I remember the beginnings.. the moment when I went down the stairs, I was playing with my tooth that has almost completely gone out, and I was feeling.. this kind of weird-guilty mixture. As if the world became a bit darker. I remember noticing it and thinking that it is most likely just temporary mood and will soon go away.. or maybe was it was the fact that there was never enough light downstairs? - I thought. Or was it because my grandparents are old and will soon die? - I was asking myself. Or maybe it is in the end all about the tooth, because yea, it did feel a bit odd to be able to feel the bottom of the root with my tongue and suck the blood while later watching TV in my grandparents' bedroom.
But yes, what is this strange weird-guilty mixture? Isn't it the same feeling you get after someone else caused you harm? How bizarre is it to feel guilty after being abused, yet this is such a basic and universal human reaction, and it really amazes me how the world still seems not to have acknowledged it. Why do we feel the same way when someone does us bad as when we did something bad to someone? What if I challenge the concept by saying that the feeling which we call "guilt" is actually primarily felt when someone else hurts us, and we also feel it "extra" when we hurts someone else only because of empathy. Mirror neurones. Empathy allows us to feel what the other person feels after we have hurt them, which is.. guilt. Is it really not just the very same feeling on both sides of the action? Yes when you are hurt you may feel resentment, anger too - but aren't those just learned reactions? What does a small baby feel when it's abused? I think it does not feel resentment or anger, so it is likely that what it feels is: guilt. I don't mean here feeling guilty for doing something, I mean this weird feeling of feeling guilty in general, it feels a bit like having lost a part of oneself, forever. I think that as we grow, we learn tools to prevent ourselves from even getting there, we learn how to fight back, how to start an argument, how to blame, sabotage, and what not. But before that, when we are just children - we are defenceless, and - my theory is that - what we experience at young age when being abused is pure guilt.
So I was standing there, in my grandparent's hallway, feeling guilty and weird. And not, this feeling never went away since then. Slowly, over weeks, it started to change into a conviction that I must be faulty. Broken. Like, because something just literally broke. I used to be fine and then one day the world became darker, and it would never go back to how it was before.
But yes, what is this strange weird-guilty mixture? Isn't it the same feeling you get after someone else caused you harm? How bizarre is it to feel guilty after being abused, yet this is such a basic and universal human reaction, and it really amazes me how the world still seems not to have acknowledged it. Why do we feel the same way when someone does us bad as when we did something bad to someone? What if I challenge the concept by saying that the feeling which we call "guilt" is actually primarily felt when someone else hurts us, and we also feel it "extra" when we hurts someone else only because of empathy. Mirror neurones. Empathy allows us to feel what the other person feels after we have hurt them, which is.. guilt. Is it really not just the very same feeling on both sides of the action? Yes when you are hurt you may feel resentment, anger too - but aren't those just learned reactions? What does a small baby feel when it's abused? I think it does not feel resentment or anger, so it is likely that what it feels is: guilt. I don't mean here feeling guilty for doing something, I mean this weird feeling of feeling guilty in general, it feels a bit like having lost a part of oneself, forever. I think that as we grow, we learn tools to prevent ourselves from even getting there, we learn how to fight back, how to start an argument, how to blame, sabotage, and what not. But before that, when we are just children - we are defenceless, and - my theory is that - what we experience at young age when being abused is pure guilt.
So I was standing there, in my grandparent's hallway, feeling guilty and weird. And not, this feeling never went away since then. Slowly, over weeks, it started to change into a conviction that I must be faulty. Broken. Like, because something just literally broke. I used to be fine and then one day the world became darker, and it would never go back to how it was before.
