But Who's To Blame?

 The world is unjust, we all know that – especially those of us who've had to suffer more than most people. It is really hard to find justice in a world that is so divided, polarized, filled with so much evil and malice. But sometimes, that is not good enough of a reason for us. Sometimes we need more than that, a guilty party, someone to put the blame on.

When it comes to abuse, the one who should be blamed for their terrible actions is always the abuser. They have wronged you, they have hurt you, done unjustified things to you because they were abusing their power over you. It's a power play, a competition between a rookie and a champion. But why are you having that competition in the first place? What made the abuser choose you? There has to be a reason for their actions. They could have chosen anyone else, anyone in the family, in the workplace, in the classroom. So why were you the one they aimed for?

All survivors of abuse go through a phase of self-blame. Depending on the type of abuse the victim has faced, the intensity in which they blame themselves varies. Especially abuse that specifically targets the victim's character might result in a lot of feelings of guilt, because the reason the victim is facing the abusive treatment seems to be rooted within themself. My story is a prime example of this situation. 

your fault.

A lot of the time, when people talk about their experiences with bullying, they start by saying something like "I was bullied for *blank*". They have one or a few things that they remember being ridiculed for, sometimes there was even a lame nickname the bullies had come up with based on the thing they were tormenting the poor child for. For me, I can't really say what I was bullied for. Abused for. It was everything I was; my appearance, my personality, my interests, my behavior... They never picked just one thing to concentrate on, they were systematically attacking me as a whole. That makes it harder for me to pinpoint what it was that I got bullied for, what was the reason for them picking me out of the group. And if it really was as overwhelming as I remember it being, the only reason that there seems to be is-

Is the person that I was.

As a kid, I used to be a freak. A total fucking weirdo, in the worst way possible. Not in the cute way, but in an unsettling way. In a way that makes you think, "what the fuck is wrong with that kid". When I go through pictures, videos, and texts from my childhood, I sometimes find myself feeling extreme second-hand embarrassment, and that's when one very familiar thought enters my mind.

No wonder they did what they did.

There's a pit in my stomach, my heart aches, and soon enough, I'm bawling my eyes out, in the middle of an uncontrollable episode. It is so easy to see yourself from the perspective of the abusers when you've become so used to always only seeing the bad and the wrong in yourself. You've been conditioned into being your own hardest critic. And that's why you start blaming yourself, your younger self, your inner child, for being the way they were. And sometimes, that is a pit you really struggle to climb out of.

"You never did anything wrong. You didn't deserve it."

That's what I a lot of people tend to tell me time and time again when I'm blaming myself for everything that happened. The whole concept of deserving baffles me greatly, and I still to this day do not know what it even means. What it means to me, in my life, in my story. Does anyone ever deserve to be abused? Is it ever justifiable? If it isn't, then who is, at the end of the day, the one to blame?

Feeling confused,

ichigonya