Trauma Dump

I did not expect life to reward me. I did not expect the world to respect my boundaries and limitations. I did not believe fairness was out there in the world and that i was entitled to it. I expected a shared commitment: a collective decision that fairness matters because we decide it matters, because we make it matter, because human beings cannot live together without it. I expected the promise to carry weight.

Desirability converts ordinary choices into status reports other people read about themselves. Your yes feels like a promotion they can flaunt. Your no feels like a downgrade they need to defend against. In that environment, every boundary you set becomes emotionally loud, even when you whisper it.

Proportionality is why we instinctively feel it’s wrong to, say, banish someone from society just because they failed to pay a parking ticket or because they relapsed into addiction. There’s a deep human intuition that responses to wrongdoing or hardship should not destroy a person’s basic dignity and prospects. The law isn’t always so compassionate, but the ideal persists as a guiding light.

Demanding optimism from someone in crisis is like demanding a patient recover by attitude while we hold back the medicine, backwards and, even when well-meant, cruel in effect.

If punishment isn’t meant to help me understand what I ought not to do, then what was it for?

The absence of support transformed my struggles into a solitary battle, one that I had to face without the understanding or compassion that