a funny way is something to be grateful for. But yeah... I get it.

shock_the_monkey

I appreciate that you're trying to be honest and not sugarcoating. That's not the reason why I disagree with you.

Your idea that I'm incapable of love is honestly just way off. I don't think you understood my last post.

It is simply that those calling for blood are worse than someone who admits his mistake, like me. They lust for blood and they are proud of it. They encourage vigilantism.

I don't think you've read my story, because if you did, I don't get how you conclude that I'm the one who lacks love and mercy. **Everyone** abused me on purpose. Not as a mistake or ignorance. They were proud of it. I begged on my knees and they didn't care at all, even laughed at me. Where did I say I wanted revenge on them? Please point out where I lack mercy because I'm not seeing any statement that suggests anything like that.

Once again I appreciate that you are trying to be honest, and I appreciate "tough love" posts but you're just way off. You mixed up "tough love" with just "tough for no reason" and just ended up with a contrarian position that doesn't fit what I wrote before.

To reiterate on my last post: I apologize for my actions to those that I've hurt, NOT to 3rd party vigilantes who are worse than I've ever been in my life. I do not apologize to you or others if I have done nothing to you. Nor do you have any claim against me. This is not a lack of love or mercy. This is a love of true justice, not vigilante bloodlust which is disgusting.

-- Sun Jul 22, 2018 11:09 am --

sprock wrote:While I don't think the position is a helpful one I can understand that desire to only be judged by the good and the morally consistent when you feel the stakes are life and death. But I think you have to try to just humble yourself and make the leap of good faith that those saying abusers should be killed are victims who have never themselves abused even while this is unlikely to always be the case. We are super privileged to be alive and free at the end of the day. We have reason to keep our heads bowed and not get self defensive however tempting. Like... I struggle when I think there must be thousands of guys who have also abused but fail to recognise the fact since I know that could have easily have been me if I hadn't then dated someone into feminist blogs who got me reading. It is hard not to envy that blissful self ignorance when you are really really unhappy and feel bitter that your own victimization is negated in the eyes of society. But this painful self knowledge however much it feels like having literally lost your soul is what has stopped you and me and others here from ever abusing again. That is worth the pain a thousand times over. And in a funny way is something to be grateful for. But yeah... I get it.

What has stopped me from abusing is just learning, plain and simple. I am not an abusive person, I don't have compulsions to hurt anyone and never have. What happened was simple in a way. Everyone pulled me away from the right path. Whenever I took the right path, I was mocked for it and punished. So after experiencing that for a while, I investigated the other path. And that is where I made my mistakes.

Call it fatal naivete. I just did not know any better. That really is the truth. My whole world was me being targeted and being told that doing the right thing, was wrong. If I had good intentions, those around me would shut me down including any and all attempts at learning. I became afraid of asking, afraid of learning, afraid of everything. They created a dynamic where ANY incident could escalate, and become a threat to my life (my parents would threaten to murder me, pulled out knives at me, if any dispute got large enough...). I lived in a kind of fear that I didn't even realize, just high adrenaline at all times.

My parents escaped my questions and even though they KNEW that I was at risk of having the wrong idea, and they didn't care. They let me go on, with the wrong ideas in my mind.

This is the simple truth. Call it an excuse if you must. But it's just true. And I wrestle daily with the thought of just ending my life, to be honest. Because I know the truth and I know exactly what led to my mistakes. But nobody cares about all that. In the end I'm the sucker who pays the price for everyone else's abuses on top of my own.

A truly righteous person would care what led me here. I see very few such people in society.

If only you knew how simple it would've been. If I had managed to speak to a responsible adult in my life, and if they had told me what was appropriate and what wasn't, that would have been it! It would've been that easy to avoid all of this!

You are definitely more victim than victimizer, I agree. And I think society has too narrow an understanding of free will vs. determinism as a binary... whereas I feel it's more like we have free will within very circumscribed circumstances.

But, at the same time, you suggest within your post that you knew in your heart you were doing wrong ("I investigated the other path"), but did it. Those moments are the ones in which we should never try to put accountability on anyone other than ourselves. That is to say, it's totally understandable for you to feel angry and righteous about the things done to you and, yes, of course they contributed to your behaviour - but you can sit with the regret of your own behaviour without immediately shifting to the question of what ultimately caused it. It's not even a strictly moral thing. I don't think it's proving emotionally useful for you to do so.

If you sought to pursue some kind of legal or social justice against your parents, you'd be well within your rights. But thinking along the lines of 'what if' to explain one's behaviour is just infinitely regressive. What if those who hurt you had different experiences in their own lives?

Also, you simply can't know the intentions of those who call for violent retribution. I think you are creating a construct in your mind of the most hateful people and then tearing them down. I absolutely agree some are just blood-thirsty and not rooted whatsoever in justice - but some are victims who have never victimized and feel all the anger you feel, but have never perpetrated... They have a right to that anger, you need to accept that. It doesn't mean they get to decide social policy or physically attack you or anything like that!

