Gratitude? You Gotta be Kidding!!!!

There is an entry on the fall equinox at https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/the-fall-equinox/

and one on the super moon eclipse at https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2015/08/20/the-september-28-2015-super-blood-moon-full-eclipse

I belong to an e-mail survivor support group and one of the members started posting one thing a day that she was grateful for. She also said anybody else could do so if they wanted to.

My first reaction was, “Me? She has to be kidding!! What do I have to be grateful for? They tortured me, prostituted me, and sold me for porn films. They ruined my whole life!!!!! I still suffer from what they did to me!!!! And I am supposed to be grateful??? Gimme a break!!!!!”

I went about my daily life, got showered and dressed, fed the cats, and had breakfast, still fuming and grumbling bitterly. After a while the routine calmed me down enough that it occurred to me that I was over-reacting. Back and white thinking it surely was. Although I had plenty to be ungrateful for, I also had plenty to be very grateful for. My kids who turned out great, my kitties, sunlight and fog, occasional beautiful rain, my faithful thirteen-year-old car, enough to eat, a roof over my head, a garden, no dementia. Most important of all, having escaped from the cult. And the wonderful people I have met in the survivors’ community.

The trigger, obviously, was my friend’s post about gratitude. Now what was the event that caused all those strong feelings?

An image of me as a child siting alone at the dining room table with tomato slices in front of her appeared before my eyes. I had protested that I couldn’t eat them and was told that I would sit there until I finished all of them. They really revolted me because, although I wasn’t aware of the connection at the time, they reminded me of blood and flesh. Sometimes I choked the food down;  other times, I couldn’t and it reappeared at breakfast.

Now here is the connection. I was told I was very ungrateful and I should “think of the starving Armenians.” This was during World War II. They used that phrase often to guilt trip me. It just enraged me. I would have happily done something for the Armenians if I could have, but I was helpless. Armenians had nothing to do with being served food I found revolting.

(As an aside, I have always been drawn to Armenians. I have had quite a few Armenian friends. Their churches are gorgeous and so are their Masses. I love Armenian food and cook it pretty well, if I do say so myself.)

Should I be grateful or ungrateful? You can’t equate the two, you can’t weigh and compare them. One case of maltreatment as a child cannot be wiped out by a lovely event in the present, no matter what it is. A loving mother-figure can’t make up for an ineffective or abusive real mother. Each event, each person, is unique and incomparable.

So I have a lot to resent and my job is to accept the evil in my past and live with it in such a way that it does not take over every minute of the day. And I have a lot to cherish and my job is to accept the good and the beautiful and use them to enhance my life, and others’, too.

My friend had the right idea in sharing with us the good and true and real parts of herself and her life.