Dear Cat:

The manic part, I wonder if it is that you so often deny yourself of pleasure that when you give yourself the occasional permission to enjoy yourself, you push a whole lot of excitement into a short period of time, hence the manic experience.

You wrote: “I think my dilemma, is that I don’t know how to view it. I’d like to think that deep down at the heart, that everyone has a good heart and wants peace and love, but some people’s actions do the exact opposite.. do I pity them?.. Should I see both of them as good people who are both just hurting? Or should I see them as being abusive individuals who aren’t good people?”

You were referring by “both of them” to your parents, and you wrote about them here: “My parents had no empathy at all for us”.

I was confused in a similar way for decades. I finally arrived at clarity on the issue and will share it with you. I will be referring to your parents taking in the statement that you made about them having had no empathy at all for their daughters.

Each one of your parents was born indeed with “a good heart and wants peace and love” and had that kind of heart for many years while growing up, each reaching out for love from their parents, having lots of empathy for their parents, willing to do anything for love, anything and everything.

When you were born to your parents, they were no longer those children. You never had the … pleasure of meeting your parents when they were empathetic and loving. You met them when they were abusive.

They were born innocent, were innocent for years and then… before you came into their lives, they were no longer innocent.

Should you feel sorry for them? For the children that they were before you met them, you can, if you would like. Feel sorry for all the children born loving and innocent, then betrayed and mistreated.

For the adults that they were and are since you met them: no, not if you could choose how to feel.

Notice this: you are a victim of your parents, but if and when you become a mother, and then you mistreat your own children, again and again, year after year, you will be guilty yourself.

Not that a single event of abuse is okay, none is, of course. But the repetition of abuse over many years without correction makes a once good and innocent person,  bad and guilty, in my book.

Let me know if this makes sense to you.

anita