I don't think you are incapable of love, but where is directing your energies into this anger getting you? You say yourself that you are at the end of your rope. I really think the best thing you can do is to get into a position of volunteering where you can ensure parents treat their children better than how yours treated you

IDK I'm very conflicted by your posts! I certainly relate to parts of it. I also feel that my abuse came out of ignorance (and, yes, maybe my own previous victimization) than actual malevolence. But, intent isn't magic. It may however predict change. Like you, as soon as I educated myself (about enthusiastic consent being the only legit form of consent) I never repeated my one time action and look at it with nausea.

But... I did commit it. I cannot magic away the past. It remains an eternal stain. The vast majority of laws in the world (and for much of history) wouldn't condemn me to death and my victim doesn't see what I did as a legal matter and the British police proved uninterested in arresting me... so, all I can do is work on my own sh*t and try to be a better human, partly so I can live with myself, partly just because it's the right thing to do and I want to put more good out into the world. Do I think the scales will balance - probably not. I don't think that's how morality works anyway. I sincerely doubt Hell exists. All I and we can do is keep travelling that long endless road of accountability and change and appreciate how - slowly - the light does leak in

P.S. I will also add, to just put things in perspective, that I really only see 'Crime #2' unambiguously as abuse. 'Crime #1' is mainly gross, effectively not all that different from peeing in the sea if noone saw. I wouldn't expect a kid to be arrested for it if it weren't a case of direct exposure/ flashing. 'Crime #3' didn't actually happen. Thoughts, however horrible, are just thoughts. 'Crime #2' was unambiguously wrong. However, you were a kid. Most people don't condemn children nearly as harshly as they do adults. It's really worth remembering that. Your brain wasn't fully emotionally and intellectually developed. So, to a degree, you can literally see yourself as a different person now

but you can sit with the regret of your own behaviour without immediately shifting to the question of what ultimately caused it

I reiterated throughout my posts that I am fully accountable to anyone that I hurt and I never denied that. But then the natural thing is to think: why did I behave wrongly? And I know it was not malevolence.

But my realization is I am not accountable to people who I did not harm, and they have no right to judge me if they don't care about the FULL story. Those with bloodlust definitely don't care about the full story, they just want to unleash on a "righteous" and "justified" crusade.

you suggest within your post that you knew in your heart you were doing wrong ("I investigated the other path"), but did it.

Somewhat. I had originally thought that behavior was wrong but with everyone hurting me even when I was good, while not educating me about sexuality, and actively resisting / punishing attempts from me to learn about it, then I abandoned my attempts at figuring it out. It never was "I am going to hurt someone on purpose," it was "I don't understand this pleasurable feeling, nobody wants to discuss this with me, and I get punished for even trying... maybe it annoys them because I am overthinking it. Maybe I should just go with it."

Now I don't claim total innocence and never did. There is definitely an aspect of gratification with every sexual misconduct and I don't pretend it wasn't there. But I did try to get help in understanding it and after a certain point I thought the lack of help was itself a signal, telling me basically "stop trying so hard to figure it out." They made my need for help seem like some kind of compulsive act that they needed to "discipline" me to stop doing, because it annoyed them. And having faced the threat of murder from them, I had a deep seated fear of annoying them too much.

I remember clearly when I made those mistakes, I had the thought of "OK, I did everything in my power to figure this out, I guess I should just stop thinking about it." I felt like I had "screened" enough for potential problems.

Another fact that I remember very clearly now, is that I was in a very bad state of fatigue. I had been rushed to the ER several times but no diagnosis could be made. I felt extremely sick and I had inflammation and brain fog, and doctors recommended further tests but my parents refused to proceed and thought I was just wasting everyone's time. After that started happening, I became lost in my head for most of the day, my grades at school plummeted and combined with the abuse I felt like I was in a 24/7 dream.

Also, you simply can't know the intentions of those who call for violent retribution. I think you are creating a construct in your mind of the most hateful people and then tearing them down. I absolutely agree some are just blood-thirsty and not rooted whatsoever in justice - but some are victims who have never victimized and feel all the anger you feel, but have never perpetrated... They have a right to that anger, you need to accept that. It doesn't mean they get to decide social policy or physically attack you or anything like that!

I've seen hundreds of comments about the Josh Duggar scandal and few were anything other than calling for his murder. I don't know that it's a strawman, it seems to match what I observed. There are also hundreds of cases in the US of people on the sex offender registry being murdered in cold blood.

And also, I am a victim of someone too, and yet I forgave them (but I didn't mention that in my post). I would never have bloodlust, even against someone who harmed me, as long as they repent. Yet I'm disappointed that it's such a rarity now, there's just no redemption on today's society. That's what brought on my rant.

