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Posted by Isabeau - Oct 11, 2013 - 1:49pm
As a daughter of two military men, real dad (Navy) and step dad (Marine) I would like to share some background here. My Step father was badly wounded in Viet Nam, via exploding bouncing Betty Mine while showing platoon how to dismantle. Killed entire platoon except for him. By shielding his left side with his arm, his left ear and eye were lost...He begged them not to take his arm.

A bitter, spiteful and contradictory man who blatantly displayed his resentment at my mother's first marriage by aiming it at me.  My mother, in her sincere, but misguided love for the tortured soul behind the body and tough facade, indulged in his bullying, even agreeing with him - telling me later that "I should Understand."  
The message was clear: Pity meant you get away with things no one else would put up with. You get to be a bully - everyone giving you a pass on being an ass.

Not surprisingly, I left home within months of graduating high school at 17.

* * * * * 
Forward 40+ years and I am forced back to the geography of my youth, no longer of my choosing. Now I see with adult eyes what indulging in mean behavior from someone who is in pain truly means.

Neither winds of war, horror, loss, death, pain or disability is license to be cruel or mean. Abuse is abuse. There is never an excuse, otherwise mankind would have vanished from this planet eons ago. The greatest stories of our heroes are those who don't allow the Fates to make them Bitter; but miraculously separate the dross from the gold and move past it, into something Transformative.

No licenses are given in this life - All of us deal with horrors of many kinds. Doesn't mean we should freely poop them on someone else's doorstep. 


8 comments on this journal entry.
haresfur
I get around
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Location: The Golden Triangle


Posted: Oct 14, 2013 - 11:06pm

Very reasonable and wise. {#Hug}
Lazarus

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Location: Bethany


Posted: Oct 14, 2013 - 8:34pm


You are absolutely correct—  there are no excuses for bullies, especially adults who abuse kids...  so sorry to hear that you had to endure so much in your childhood...

I want you to know that everybody in my mushrooming multitude of churches thinks you are a marvelous woman...
 
lily34
i need a bogle for my glotch.
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Location: GTFO


Posted: Oct 14, 2013 - 6:13am

i love this.


ScottN
We're all riders on this train
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Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary


Posted: Oct 12, 2013 - 11:03pm

You're correct, of course, that there never is an excuse for abuse.  Many conflate "reason" with "excuse". It's called careless thought (assuming thought, indeed, was part of the equation).

What you have, and have shown, is personal power. A recognition of boundaries.  You have the power of forgiveness and the responsibility of free will.

Do your best. It will be more than sufficient.  The prime directive, as we are privileged to travel this veil of tears, is to be happy. {#Hug}
oldviolin
ab origine
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Location: esse quam videri


Posted: Oct 12, 2013 - 3:11pm

From a vantage point of despair, it's often hard for a person to rise above enough to see a way out or to overcome the crush of overwhelmingly
definitive horror; truly it's not an excuse or license to pass it along to the world in the form of abuse of others, especially loved ones. So there it is. Where is the place; what are the words; from what baseline does a human being fend off the perfectly adapted demons of our existence? It takes
faith, my friend. Patience and hope and tough love and courage. Words in the forms of examples. Time in the forms of brevity. Knowledge in the forms of love.
Atman

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Location: Sandpoint, ID


Posted: Oct 11, 2013 - 10:48pm

I honor your heart in Transformation! 
p4jkafla
Resident oddball
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Location: New England, USA


Posted: Oct 11, 2013 - 5:21pm

{#Hug}
kurtster

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Location: drifting


Posted: Oct 11, 2013 - 2:49pm

Bitterness is the heaviest of all baggage to carry thorugh life and eats at the carrier like a cancer.

The only way to conquer it that I know of is through forgiveness.  There may be other ways that I cannot think of at this time.

While real pain is a fact, it can never be the justification or excuse for inflicting pain or abuse on others.

Sorry for the suffering you endured, but happy for the wisdom you came out of it with.

{#Hug}