Forgiveness
“In a 2008 essay in the journal In Character, history professor Wilfred McClay writes that as a society we have twisted the meaning of forgiveness into a therapeutic act for the victim: “[F]orgiveness is in danger of being debased into a kind of cheap grace, a waiving of standards of justice without which such transactions have no meaning.”
I had never thought about forgiveness this way before, and this passage makes so much sense. In so many conversations, if you’re not willing to forgive the person who hurt you, then you become the one causing yourself pain. The original transgressions get forgotten because your inability to move beyond them makes you responsible for your lasting trauma.
It’s seems to be an under-acknowledged fact that giving birth to a child is a morally fraught one. You’re creating a series of demands with another person that had no ability to consent to entering into that relationship. I would argue a person who doesn’t exist cannot owe a moral obligation to anyone.
If someone walked up to you and said “I entered us into a contract, without your knowledge or consent, where you have to drive me around at all times at my discretion” you would rightly reject that contract. Yet this is pretty much the same circumstance for the child. I strongly reject the thinking that children owe their parents anything. They did not ask to be born, they did not ask to be raised. The parental decision to birth a child is purely a selfish one (as opposed to adopting one, say); as such, the parent owes the child everything in terms of the moral duties and obligations. I would say the child owes nothing morally to a parent above and beyond the typical duties we owe to each other as human beings, especially forgiveness for maltreatment.
I know I sound cold and unfeeling. I’m not, though. I’d just rather use my limited resources to help the truly wonderful family I’ve built for myself than the family I got by birth.
Loved ones and friends—sometimes even therapists—who urge reconnecting with a parent often speak as if forgiveness will be a psychic aloe vera, a balm that will heal the wounds of the past. They warn of the guilt that will dog the victim if the perpetrator dies estranged.
For some of us if the perpetrator dies the most powerful feeling will be an enormous relief.
I’ve known a lot of people who have had to cut off abusive family members, and no one I’ve known has ever done it lightly. It’s a hard decision to make, it’s embarrassing to talk about, and the pressure from other people to reconcile is frankly cruel and only benefits the abuser. For the friends I’ve talked to while they were in the process of trying to establish a minimum safe distance or make the decision to cut someone off, it’s usually gone far past the point where my only question is why they haven’t done it sooner.
I am detached because I have to be… so that I can live my life and not be pulled into the familiar dysfunction of theirs. At first there was a sense of shame I felt, as many cultures place high value on the child-parent bond— even if those parents are toxic. But now I firmly believe that an individual’s well-being trumps archaic notions of blood-relation loyalty, even if it means establishing boundaries or removing the parental relationship from your life entirely.
I know what a cult the ideal of family connectedness is (even amongst people who have cut their own family members out of their lives!), and I’m always expecting pushback on my decision to be out of contact.
I also disagree with sayings like “hate eats the hater.” For me, holding a grudge is simply putting an item on a mental checklist, like doing the laundry or buying gifts for my friends around the holidays. I suppose that if you’re the type to brood and obsess angrily about people that you hate, it could easily become an unhealthy thought process that leads to a ton of stress. But that same thing could be true of anything that one might brood and obsess over, wouldn’t you say? If you treat a grudge as just another chore that you’ll cross off your list when you have some free time and are bored, it’s totally not that big of a deal.
For me, holding a grudge against L. (if you want to call it that) is a form of protection. I know that the second I forgive her she’ll ignore my boundaries, worm her way back into my life, and find some way to stab me in the back. I don’t think about her every day and I don’t see this as a huge millstone. I just see this as keeping myself safe.
Forgiveness is a tool. Grudges and anger are a tool, too, as a form of asserting the worth of our feelings. We need both in order to successfully navigate the world.
Years of abuse at the hands of my family, and I feel neither the need nor the obligation to forgive them. I do not hang on to hate, although sometimes I am angry - but anger doesn’t define me as a person. I’m also not someone who holds grudges. I generally let things slide and move on. I do practice forgiveness almost daily towards others and myself.
And yet, my life is not poorer for not forgiving my parents for what was done to me. I am no more bitter or resentful than I might have been otherwise. I am, I believe, a mostly contented person who deals with things that happened to her as they arise. They arise less frequently year after year.
I’m not saying I will never forgive them, but I don’t feel the urge or need to do so. They are, happily, out of my life entirely. I do not need to see them, consider their feelings or care. I do not wish them well nor do I wish them ill. I give them little thought.
And here I am, content with life and finding beauty in it, and all without having to forgive horrible people. My freedom from anger has come from learning to love myself and practicing kindness.
ADHD
Masking is grounded in trauma and is a trauma response:
… imagine having to consciously get into character the moment you’re in the same room with other people. It isn’t trauma, but it is WORK. There’s a reason actors need a green room to stay in between performances, and for the same reason, I need to take breaks and find a green room at some intervals.
This is the crux of it, really, and where the ableism comes in. It’s not just that if I don’t do this, communication will break down. It’s that communication will break down and everyone will insist it is my fault. If we are having a conversation, and the neurotypical person misunderstands because they ascribe to me attitudes and moods that they have incorrectly drawn from my expression and body language, I am blamed.
The thing is, they almost never extend the same courtesy to me. Neurotypical people do not adjust their behavior to make it easier for me to understand them. And if I fail to understand them because the way they communicated was confusing–whelp, it’s my fault again. It’s always my fault. It’s always my fault. It’s always my fault.
When people make jokes with straight faces and I take them to be serious, that’s my fault. When people pause at the end of a sentence and I don’t realize they have more to say, I get berated for “talking over people.” When people use subtle expressions to change the meaning of their words, I’m to blame for not picking up on them. When people are tired of talking about a subject but don’t want to say that, I’m “monopolizing the conversation” if I don’t realize that. If they give me too much information at once and I miss most of it or get overwhelmed, I’m “not listening.”
The thing is, they almost never extend the same courtesy to me. Neurotypical people do not adjust their behavior to make it easier for me to understand them. And if I fail to understand them because the way they communicated was confusing–whelp, it’s my fault again. It’s always my fault. It’s always my fault. It’s always my fault.
When people pause at the end of a sentence and I don’t realize they have more to say, I get berated for “talking over people.”
I love talking to people with ADHD, for two main reasons. The first is that, often having social difficulties of their own, they don’t automatically assume that any miscommunication is my fault. They don’t mind if I interrupt, because they do that all the time too. If I don’t understand them, they’re happy to go back and explain, because they’re used to people not following their train of thought. In general, people with ADHD give me the benefit of the doubt in a way that neurotypicals don’t. They other reason is that their communication style is often exactly what I need from neurotypicals to be able to understand them. Their expressions and gestures are exaggerated and easy to pick up on. Telling a “isn’t this fucked up?” story to a group of neurotypicals vs my ADHD friends is such a wildly different experience, even if both groups are having the same reaction internally. Neurotypicals will get this certain kind of subtle expression (which I usually miss because I’m not looking at their face) and maybe shake their heads, say “wow” or something in a tone of what I think is disbelief but often can’t place. ADHD people will (for example) lean back, spread their hands, look side to side to an imaginary audience and say, “WHAT THE FUCK” in a tone of obvious incredulity.
But neurotypicals rarely want to put any effort into changing how they communicate.
Being myself is not really an option.
All my life Ive felt like an alien:
To be neurodiverse is to go through the world struggling with certain things that are easy for other people, and being rejected for failing at these things is an almost universal experience. We are social animals, and this pattern of mysterious rejection followed by blame begins in early childhood.
The existence of living in a society that expects you to do the impossible without help and blames you for failing teaches you to associate rejection with further and more intense rejection. It isn’t you: the world is unfair.