Settled in Journal

I recently picked up my journal from 2019, when I first began intense therapy in earnest.
Having not been in therapy now for quite awhile, and having not felt any “need” for it possibly a few months before my last session, my journal seems to me now like a sad, fascinating glimpse into the mind of a broken child. I realize that is exactly what I was. But was I operating as a child? Yes. I was a sad broken child in mind and in deed. And everyone around me seemed to prefer it that way. In fact, when I shed that brokenness through healing and grew from a child to an adult through conscious maturation, almost everyone in my life began to hate me. So they did in fact prefer me broken. They benefited from my brokenness. They had a stake in me remaining broken. So when I healed, they were enraged.
And it isn’t an enduring rage. I feel like people on the “other side” need no explanation; it’s just a reiteration of the basic reality we exist in. However, I hear from doubters and those critical of universal values regularly. Why bring up the past? They ask. I don’t want to think about or re-experience those feelings. OR, those loathsome few who dare to assert that my mother loves me in her own way.
So I still engage with those people- I mean, it’s almost necessary, they make up about 99% of people- but it is from a place wherein I observe them with clarity. By clarity I mean that I consistently and accurately identify myself, vs them, vs the world.
Because, and this is my guess, the average person suffers most from lack of clarity. Or maybe lack of honesty, or vanity would be another way to say this. Most people cannot accurately identify themselves, let alone empirical phenomenon that originate within themselves, vs others, vs the world (reality).
It is a uniquely human trait to develop an individual identity.
The original evil is that child abusers violently, brutally rip away the child’s rightful ability to identify self vs other vs reality.
In fact, abuse is only possible by obfuscation of identity by the abuser. This is not an innocent child communicating his legitimate needs. This is the disobedience, or selfishness, or defiance, an evil that must be destroyed. And it must be destroyed now, quickly, decisively, and firmly. I must make the biggest impression I can in this moment so that this evil will never be a thought in his head ever again. And if it is a thought, it will be just as quickly, decisively, and firmly destroyed in the child’s mind. One may never admit to oneself that one is a reprehensible child abuser. It’s never the child that they are “abusing”. There is always a story, a narrative, about how the abuser actually loves the child and is teaching the child about the real world.
So it’s all the same abuse. Whether it is my mother neglecting me for having the legitimate needs of an infant, or a father who beat his kids, or some stranger who asserts that all parents love their children. It is the same. They’re all doing the same thing; to one degree or another.

It is strange to read the words of my sad broken child self. On repeat was the doubt of my own existence. “Do I exist?” I asked, over and over. How could I know if I existed, when my existence was predicated on the necessity that I not exist? Having needs meant that I was rejected. No one saw me. I could’ve been anyone. No one loved me. I was just a placeholder; like a hollow baby doll that any personality or identify could be switched out in any moment. And it didn’t matter who it was; it made no difference. I died, and it made no difference.

Last updated July 05, 2023