That is my new motto. They were wrong.

All the people who bullied me and hurt in elementary school…. they were wrong. They were morally wrong to do it and factually wrong to thing I deserved it. I don’t have to own their abuse of me because they were wrong.

The teachers that ignored me, kept me at arm’s-length, or worst of all turned a blind eye to all the abuse I suffered because, deep down, they felt I brought it on myself for being so weird and difficult… they were wrong too. I was a unique kid but that didn’t give them the right to treat me that way and it certainly did not absolve them of responsibility to make sure school was as safe a place for me as it was for all the other students. I don’t have to cosign their neglect of me. I don’t have to go on believing they were right to do so, because they were wrong.

The people in that little town in a tiny province that was too small for the kind of person I was born to be… they were wrong too. I was born special. They should have been able to handle me anyway. But the system failed me spectacularly, and it is not my fault. They were wrong to treat me like that, making me feel like I was a repulsive alien just because I didn’t walk around half-asleep like they did. They were wrong.

Now we get into the real meat. My family was wrong to treat me like it did as well. I was treated like a neglected pet, ignored and degraded and desperate for any kind of positive attention. It was never my fault that I was unplanned… an accident. I didn’t ask to show up four years after my parents thought they were done having kids. It’s not my fault that my arrival messed up their carefully laid plans. I did not deserve to be treated like an afterthought. I did not deserve to be treated like I should be glad I get anything. I deserved to be treated like an equal, not a second class citizen in my own home. I didn’t deserve to feel like I was always running to catch up for fear of being left behind. They treated me like an unwelcome guest, and gave me a lifelong feeling of guilt for even existing, and that was wrong. They were wrong.

And that includes my parents, obvious. My father was wrong to have such a big rage issue and make us all afraid of him. He was wrong to take his issues out on his family. And he was especially super wrong to molest me at The Spa. I didn’t deserve any of that and it is not my fault that any of it happened. These things did not happen to me because there is something wrong with me. They happened because they happened, because there is injustice everywhere and some of it happened to land on me. I didn’t deserve for any of it to happen. I didn’t ask to grow up with absolutely no sense that there was anyone looking out for me. My parents were wrong to let these things happen to me, they were wrong to basically ignore me and assume nothing was wrong because I didn’t complain about anything (after teaching me never to complain), they were wrong to abandon me to my own devices in life because it suited their lifestyles, and they were wrong to fuck my adult life over completely by withdrawing funding from my university education halfway through college.

And that includes my mother. I have, in a secular sense, viewed her as a saint my entire life, and she honestly doesn’t deserve it. Don’t get me wrong, she is a sweet and wonderful person. But she ignored me like the others, especially after going back to work. She never really had time or energy for me. And she just sat there and cried while my father verbally abused his children right in front of her when she should have been a mama lion protecting her cubs. Apparently, she thought it was acceptable to just cry rather than feeling there was something she could do about it. Well she was wrong, and none of us deserved to be abandoned to my father’s rage. And I didn’t deserve to end up in the patently absurd situation of being moderator and diplomat despite being the youngest by four years. She was wrong to treat me like that, same as my father and my siblings. They were wrong.

I have been the victim of a long series of egregious injustices, and it time I stopped owning all the resulting garbage like it says something about me as a person. All those people who hurt me were wrong to do it. What they did says a lot more about them and their failings that it says about me and my own.

It’s time I stand up straight, look the world in the eye, and say “I am here. I deserve to be here. I have nothing to be ashamed of. The bad things that happened to me were bad luck and nothing else. It is fully within my power to just plain leave all that bullshit behind me as I walk tall into the future.”

The lesson is not over. I am going to have to repeat this one over and over again to make it truly sink in. The existing structure of my mind is going to resist such a fundamental change in outlook and so I will need to pound it into my thick skull with as many hammer blows as it takes.

But for now, I am confident. I have a real grip on my demons and I stand a very good chance of killing them once and for all, and then finally being able to close this big festering wound in my mind.

They were wrong. All of them.

And now I know it.

See you tomorrow folks.