Trauma

Every person responds to it differently.  Some people need to talk about it.  Others, lay it aside.  Some need to cry for weeks until they can't cry anymore.  Some need to pretend it didn't happen until it catches up to them and then they let it break them down.  And some do it differently.  The only common thing, really, is that everyone has to do it themselves.

There are pieces of my past that I have put behind me now.  I dealt with it, accepted it, moved past it.  I'm over it.  Which means that I don't want to talk about it ever again.  I feel selfish when I bring it up.  I hate the pity, the sympathy, the hushed, wordless acceptance.  So I'm not about to bring it up in conversation because it's not relevant anymore, it's not something that people need to know about me.  It's old, it's worn, and while it certainly changed the person I have become, it is no longer reflected in my personality.

But when it comes to workshops I'm required to attend on the subject, that's when I feel myself slipping back a little bit.  Because, the thing is, I know all of this.  I've been there.  I've experienced it.  And I've seen all of the statistics, read all the advice, been told everything and anything that someone in that situation could be.  I don't need this workshop.  So even if others do, that's not going to stop me from being upset about being required to go.

It brings back things I don't want to think about anymore.  I went through all of the processes of putting myself back together after the fact.  I repressed it, I dealt with it, I moved past it.  That's where I am--past it.  And that means that it's not a part of my life anymore and I really don't want it to be.  But I'm not about to explain that this is why I don't want to go to a workshop.

It's not that I can't deal with thinking about it.  I still do that occasionally.  It's really just that I don't want to get lectured on bad experiences that I have already been through.  I don't want to be told how to prevent them and what to do about them. Because for me, all of those words are hollow and empty.  None of them mean anything because I'm different than I was a few years ago, because I know not to let it happen again, not like that, not in any other way, if at all avoidable.

I don't want to talk about this.  I don't want a big conversation about my experiences and how they have affected me and why this influences my opinion of such workshops.  I just need to get it out of my system because it's festering and frustrating me right now.  I'm out of things to say.  Anything else I write will just repeat or restate the things I've already written, so I'll stop.

I know it's not all completely rational.  I know it probably doesn't make sense to most people.  But this is my thought process.  This is why I detest these things.  This is why I'm never going to want to go and why I'm always going to be cynical about it.  Because even if it doesn't really hurt anymore, it's not the sort of thing I want to go back to.  It's not at all the sort of thing I want to be lectured about.  That's all.  Sorry.