I think one of the scarier things I’ve learned through my therapy/deconstructing my experience with abuse/leaving christianity is that monsters aren’t just monsters. Monsters are usually the end product of a snowball of factors. Work stress, unprocessed trauma, undiagnosed/untreated mental illness, poor health, substance abuse, low energy levels, short tempers, repeated exposure to harmful propaganda, peer pressure, an environment that happens to make it easy to conceal wrongdoing, a few accidental bad decisions, etc. etc. etc.
I don’t mean this in any way that mitigates the harm or pain that abuse causes, or in any way that diminishes the very real responsibility every person has for their own actions.
But the scary thing to me is that my monsters are so human, so much like me. The people responsible for the abuse I went through, they also hurt and they also bleed and I have never been able to really, truly, honestly hate them no matter how bad it got. Like, on some level, I kinda get it. I would never do what they did, and they should never have done it either. I owe them nothing. I don’t forgive it all. I won’t be returning to them. But we’re not so different, at the core, and that’s scary.
