The Annual Update

 We can't handle deceit or betrayal.

The people I've seen who've been really hurt have been hurt most by deceit. That's worth thinking about.

You get walloped by life. There's absolutely no doubt about that. But I thought for a long time that people can handle earthquakes and cancer, and even death.

But they can't handle betrayal, and they can't handle deception.

People can't handle having the rug pulled out from underneath them by people they love and trust. That does them in, you know? It makes them ill. It hurts them. Psychophysiologically, it damages them.

But more than that, it makes them cynical, bitter and vicious and resentful.

And then they also start to act all that out in the world, and that makes it worse. ~J.P.

Do you see her?  Innocent, happy, foolish, blind.  She thinks her world is very nearly perfect...except for....? there it is, just in the peripheral, never able to see it directly, but she can't shake the feeling that something is looming. Something is wrong.  She dismisses, she denies, she feels guilty for ever letting herself think those things.   And, yet.

In the quiet moments, when she's all alone, which she finds herself having more and more, her thoughts always return to this underlying unease.  This poor stupid girl is about to die a thousand deaths all at once and then over and over again.  Every day.  For the rest of her life.  When you see her six years later, (this very month in fact), it's not that girl anymore.  That girl is gone.  And she will not come back.

Six Years Later.  All I can say is that there is a life after trauma.  I've stopped waiting to feel "better" or "back to normal."  Now, I'm just living.  I'm not the person I was before, but I think I'm finally getting used to the person I am today.  The person I am today is trying to heal, to not bring more pain into the world, to not let bitterness close her heart and cloud her every interaction, to not allow cynicism to steal her joy and the joy of everyone around her.  It's a daily fight, but a worthy one.  I don't want to poison those around me.  I can't guarantee I'll make ever make the world a better place, but I can try.  And I will promise where at all possible, not to make it worse.