five in the morning. thinking about the past. thinking about mistakes i made. thinking about people i trusted that i shouldn't have because as events unfolded they were not worthy of the trust i placed in them and things were said or done back then that carry hurt and pain into the present. like crimes against humanity going on in my house that i missed because i was deceived. successfully deceived. now i'm thinking about lies i was told by people i loved, people i cared for, people i was supposed to protect who were under attack but i didn't know it and they didn't trust me enough to tell me. thinking about deceptions that involved hiding information from me, information that is no longer hidden by people who are now questioning my ethics and my integrity even though they were deceiving me and now i am somehow responsible for being deceived. i have a lot of questions this morning, and not a lot of answers.

it's partly a survivor's guilt thing. from my perspective i didn't protect what i didn't know was at risk because i didn't notice what was happening, as in ignorance was bliss. but now the people i love say that my inaction and inattention in the past somehow justifies their right to lay a guilt trip on me in the present. as in my ignorance was inadequate then and is no excuse now. it's hard to talk about because even the act of talking about it can be interpreted as an attack or as a failure to protect. it's like emotional blackmail. it's a mental knot where failure to be conspicuously compassionate becomes equated with being an accessory to the fact. it's very strange logic and i am a bit at a loss to address it. it's very messy. people are yelling at me like i'm a runaway horse and they're innocent riders but my perspective is so totally different that i don't know where to start. maybe there is no good place to start, only rotten places. maybe starting to talk about it is worse than keeping quiet. or maybe the best response is no response. but that just reinforces the mistaken perception that i do not care. i don't see a good way forward. it's fuzzy to think about. it's five in the morning.
posted by Will Ross at 05:34