You, the Guilty One

nobody@vox.com(Patricia Volonakis Davis) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:28:41 -0700

This post is dedicated to you. You know who you are, though not many others do. You trust very few with your secret, the terrible, shameful secret that your mother, your father, maybe even your brothers and sisters, are not talking to you, or you've stopped talking to them.

Or perhaps that's not quite the truth, perhaps you do still talk to them, but wish like hell you could find the nerve to sever ties. Because every time you see them, you leave feeling sick and humiliated. They twist your guts up every time, but you keep going back, because you think- hope- it will be different this time. This time, you’ll do or say the one right thing, the one clever thing, that will make them love you or be proud of you, or, at the very least, respect you. Or maybe the reason you go back each time is because you had it drilled into your head long ago that you have to accept any bad behaviour from them because they are "your family." Possibly your priest told you that, or your rabbi, or even your best friend, who just happens to have a family who treats him/her in a similar way.

But more likely, it was your parents themselves. Starting from when you were quite young, after they tormented you in some physical or mental way, they told you that you were to blame, you forced them to treat you in an unbearable way, because you were an unbearable child.

And when you got to too old for them to mentally or physically persecute you, (but only because you moved away,) they continued their campaign against you by “gathering armies.” They told your brothers and sisters how reprehensible you are and that it was acceptable, preferable even, for them to dislike you, even hate you. They passed this sentiment on to aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, anyone they could martial to listen to and sympathise with their complaints about you. Some were happy to join their crusade. Others were skeptical, though nonetheless, they never defended you.

So for a long time, as you grew to adulthood, you believed them, all of them, that you were ‘argumentative,’ or ‘ungrateful,’ or ‘disrespectful,’ or ‘selfish,’ or ‘crazy’ or coldhearted, or ‘too big for your britches,’ or ‘difficult to handle,’ or whatever. Whatever the reason that they reviled you, you knew it was your fault and you tried to 'fix' it .

But, you never could, could you? No matter what you attempted, be it reason or tears, no matter how you begged for acceptance, wanted so much to explain who you were, and how much you loved them, they wouldn’t hear you and you couldn’t earn their love.

So you struggled hard to close yourself off from the pain of it. You swallowed all their contempt, pretending that you didn’t even sense it. You chastised yourself every time you weren’t stoic enough, numb enough, to convince them and yourself that their barbs, their accusations, didn't hit their mark.

You may have even gone out and found others who treated you the same way your family did. Your wife, your husband, a new friend, even a coworker, picked up the signal from you that it was okay to treat you despicably, because your own family had taught you that you deserved to be despised. You provided a great outlet for these people, because you would never react. And that was because you wanted to be too tough to care.

Sometime in your late twenties or early thirties, it all gets to be a little too much, however, when someone steps over even that meagre line of self-respect you’ve allowed yourself. It might be that you get turned down once too often for that promotion you richly deserve, or that your husband’s verbal assaults become physical. Maybe you have child and one day, when you look at her, you see the child you once were. So you decide to create a better world for your child and you. You seek “help,” another thing your family ridicules you for, as more proof that you’re the problem. They see you need to go ‘get right in the head,' while of course, they don’t.

For a hefty fee, your therapist is sympathetic and points out the obvious - you didn’t deserve to be brutalised because you couldn’t have been all that intolerable when you were in middle school. So, it’s not you, after all. You wasted almost three decades to anxieties and unmerited hurt, but now you can feel better. Now you can say, “it’s not me,” with some conviction, because your therapist told you so. And will keep telling you so, as long as you keep going back and paying to hear it.

Eventually you stop having to go back and hear it, either because you do finally truly believe it, or because your health insurance runs out. You feel much better about yourself. You learn to have productive relationships. You learn to assert yourself, even like yourself. You meet others who like you, too and whom you can like right back.

And yet, there’s always that hole of lingering hurt. You try to fill it. Maybe with food, maybe with exercise, maybe with sex or achievements. But deep down, you know you weren’t really hungry and all your accomplishments still don’t give you what you want - that primal approval from the ones who mattered first, though not necessarily most, and the complete release from the little guilt devil who still remains tethered to you. He’s much less significant now, but he’s still there. He’ll never completely go away. And do you know why?

It’s because you really are guilty.

You are guilty of possessing that one rogue gene from the putrid family pool that gave you a luminous soul and a heart full of compassion.

You are guilty of making the rest of your pitiful family feel envy and resentment that not only were you the only crab who crawled out of their barrel, but you offered others a hand up, too and they didn’t want to take it.

You are guilty of overcoming hardships and rejoicing in your triumphs, while your relatives only see that you have “good” luck, whilst theirs is “bad.”

And though you may always feel slightly sad that your “good luck” did not extend to who your family is and how they will always see you, that experience helped shape you into the empathetic, productive person you are.

And so, you are guilty, my friend, of being capable of embracing life, drawing others to you with your lure of joy, while your relatives only want to wallow in misery and wait to die. It was a choice they made long ago, that separates you from them and always will. If you can’t fully get over it, sigh deeply, and get used to it.

Then, surround yourself with people like yourself and celebrate the miracle of you, the guilty, wondrous, miracle of you.

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