I don't think you are incapable of love, but where is directing your energies into this anger getting you?

Maybe I just need to vent. I never wanted to be a bad person and I feel I made a significant effort not to become one, but somehow it didn't work and it just bewilders me. Maybe I overrate the effort I thought I made. I don't know.

I say I'm at the end of my rope because I never wanted to be a bad person, and yet that's what became of me. I honestly have no desire to live anymore, it just feels like everything happened too fast for me to keep up and before I knew it, I had already behaved badly.

Everything just hit me at once, I was sick to death, I was afraid of dying due to illness or due to my parents' threats of murdering me, I was confused, and then I became an abusive person. Everything went wrong in my life. That's why I think of ending it. It's just a failure on every level, nothing works. There are no paths to redemption available in this society. What's left for me at this point?

__

P.S. I will also add

I think directly discussing the specific items may be the most helpful thing possible, so thank you. I feel crime #1 was just disgraceful and I debased myself in it.

Crime #2 is indeed unambiguously abusive.

Crime #3 scares me because of the "what ifs" and because maybe it means I could have gone that far. I know you can't live life thinking of "what ifs" but that's what this does for me. I have nightmares about it.

___

Also let me say, thank you VERY much to everyone who replied even if I disagreed. It's very helpful for me to discuss this regardless of the conclusion.

As ever I spent almost an hour writing a post only for the forum to time me out.

In short, even without being redeemed, your being persists since you are still as part of nature as any other animal, person or thing. So, life persists. It may be anxious, unhappy, self-recrimination life, but it is life nonetheless.

Ergle bergle - I'll try to re-write (but more briefly) what I wrote before.

I reiterated throughout my posts that I am fully accountable to anyone that I hurt and I never denied that. But then the natural thing is to think: why did I behave wrongly? And I know it was not malevolence.

Subconsciously possibly rooted in a fearful, wrong-headed desire to "take back" power, but you/we can never ultimately know.

Somewhat. I had originally thought that behavior was wrong but with everyone hurting me even when I was good, while not educating me about sexuality, and actively resisting / punishing attempts from me to learn about it, then I abandoned my attempts at figuring it out.

I can relate to this. It's not good enough that society leaves children to discover sex through what they find on the internet. Sometimes that'll be a good sex educator like Laci Green... sometimes it will be the most misogynist of online pornography.

My formal sex education lesson consisted of my form teacher in year 9 telling all the lads how his scout troupe had "ravaged" a group of girl guides in their tent. Later that same year he badgered a bunch of us into playing a game of spin the bottle while he watched. Erg.

Another fact that I remember very clearly now, is that I was in a very bad state of fatigue. I had been rushed to the ER several times but no diagnosis could be made. I felt extremely sick and I had inflammation and brain fog, and doctors recommended further tests but my parents refused to proceed and thought I was just wasting everyone's time. After that started happening, I became lost in my head for most of the day, my grades at school plummeted and combined with the abuse I felt like I was in a 24/7 dream.

It might just be a coincidence but that it weirdly similar to the year or so that preceded my abusively "dating" a 16/17-year-old. Post-viral fatigue with weird tingly sensations in my extremities and brief hospitalisation and an MRI scan for a phantom brain tumour. Because I thought I was going to die, I became very isolated, which is how I ended up spending all my time in my room on my computer in a state of foggy sleep deprivation.

I've seen hundreds of comments about the Josh Duggar scandal and few were anything other than calling for his murder. I don't know that it's a strawman, it seems to match what I observed. There are also hundreds of cases in the US of people on the sex offender registry being murdered in cold blood.

True, but I think a lot of that anger was due to the hypocrisy of Duggar setting himself up as Christian bastion of morality on TV. Also, he molested his siblings over several years up to and including his 18th.

I think a better comparison would be Lena Dunham. Yes, some people hate her guts, but many others think she shouldn't be labelled as a monster.

I never wanted to be a bad person and I feel I made a significant effort not to become one, but somehow it didn't work and it just bewilders me.

I think very very few people actively *want* to be a bad person though. Most terrible actions are committed by people who are, in the moment, convinced of their being in the right to some degree.

there's just no redemption on today's society

This is mostly true, I think... however it is better than people are labelled as sub-human due to their own immoral actions, than due to - say - the colour of their skin.

However, while moral punishments were far harsher in the past, there was a much greater belief in metaphysical redemption. For instance, the mortal souls of those about to be hung on the scaffold were prayed for and those criminals sent to Australia were eventually allowed to start new lives.

There are no paths to redemption available in this society. What's left for me at this point?

Life persists though. If you can trying to shift your brain from an immutable Christian binary of "redeemed/ irredeemable" towards a more Buddhist concept of gradual change. You are a process not the finished article. Metaphysical labels, however socially or psychologically enforced, don't change that.