Dear Samantha:

I wonder if your mother’s reasoning about divorcing your father when you were 11, and not before, made sense. I think not, for the following reason:

I think what would have made sense was to remove you ASAP from the physical violence you were a victim of. And fight in court so to protect you from visitation with an abusive father/ grandfather. I can’t picture it being a good idea to allow you to be victimized in such a sensitive age so that to prevent victimization later (when you are already injured by years of more violence, more victimization).

I understand you finding comfort in a fellow victim in that house-of-horrors. Only, of course, you were the only “perfect victim”- the only child in the duo of you and her.

Regarding the on and off again boyfriend: I don’t know if I understood your last question: “..I am keeping who he is when we are in our on mode an antonym for what happens between us.” Do you mean that you are holding on to that good view of him when in actuality he is not good for you?

Makes me think… your insistence that people are kind when they are not: “it’s so easy and wonderful to come from a place of kindness, so why not?” Your father had a reason for Why not, and so did your grandfather.

Can’t deny the fact that it is easier for many people to be cruel. True, sometimes we see cruelty where it is not, mind reading for example, thinking wrongly that another said something to hurt us when they didn’t and when the thing said was not abusive in itself. But often enough, as evident in your life, and mine, there is such a thing as cruelty.

Hurt people often pass on their hurt as a way to relieve themselves from their hurt.

anita