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I realised that people found it much harder to picture the average patient as someone who was unfortunate, someone who had been a victim for most of their life, who was never given the start in life that they needed. What they wanted to believe was that some people were born degenerates, or that they were evil to the core. That wasn’t my experience.
Children need love and care. They need to form an attachment. When a child fails to form an attachment with a caregiver, they fail to learn empathy. That’s how you build a sociopath.
The human mind is fragile, built upon tiny impulses of electricity sending signals to the rest of the body. Our thoughts, our feelings, our language, it all comes from the brain, so when one of those little electric impulses goes haywire, we follow suit.
But the person behind closed doors is not always the person out in the world.
Did any of us have much choice in life, or were we all marching to the beat of our own circumstances?
Sometimes it’s easier to be an internet persona than it is to be a real-life person.
What was wrong with this world if the guilty were never punished for their crimes?
Innocent men did not put their hands around the throats of women.
When you’re poor, shame comes as naturally as breathing, but unlike breathing, you never get used to it.
If you ever find yourself sitting alone with your mind on a loop of all the worst things that have ever happened to you, then you’ll know exactly what I mean, and the only thing that turns it off is alcohol.
“No one walks this earth without scars;
“And I think some part of me still loved him, my father. I didn’t want him to go away. This was all before he became very violent. Before the drinking got worse. He was still… he could still be, sometimes, a loving father.”
But when you can’t even trust your own memories, it’s difficult to know what to believe.
But you do realise that you were the child. If anyone needed protection, it was you.”
My childhood house never truly felt like home because it was the place where my abuser lived.
No one with an unbroken spirit can truly be a victim. They can hurt you physically and emotionally, but you’re no one’s victim if you remain in possession of your whole self. Of your willpower.
