I have been on record saying that one of the most freeing conclusions I came to during my healing process was realizing that asking “why” I was abused was the wrong question.
In short, I was abused because someone decided to abuse me. That’s the why. It wasn’t because of anything I did or was as a child.
If you’re a survivor of abuse, sexual assault, violence, etc., the same is true. You were hurt because someone decided to hurt you. If you’re being oppressed in any way, you’re likely being oppressed because someone chose to oppress you.
In this case, Occam’s Razor tells us that of any logical explanations, the simplest one is likely accurate. To me, this is the simplest explanation for what happened to us.
I had forgotten, but I see clearly when looking at society today that when I say that, I make an underlying assumption about the world that I have already come to, but many people have not. When I say I was abused because someone decided to abuse me, I am accepting that life isn’t fair and the world is not just.
For years, I struggled to understand survivors who didn’t seem to accept this simple explanation for their abuse. Not that they argued with me, but I could see and hear that they didn’t entirely believe it. However, I’m starting to connect the dots in the last few years. I’ve watched so many people cling to cognitive biases to their detriment. The Just World Fallacy is one of the big ones, and it’s incompatible with my explanation for abuse. In a just world, there would be a reason beyond that, or there would have been immediate justice for what happened. None of that happened. The world doesn’t work that way. People do bad things, and sometimes there is no justice. Karma doesn’t come looking for them. They go on with their lives.
There’s nothing fair about it. That can be a bitter pill if you believe that good things happen to good people for your entire life because that’s not true. You can be as good as you want, and there’s no guarantee that you won’t be the victim of a crime. There’s no guarantee you’ll be rewarded for it either.
You can do all the right things and still find yourself beaten, raped, cheated, vilified, etc., solely because someone decided to do that to you. You can also not be believed because someone chose not to believe you.
As I said, that’s the good news. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t ask to be abused any more than a woman asks to be sexually harassed on the street or a minority asks to be discriminated against, and there wasn’t any action you took to cause it. The decision to abuse was 100% on the abuser.
I also understand that this is bad news. Some people decide to hurt others based on their desires and ideas. There is no other reason and no promise that it will be just. It isn’t easy to let go of that ideal when it’s been drilled into us from an early age. Letting go means a complete reinterpretation of the world and our place in it. It’s hard work to figure out how to live our lives if something we’ve clung to since childhood isn’t true.
Letting go also means letting go of the shame and guilt you’re clinging to. You don’t need it. It doesn’t belong to you. You never deserved what happened to you.
You’re free, as complicated as that might be. Embrace it and move forward in the messy world we live in.
Bonus link – You Didn’t Do Anything Wrong: Conquering a ‘Just World’ Fallacy