You have a choice...

I have been both the victim and the vicitimizer.....a horrible realization. To understand that I have been in the position to hurt someone else is so horrible to me now. There were times I was a bully just so I wouldn't be bullied. I was the one in hiding...hiding away from the sexual abuse I was receiving from an older neighborhood boy (he had been told on and nothing happened - what could I have done?). I was hiding from physical abuse and emotional abuse living right under the same roof. And from my hiding spot, I became just as bad and worse an abuser.....I am so sorry, so ashamed. An adult person makes choices in his or her life and has to live with those choices. Sometimes we don't even realize why we do what we do, but doing it is the adult's choice. I chose to hurt who I hurt due mostly to the hurt I had in me. Did that absolve me? Was it ok because I didn't set out to hurt someone? Hey, I was drunk? I was sad? I was lonely? I was mad? No! Just because I was hurting did not make me hurting someone else any more acceptable than saying because I have a dent in my car I'm going to crash your car. I live with the pain I have caused everyday when I look into the mirror. I can't get away from it.....Scottie tells me not to be so hard on myself, to love myself...but for years I was the person who was told he was worthless; would never be anything; why was I even born; so ugly; such a jerk; can't do anything right; I can't even stand the sight of you....I've had guns pointed at me and dry-fired, then called a wimp becasue I didn't like it. And yet, I still love these people; I still crave the acceptance and I still need the positive strokes from these people. And, I still hate the person that was so unworthy of that love, acceptance, respect........me. I wish I could go back in time and tell the people I bullied and hurt how sorry I was and make it all somehow go away. I can't....they are living with my abuse in some way the same as I am living with the abuse that was done to me. And, then there is the moral righteous.....whose "job" it is to punish and castigate at every opportunity. These 'holier-than-thou' folks with vengence in their hearts ... and they probably don't even know why. Facts are useless to them..... just as useless to my victims is the fact that I was a victim, so is the fact for such people who would abuse from a stance of righteousness that they are actually in the wrong. It doesn't matter....the hurt is there on both sides no matter the reason. The only difference: the hurt one side is feeling is a choice of the other.