Anatomy of a Human Sore Date Wednesday, April 24, 2024 - 06:56 PM PST Topic Icky People Once upon a time, not too long ago, there was a girl. This girl lived in a small town with a mom and a dad and a big sister and a little sister and a lot of cats. Like all kids, sometimes she had fun, and sometimes she didn't. Sometimes she was happy, and sometimes she wasn't. And she grew. Oh yes, this girl grew. Like all girls do, she turned into a teenager. And like many teenagers do, she became rebellious. It didn't help that her mom was too busy with her boyfriends on the side to spend time teaching her daughters how to live. This girl was on her own, to figure it out by herself. Well, this girl found a way to get the attention she craved. There was a reason why her mother could get all the boyfriends she wanted, and this girl inherited that reason. Long, reddish-brown hair, big blue eyes, tall and thin with legs up to there, she walked through town and the boys and men followed her everywhere with their tongues hanging out. And she got attention. God did she get attention. And she loved it. No longer just a middle sister, just another daughter. Now she was important. And damn did it feel good. She couldn't get enough of it. She was the town's wild child. Now along came trouble, in the form of a young man. He was born in that town, and was just returning from Florida after the death of his mother. Edgy and mysterious, with a who-cares exterior and a world of pain inside, he caught her imagination. He was older, would have been barely out of high school if he hadn't dropped out, and he had a car, a job, and an apartment. He was danger and security all in one, and she wanted both. Her dad had just had enough of her mother's games and left them all, and she felt her entire world rock with the stress of that. She needed support, a new home to replace the old. And the pain in her called to the pain in him and claimed kinship. This boy was raw with the pain of losing his mother, and dazed by the difficult task of making his way in the world alone. And that was the thing - he was so alone, desperately alone. And when the wild child came and cast her line, he fell for it, hook, line and sinker. She was his world and his reason for living. But she hadn't changed. She still had all her followers, all her men, and she liked it, oh, how she liked it. She would do them in the back of a friends car, she would do them on the top of the mountain, she would do them anywhere. But she felt bad, because she knew it was wrong to do it behind her boy's back. So she confessed. And he left her. But he came back. He had to - she was all he had, and he couldn't let it go. So they got back together, and swore they would never part, with the intensity of two children playing with love. And it was then that she decided. He would be the one. Her new family, her new life to replace the old, broken one. And so they had a baby. Yes, how stupid was that. Children having children. You've heard the phrase, and there's a reason you've heard it. Because children aren't meant to have children of their own. They're meant to go to school, and learn, and be carefree. But don't try to tell it to these children, because they're the anti-couple, and they do things their own way. They know better. Don't we wish we all knew as much as them. So she had a baby, her son, their son. And she dropped out of school to take care of the baby. And her mother, her very troubled mother kicked her out. So of course, she moved in with her boyfriend. He swore to her family that he would care for her. So he quit his job stocking at the grocery store, and got a new job at a factory, and worked his tail off to provide for her and their son. She loved her new life. Her new family. But it wasn't enough. The wild child couldn't settle down. The men still followed her and the baby carriage up and down the streets, and now they followed her to her home while her boyfriend was away at work. And life went on. But something new was happening. You see, she was still a teenager, and still rebellious. Without parents to rebel against, she had to find a new rebellion. So she turned on her lover. She flouted his advice, and mocked him at every turn. Every bit of angst and brattiness that would have been focused on her parents was now focused on the man she claimed to love. And it hurt him. It hurt him badly. It hurt him almost as badly as the growing knowledge he was gaining of her infidelities. And around the time that they decided to give their son a baby sister, he stopped talking to her. Stopped opening up, sharing his hopes, his dreams, his feelings with her. It hurt too much when she stomped on them. This was not good. This was not what she wanted. Her new life wasn't turning out according to plan. But she would not admit her own fault in the matter. Rather than realizing that her harshness was turning him away, she labeled him as cold and uncommunicative. You see, she could never admit her mistakes. She hated herself too much, and the hatred was not something she could face. The build-up of her mother's neglect and her father's abandonment left her feeling worthless. She grabbed franticly for feelings of false worth from the attentions of men. The power she gained from manipulating their feelings made her feel worthy. She would not sabotage that feeling by admitting failure of any kind. She stuffed her feelings of self-hatred deep inside, and covered it over with a thick veneer of self-importance to the extreme. She was the amazing herself, and let no one forget it. But she was discovering a new power, one that helped even more to cover her self-hatred, even while it fed it inside her. She was discovering the power to make people feel horrible. To make them feel lower than insects. To make them angry, and sad. She was getting addicted to the power. No longer were her men kept around her for the attention, they were also there to make her boyfriend feel awful. And she pushed at him and prodded at him, deliberately stirring his anger, driving him mad, bringing out all the worst in him, feeding it and making his faults grow. She was intoxicated by the power. And this fulfilled another need - the need for a scapegoat. She needed someone to blame for her failures. And who better than her nearest and dearest? Everything that was wrong with their relationship was his fault. Even her infidelities were his fault. All her self-loathing was projected on him, and a little on their son who resembled him so much. Besides, if she could prove everyone around her to be horrible people, then that meant she was better and more valuable, right? The poor man was torn - torn between love and pity for this wreck of a human, and his own growing misery. The knowledge was growing on him that this life would not last. But what was his alternative? To leave his family, his children, and this relationship that, however diseased, was still all that was valuable in his life? To leave behind everything he had fought and worked for, that he had invested every bit of his life in? This was a decision he did not know how to make, so he stayed, growing angrier, and more depressed, and more hopeless. Those who know me will know that this is where I came in. Those who know me will know how I fought long and hard to give this man the strength to break away and build a new life. To redeem the mistakes of the past and fulfill the potential that was being held down. The question is now, what do we do about this wreck of a human, this little hurt girl who lives to hurt others? This human sore? Do we pity her? Hate her? Both? What do you do with someone who so desperately needs help, but only wants to destroy her helpers? And how do people become like this? Why will one person take the pain of life and become strong and beautiful in response, and another will become weak and poisonous? Is it something you are born with? Something you are taught? I really wish I knew. This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=689