For the record. We will not crop it, as the contexts will be lost ...
*****
April 14, 2014
How I feel about the abuser
"I got followed on Twitter by a registered sex offender over the weekend, and when I found out, I was just like 'meh'.
"Yeah, I was just like that.
I know I was supposed to get all angry and upset about it, and demand that Twitter ban his account (which I hope they do); I know it was designed to ruin my day and my mood, but it didn't. I think it's 'cause I can see it all for what it really is. And it got me thinking about how I feel about my father today.
The thing is, I strongly believe in the 'spiritual' maxim: 'happy people don't do bad things.' This makes perfect sense to me. My ugliest behaviour has always come from a place of pain, and when I'm happy, I want others to share in my happiness too. The world looks so different when I'm happy, from when I'm sad. And long story short, abusers ain't happy.
Ok let me elaborate a little. I don't think you can be happy whilst simultaneously destroying other people's happiness. At best, you'll be avoiding your own pain i.e. if you screw over your rival to get ahead in the big game of life, sure, there will be the absence of pain, because for a short time you won't feel inferior to them, you can experience some peace for a short while... I'm not convinced that it's happiness, though.
In life, we are all suffering, and the way we treat other people reflects the extent of our suffering. Now this guy on Twitter has been galavanting around the cyber space pretending that he's oh so nonchalant about everyone's unbridled hatred towards him, but I don't buy it. Even if in his own mind, as a lot of child abusers do, he thinks he's somehow 'right' about his previous actions, feeling ostracised by society has gotta suck. You can't just shake that off. You think he doesn't know, deep down, that he's an idiot? He knows. And if he don't consciously know, well, the signs of subconscious knowing are there for all to see: every Tweet oozing with frustration at the world, so much time and energy put into trying to score petty points against others - it's a sad life. It's one I almost pity.
Actually, I do pity him. There, I said it. I pity him and anyone else who's ever fallen so low that they've abused a child/delighted in the occurrence of their abuse, and then gone on to try and justify it. I know that the initial, understandable, relatable, damn well straight response to an abuser is utter contempt, and that's how it ought to be. But me, I'm tired of giving 'em enough airtime, it just goes round and round, some folks are incapable of reason because if they accepted reason then they would also have to face what they are. Nope, too painful. But you can be sure that no matter what tomfoolery he or they come out with next, they are suffering immensely. Possibly even more than you or I. Well, definitely more than me, I'm having a hoot.
You see, I might have been a victim of the abuser's messed up beliefs, and it very much had a negative impact on my life to have to deal with it all, but I'm out of it now. I get to go on and do normal things like build friendships and follow interests and, oh yeah, be accepted by society. It's done. For me, it's over. But for Bill the pain is unending. It'll never be over for the abuser, particularly not when they refuse to admit remorse - or fail to feel it altogether.
I used to spend a lot of time agonising over whether Dad really acknowledged what he'd done, deep down in the recesses of his - chest area. It was so important to me that he was capable of remorse, and when no evidence of it showed up, I chose to believe in it anyway, a bit like God. I told myself that, deep down, he knew what he'd done, he was just too cowardly to admit it. Now I realise that he probably genuinely doesn't think he's done anything wrong. And in a way, that's even more dire for him. He is actually incapable of remorse. What a sorry, pitiful, degenerate kind of existence that must be.
I think survivors often envision their abusers as 'winning' somehow, as 'getting away with it', as if they get to walk off into the sunset laughing. I don't think this is accurate. Of course, if you've ever had to endure contact with your abuser after disclosure, then they will try to enforce that image to cause you pain in order to try and relieve some of their own. It becomes an adversarial battle about winning and losing and even point scoring. But what we don't realise is, we win by default because we don't abuse kids!!! There's nothing to prove, nothing to fight for, nothing to analyse. To abuse a child in all their innocence, you gotta be pretty messed up. You're already so, so, so lost by the time you start abusing them. Even if you're rich and reputable, in your head you must be suffering immensely. And basically, serves you right son.
