Hurt People Hurt People

I never had a grandfather. My dad's parents both died before I was born, and my bio mom's dad was simply referred to as my mom's dad. I was told very early that he was an abusive man that, upon getting divorced from my nana while my mom was still a kid, took most of their money. She was very open about what it was like growing up poor and told me a lot of stories about the abuse she experienced, like the time her father dragged her down the stairs by her hair because she forgot to take out the trash. She had strong feelings about physical abuse, asserting that she'd never harm her children like that. When I was just about to drift off to sleep as a teenager, she'd slam my door open and shout at me to get out of bed to clean a single hair I left behind in the shower drain.

Hurt people hurt people. I spent a lot of time in online communities for trauma survivors early in my recovery and the people there really hated that phrase. They think that it means they'll become just like their abuser, and they even cite that little statistic about how mentally ill people are more likely to be a victim of a violent crime than a perpetrator of one, as if that somehow means they would never hurt someone. My mother didn't believe she was abusive because she wasn't like her father, and yet what she did was still abuse. Almost nothing she did was illegal, either.

I have a friend that deals with Catholic guilt from his negative childhood experiences with Catholicism. My mother was raised Catholic and hated it, so she vowed to never force religion on me, and yet I deal with the same Catholic guilt because of her behavior. My interest in sexuality as a young teenager and cursing with friends were treated like sins, and the punishment for them was severe. She was so confident that she wasn't harming me because she didn't do what her Catholic mother did, and yet the lessons she learned from a sexually repressive childhood impacted her parenting decisions all the same.

I often refer to online communities for trauma survivors as beta fish tanks—as in, a tank full of beta fish. It is the shining example of how hurt people hurt people if there ever was one. They'll know that what their abuser did to them was wrong, but not what abuse really is. A now-former friend of mine who adamantly insisted they would never be like their abuser publicly posted a private conversation between the two of us in which I attempted to process the details of a violent assault I experienced, asserting that I was lying about it because I made the mistake of assuming a conversation about their trauma was a two-way street. Another now-former friend gave me access to their vent blog, made posts complaining about me repeatedly, and then viewed me as one of their abusers because I blew up after the third or fourth time it happened. It was no different with my mother. She told me she was afraid of me like I was afraid of a boy that sexually assaulted me because I slapped my phone into her hand when she demanded I give it to her and the keys on my wallet case keychain hit her. If you as a hurt person cannot hurt other people, then other people can only hurt you.

As a survivor of familial abuse, I am all too aware of the constant pressure abuse survivors face around forgiving their abuser and/or seeing their actions as something that came from a place of love. All this compounded with the actual abuse itself makes it almost impossible for many trauma survivors to actually think about why their abuser behaved in a certain way. I once read a criticism of prison abolition from a feminist perspective that cited a study done about the reasoning behind a domestic abuser's behavior, which surveyed victims at a domestic violence shelter and not the perpetrators. From the perspective of the victim, abusers are narcissists who do bad things exclusively because they want to hurt their victims, so there's nothing that can really be done to prevent abuse. One can extrapolate from this survey that the victim cannot themselves become abusive because they aren't a narcissist that chooses to do bad things because they want to hurt their loved ones, even as they scream at and spank their children. Almost no abuser sees themselves as an abuser.

Most people want to be better than the people that treated them wrong, but if you've only been treated wrong, then you have nothing that has taught you how to treat other people right. Some trauma survivors, like my mother, simply relied on not doing what her abuser did to a T. Other trauma survivors, like some of my former friends, only internalized the idea that what they called abuse was wrong because they were innocent—so long as they could see me as an abuser, the same action against me couldn't be wrong. Take a look at the way supposed empaths talk about their abuse tactics towards the people they consider narcissists. This is what the cycle of abuse actually looks like. You do something else that's just as horrible or you hurt people in the same exact way and find a way to justify it to yourself. Hurt people hurt people.

Inside every abusive, controlling person is an inner child trying to make themselves feel better. The same kind of child is inside of their victims, and it takes more than learning that their abuser's actions were wrong to stop them from trying to make themselves feel better in a way that hurts other people, too. My mother's insecurities with money after growing up poor led to her being financially abusive, keeping track of every single purchase I made and not allowing me to spend my own money if she deemed the purchase unnecessary. I vowed to never share my finances with someone else as a result, to the point where I was neglecting my partner's needs. Our behaviors came from the same place, the same inner child that is afraid of poverty. The friend that publicly called my trauma stories lies had dealt with years of medical negligence because they weren't believed, and they share the same inner child as the doctor that can't feel confident in his rightness unless the person that challenges his authority is proven wrong. The friend that repeatedly vagued me and called me an abuser when I finally reacted had a childhood bully that always behaved as if she could do no wrong, and they shared the same inner child that feels fundamentally innocent, fundamentally harmed by others.

It's really difficult to stomach the idea that you could become like your abuser, and it's even more difficult to stomach the idea that you already have, just not in the way you think. When my partner needed time off from work, my gut told me I was hearing my abuser speak whenever my voice raised in discomfort. I couldn't put words to the feeling until after I saw her fill out a form for the medical treatment she'd receive while on leave if she could have it, saying just how desperate she was. My inner child was afraid of losing the little money I managed to save up, knowing it'd be a really long time before we could recover those savings, but my girlfriend couldn't afford to take the time off because she already emptied her own savings account for my service dog when she was dying.

A trauma survivor may share the same inner child as their abuser, but they don't have to share their same lack of self-awareness or stubborn mentality. At the end of the day, your inner child is just that—a child. They have wants and needs, but they don't actually know what's good for them and they don't have a strong capacity for empathy. It is your responsibility as the adult to do what is right and empathize with others, even when they make you feel wronged deep down. I told the kid inside my heart that our best friend's life is priceless and paid her rent while she took the time off. Hurt people hurt people, but harm already done doesn't prevent change for the better.