My True Realities

People have been hurting me all my life in ways I could not acknowledge until now. I always judged people based on their motivations, their hearts, their reasons. I could see it. Often, they thought they were helping. Probably more often, they had their own traumas and past abuses that they never dealt with, and so they passed that on to me. The saying goes that hurt people hurt people, and that’s true. I am sure that I hurt others in these times of grief, although that is not my intention and I carefully examine my actions to determine if they are over reactions to avoid hurting others as much as possible. I also have certain safe people to whom I vent my frustrations while avoiding loosing them on others who couldn’t handle the force of my pain and anger. I know I’m not perfect at choosing the healthiest of coping mechanisms, but I try. Today I had a thought, though, about the intentions of the people who hurt me the most. Sometimes people hurt others unintentionally. But w...

One of the hardest things to do is to go from being a secondary character in someone else's story to being the main character of your own. Most people start out learning about life from their parents. As trusting children, we believe everything our parents say until maturity shows us that even they do not know everything. By the time that happens, we have entered social situations in which we yearn to be liked, accepted, and validated by our peers. If we grow up in religion, we are told from the start that we are not to trust ourselves, but need to rely on others who have more wisdom than us to tell us about life, the universe, and everything. The entire church hierarchical structure is predicated on this idea that someone with a divinity degree or who happens to stand behind a pulpit knows more about Yahweh than the person in the pews. Both religious and secular society teach us to value productivity in some form, and we all begin to strive toward some goal that we think will ...