Karma doesn't have to be a linear narrative of 'do this bad thing, THEN a bad thing will happen to you' - rather, it's a simultaneous transaction: 'for you to even DO that bad thing, you must already be in such pain.'
And so, your abuser can never 'win'. They're not putting their feet up after a hard day's molesting, to listen to some Sinatra and feel good about themselves. That doesn't happen. Rather, they will derive whatever cruel semblence of actual happiness that they can, desperate, like a starving rat nibbling through the trash. It's not a dignified life. And it's simply your bad luck that you came into contact with such a dysfunctional individual when you were young and vulnerable. It's nothing you did. You didn't make them that way.
Nowadays I feel more or less indifferent to the abuser because I'm too busy focusing on me. Sure, if I bother to really think about those memories, of course I'll get upset and angry and want to shoot him. But that's exactly it... why bother? I don't define myself by what happened to me. I partially define myself by what I'm doing about it. And you can't say I'm repressed, because I've done all the letter-writing and contemplating and pillow-punching so that the anger I feel doesn't show up in my day-to-day life. There's only so many times you can keep squeezing the sponge of your past to get all the pain out; after that, it's just not interesting anymore. For the most part you can leave it where it is and focus on the here and now.
Never believe it when an abuser or other cray-cray tries to make out like they're laughing at you, mocking you, getting the better of you, and goin' home for that Sinatra. It ain't happening. It's an illusion designed to hurt you 'cause they still haven't learned that you can't be happy whilst hurting another individual; though you can be entertained, and it's a distraction from the inner void of self-loathing that they all experience without exception. That's why they're doing it. They're 'thriving' on the fuss, the controversy, the supposed power trip; but remember, you, the survivor, won and win and keep on winning by default. Why?
Because you don't abuse kids! There can be no greater slam-dunk than that. Go live your life and give 'em the two-finger salute, it's the best way of exposing how powerless they really are."
http://www.siobhanpyburn.com/#!How-I-feel-about-the-abuser/c21su/6D0B66AC-454E-4955-BCEB-3EFA47AC2E11
*****
Siobhan Pyburn @siobhanpyburn
https://twitter.com/siobhanpyburn
1:59pm Tuesday 23rd February 201
Life after abuse
http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/5023507.Life_after_abuse/
http://www.fixers.org.uk/fixers/3195-10696/siobhan.php
17 Oct 2013
Attorney General aims to put sex abuse victims first
http://www.channel5.com/shows/5-news/features-archived/attorney-general-aims-to-put-sex-abuse-victims-first
*****
April 19, 2014
Changing the meaning of the abuse
"I wrote in my last post about the sex offender who followed me on Twitter; well, on his site, he's got a reading list of things what conveniently make his previous actions sound okay. Yeah, I know. From there I discovered that there are some authors who go so far as to say that the pain from sexual abuse specifically is a myth and it isn't the abuse itself which damages us, but our narrative of it - the way society deals with it, and paints it, and makes it out to be this big bad thing which it's not.
Well, to that I say an almighty fuck off. How can anyone say that sexual abuse isn't a damaging experience? [inconsistent evidence] Of course it is. But. But. The general principle of 'things have no meaning but for the meaning you give it' applies to a sexually abusive past as much as it does anything else. As a kid you had no choice in what happened or how you perceived it; but as an adult, the power is in our hands. We have the power of decision at our disposal, any second that we wanna use it.
One day I just decided that I wanted to take responsibility for who I was gonna be from now on, and re-framed the abuse accordingly. I'll never say it wasn't a big deal. It was huge. But it is done now. Sometimes there are after-effects and I totally anticipate that and will deal with them as and when they occur.
But I'm not gonna let that dirty old man (read: terribly tormented, suffering sould, as discussed is previous post) [well really !!!] ruin my life and that's the bottom line. [you fabricated the construct]."
http://www.siobhanpyburn.com/#!Changing-the-meaning-of-the-abuse/c21su/24F1AE54-8485-4B6F-8CAB-2CC322D96459
