Posted on by crystal · 134 Comments

Hurt people hurt people … but that doesn’t make it okay

We all have different ways of responding to trauma and misfortune. Some of us suppress it until it eventually bursts out. Some of us crack jokes and make millions in stand-up. Some of us hide in alcohol, or drugs, or sex, or novels. Some of us build walls and never let anyone near us again. And some of us – many of us – pass on the pain to others.

Unfortunately, the people who receive that pain are often undeserving. You reject the nice guy or nice girl because of someone who wasn’t quite as nice. You become transactional in relationships with someone that’s given you their money – and their hurt. Sometimes, you get downright violent in your words, actions … or your stubborn lack of both.

I’ve explored religion a little bit, and while Christianity says to turn the other cheek, New Agey Buddhism says there is no cheek, there is no hurt. That everything happens for a reason and if you take a big picture view, that ‘nasty experience’ was for your benefit. Something in your past life (or the past life of your harmer) brought you together in this painful situation at your request.

While I won’t go that far, I don’t believe anything happens in a vacuum. Nothing is random in my world. There’s always a reason for the way things go. Now – in my line of thinking – a reason isn’t an excuse. It may explain what happened, but it doesn’t make it okay. Knowing someone was abused in childhood may explain why they hurt another child, but it doesn’t justify their action, or mean they should be forgiven.

Some of us are wired with empathy. When something bad happens to us, we do our best to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else. Others are more drawn towards vengeance. If I suffer, we all suffer, and that somehow makes it fair. Like the example I like to use so frequently, two young brothers watch their dad batter their mum. One grows up thinking it’s normal – even expected – for women to be beaten. The other promises never to raise his fist.

 

They say the way someone treats you is a refection of them, not you. If someone abuses you, there’s nothing wrong with you. The problem is them. On the other hand, people only treat you the way you let them. Yes, they are the ones with a flaw, but as long as you sit there and take it, it doesn’t stop.

So I guess the trick is to know when to walk away, and have the courage to do it kindly. Be brave enough, strong enough, and soft enough to say, ‘Hey, I know you’ve been hurt, and I’m sorry that happened to you. And I’m not going to stay and let you do the same to me.’

Be wise enough to know acting out is not the same as working out, and indulging negativity is not a way to solve it. They need professional help, not a psychological punching bag, and that letting them use you to exercise their demons is no good for either of you.

Some people see that as abandoning someone that needs help. It feels more loving to martyr yourself, to give them another chance, to believe that your wholesome love will get through to them, heal their hurt, and make them better. You’ll be patient. You will fix them. And they will love your forever in return. You’ll be the one person in life that never gave up on them.

Or, you know, you’ll be dead.

It’s hard to walk away, and some people never do. They just stay there and take it forever, losing themselves in the process. So now you just have two broken people instead of one. Well, the older I get, the more I learn to be kinder to myself. Sometimes, that means refusing to ‘save’ someone else.

♫ human ♫ Rag ‘n ‘bone man ♫

Posted on by crystal · 136 Comments

Romancing the story

What’s your dream career? I don’t mean the job you’d love to do, the one that ‘wouldn’t feel like work’. I mean the one you fantasise about, the one you think must be fairytale bliss. (Mine is probably chocolate taster, because omg so. much. chocolate!

For a lot of people, it’s being a princess, or a writer, or a sailor. I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week because my writing list has covered Pest Control Services and Tombstone Carvers … Also, I’ve been reading about maritime disasters, watching Royals, and Pirates of the Caribbean.

A lot of the clients I write for are family businesses in the first world. So while us guys grow up wanting to be doctors or lawyers or socialites, there’s a guy somewhere in the bundus of UK who woke up one day and said, ‘You know what, Wife? We’re going to kill bugs. And people are going to pay us to do it.’ And they did. For 50 years and counting. And all their nieces and nephews and kids and grandkids are part of the family business.

These kids did not tell their guidance counselors that they want to be policemen when they grew up. Nope. Their career path was clear from day one. Their folks and grandfolks had made millions (?) killing insects and it was their duty to continue with the business. They didn’t really have a choice.

For some people, this is a blessing. They find comfort knowing their path is charted out, that they have a job waiting, that they don’t have to struggle to discover what they want to do when they grow up. They just go to school and study something relevant to the family firm. Like … I don’t know … a degree in radioactive roach control.

