TW: suicide
Don't want to hurt abusers, but I do want to be able to hurt them and choose not to. I think it'd help me if I gained the ability to imagine physical vengeance. I want this to end in forgiveness.
It's long been unsustainable for me to be a martyr. I waste my life away in maladaptive daydreaming where I imagine helping my past abusers. I've attempted suicide over the grief of past events, which gave me CPTSD and OCD.
I've had multiple physical abusers, and can barely imagine hurting them. I need to build the ability to imagine attacking. I think if I can imagine hurting my attackers and physically punishing them, including just for my own vindictive fun, then maybe I can gain the ability to actually forgive them.
Currently, I imagine giving them what they want, and then magically figuring out a compromise with them where they change their minds and stop being an abuser. (Like dating someone who sees me as a piece of meat, and using the relationship to change their mind so they're not a shithead anymore.) I think that's not actual forgiveness, it's just bending to their will. I cycle through these maladaptive daydreams of self-sacrificing for the benefit of the inhumane, and waste my life in suicidal grief. I'm skipping something crucial...
...I realize cannot truly forgive without making a choice to not hurt them. I think I need to first imagine brutal vengeance. Not to act it out, but as a step to expressing myself differently before I attempt forgiveness.
A friend has also been trying to train me in MMA, but I won't hit for real. I won't spar with them even though I know its good for me. I just imagine stopping danger through compromises that don't actually exist.
One session I hit a bag for real. I was down to punch after someone had attempted to assault me days earlier. Being vindictive seriously helps, and imagining torturing and annihilating the predator was a huge help.
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Reading Berserk gave me some new perspectives on violence. Or really it just gave my existing perspectives some nice graphics to look at. In the series, the protagonist experiences horrific things from the moment he’s born, and he loses what little hope he found several times. He sets on a life quest of extreme violence to get vengeance, but quickly realizes that all it does is makes him feel empty and depressed and alone. But he later finds kindness and love in new friends and family and repurposed his violence to preserve that.
We all should seek peace and kindness in our life. But that doesn’t mean we must accept evil being inflicted on us or others. And sometimes the only way to preserve or create that peace and kindness is through violence. Don’t get intoxicated by violence and don’t make it your purpose in life, but if you find yourself in such a situation, then the person threatening that harmony must be disabled or put down like a rabid animal if necessary.
Alternatively, consider abuse and self defense as a microcosm of war time conditions. During war, we cannot prioritize re-educating the enemy. They will either be imprisoned or shot. Once you are in peace time, and the threat is far away from you, then you can consider forgiveness and re-education and reintegration.
Shockingly good lesson from manga; maybe I actually do need to properly read Berserk.
They are far away, but the threat that they'll be back soon always seems near. Maybe it's just CPTSD though