I realized something a couple of years ago: I am bothered by memories of the abuse I have suffered, and part of what rankles is my own failure to stand up and punch the nasty person in the mouth.
If I were injured by something I genuinely could not have helped ― e.g., something heavy fell on me ― then that would not be an infuriating memory. I was injured by other people, though, and I believe I should have done something.
Targets who retaliate are usually blamed. Since nobody else cared about the abuse, the third parties will usually turn on the target ― from their own self-centered point of view, there would be no problem if the target continued to absorb the abuse passively, and so the target is the one causing problems for them.
I know that this is how my family would have reacted to any self-defense on my part, but I still think I should have punched one especially vicious aunt. She made a hobby of tormenting, insulting, ridiculing, and smearing me. She even shrieked ridicule at my father’s last services, to try to get the entire room to laugh at me with her ― at a memorial service. If I had administered some consequences in my teens, I would have had to deal with some fallout, but I probably wouldn’t have had to continue enduring the abuse. Accordingly, I’m pretty sure I should have just hit her. It would have been wiser in the long run.
So why didn’t I?
At the time, the lesson I’d learned was that standing up for myself generally caused more problems than it solved. No one else would ever help me, and helping myself always went badly because I was blamed. I was trained to complete passivity.
However, I feel responsible for not having overcome that. Not standing up for myself at age four is one thing, but not standing up for myself at age fourteen is harder to forgive.
In my daydreams, we’re all at my grandmother’s house for a family gathering, and I don’t hide in another room when she starts up. I take a hardback book, walk over to her, pull her down over my knee, and paddle her nasty behind good and hard. Then I dump her on the floor and step on her as I’m walking away (forever). I go to Minnesota, where emancipation is much easier than it was in Ohio, and live my own life. Once I’ve passed the magical-in-Ohio eighteenth birthday, I pop back up with lawsuits all around.
Since it’s a daydream, all of this goes swimmingly. In real life, everything would go wrong and I would be treated as the bad guy who “assaulted” the poor darling.
So why do I still wish I’d tried it?
All I can come up with is that I would respect myself more if I’d at least tried. Is that reasonable, though? If I’d continued trying even though it always went wrong, would I really look back on that more proudly? Or would I just be berating myself for not trying other things?
It’s absurd, really, to think that a child or young teen should simply stand up and end the experience of being the designated free target for an entire extended family. So why do I believe I should have?
I think it boils down to the programming that the abuse was my own fault. Everyone always said I deserved it, after all. The emotional message lingers long. Even though I always knew that the aunt sought me out specifically to insult and taunt me, and even though I now know it’s impossible for me to cause other people’s behavior, the message that “it’s all your own fault” makes me feel that it was still my fault because I didn’t stand up and end it.