For others, this feels like a trap. They are free spirits and would rather be lost and uncertain on their own life journeys than have a destination chosen for them. They’d rather flit from job to job until they find one that fits. A similar line of thinking came up in the royals documentary.

Some street-side interviewees said they felt sad for modern royals. Their whole lives are designed, what school they go to, what charity they support, what family they can marry. Especially the first borns, the crown heirs. The crown spares are even more trapped, because their whole lives are basically waiting for siblings to die so they can be a just-in-case monarch.

Other people thought this was the best way to live! Be rich, don’t pay bills, attend fancy events, then die and be buried in fancy clothes. The cost? Don’t fall in love with the wrong person, and try not to be photographed doing anything stupid. I suppose your views on this spectrum are driven by your personality, what you believe in, the kind of person that you are. Neither opinion is right or wrong. They’re just … different.

Unrelated: how the fuck did we ever communicate before gifs?!?!

Back to the point, I’m a writer by profession, and my current target for 2025 is a container house on the shores of Lake Elementaita (where a friend currently owns a resort full of forest cabins and is trying to convince me that cabin beats container). So yeah, lying in a hammock, staring at flamingoes, and typing on my laptop is a very real possibility by the time I’m 43. #KnockCabin

Except … that’s not really what my daily life is like. Yes, I work in my pyjamas and write for a living, and I generally enjoy it. But it’s not the romantic notion of scribbling words under a tree. Most days, I’m on my bed or at my writing desk, sitting until my ass hurts, chasing panic-inducing deadlines as I write SEO articles about marble tiles and Japanese blenders. Up-side, it pays well, I nap a lot, and I get to use all the puns I want woohoo! #PunsAreFun

Sometimes I think other jobs must be way more exciting. Like being a sailor or a hunter or a chef. But the truth is – as much as we romanticise that shit, they’re all just jobs. Hunters still have to skin animals and clean smelly intestines. Sailors spend a lot of time in nasty weather smelling like fish. And some people earn their millions killing bugs. What’s my point? I have no idea. I was just thinking about it so I wrote about it. Sorry. Here, have a gif.

♫ How you remind me ♫ nickelback ♫

Posted on by crystal · 16 Comments

Pain

I’ve never considered cutting. It just didn’t occur to me. I guess because I’m terrified of pain, and not too wild about blood or broken skin. Scabs maybe, but not the raw stuff. But I do get the thinking behind it … probably because it’s the space I’m in now.

My teenager tells me everybody cuts, and that it’s no big deal. Unfortunately, one of her crowd took it over the edge and ended up in hospital, but that’s not my story to tell. My story is … well … feeling so much emotional hurt that a physical outlet seems better. It’s an inkling that if I had something tangible to focus on, then it would dull the torture inside.

Some people cut for the opposite reason. They’re so numb and dead inside that physical sensation – even the negative kind – will remind them they’re alive. Seeing their blood flow out proves that they’re still breathing. But because those dark spaces are cyclic, they keep needing the razor-sharp mnemonic. And anyway, beer is better, so if you’re cutting, you can get cheap-to-free non-judgey help at Amani Centre of Befrienders Kenya.

I’m big on MBTI and I’m a feeler, so I’m supposed to prefer ‘feeling’ over ‘thinking’ and be comfortable with my emotions. My best friend is a thinker, so it’s always been my assumption that I can handle sentiment better than he can. Turns out it isn’t the case. See, he … feels things. He doesn’t try to figure them out, because digging into feelings is exhausting. He prefers logic.

So when he feels something positive, he goes with it. When he feels something negative, he sits still and waits for it to pass. It’s a lesson he’s trying to teach me, because I give so much weight to my feelings that I’m obsessed with understanding them. So I analyse them to breaking point, and if they’re illogical (which feelings generally are) then I suppress them.

Here’s the thing with the stuff you suppress. It eventually pulls a coke bottle on you, and the sight is never pretty. I thought I had learned this lesson already – especially since my therapist made repeat the exercise so often. Turns out I wasn’t paying attention.

I’ve been holding in a lot of shit and it’s coming out explosively. So then I just started tuning it out with beer and weed cookies, but that just pushes it down further. Also, it makes me wake up with cramps. So this week I decided no cookies, no beer (also, I was super broke). I decided I’m just going sit with this shit and feel it. And you know what? Feelings suck raw eggs. Send beer.

♫ Basket Case ♫ Green Day ♫