Comments | windsweptthumb: Pain from the past

windsweptthumb

Pain from the past

Sep 03, 2009 01:27

Just found out from the ex-girlfriend of a former roommate that he was abusing her and I never noticed. I can't be 100% sure it happened, but her story definitely has the ring of truth and I am pissed at myself for not noticing at least that possibility and asking her directly back then. I also have to wonder if my own flirtations with her may have ( Read more... )

Comments 11

nnylrac September 3 2009, 15:10:04 UTC

*hugs* you are a good man. Don't carry guilt for no reason.

windsweptthumb September 3 2009, 21:10:25 UTC

Thanks honey. I hope I can live up to your opinion of me.

rathess September 4 2009, 10:46:21 UTC

Dude, you are a good person but at the same time you are your own worse enemy. See also my comment below in the thread with Adelinfdm.

adelinfdm September 3 2009, 16:28:53 UTC

Sometimes things just slip by us through no fault of our own. If you're going to doubt yourself, do it for the things you've actually done, not for the might-have-beens.

windsweptthumb September 3 2009, 20:58:04 UTC

There are enough of those too. But AFAIK nothing that did as much harm as this one seems to have failed to prevent. I try to learn from my mistakes. But how do you learn from what you didn't notice? I guess to be more observant.

adelinfdm September 4 2009, 10:33:02 UTC

If you're lucky, you learn that no one is perfect and that trying to hold yourself responsible for not noticing something is a guilt game that no one needs. It's easy to depress yourself over something that isn't your fault. What's hard is living with the fact that you aren't perfect and loving yourself anyway.

rathess September 4 2009, 10:49:24 UTC

You need to break the cycle of being "addicted" to being down on yourself. Your body can get addicted to neurotransmitters (don't know if you know that) and so you could actively look for reasons to feel down because while you consciously dislike feeling down it is possible that your body craves the feeling. I saw adelinfdm struggle with this a couple of years ago and I /think/ that the first step is recognizing this may be the case so that you can then break out of it. I'm sure she could fill you in more if you reached out to her in a less public forum. :) (or maybe here even, but I'm not as certain of that)

Thread 6

ceruleanechoes September 3 2009, 22:38:24 UTC

You can never say for 100% what would have happened. Even if you had noticed she may have denied things, depending on how embroiled she was at the time, those sort of things are very hard. The only thing you can do is focus on the present and be here for her now if she needs help with recovery.

Still I'm sorry.

Neurotransmitters sanchopanza2000 September 4 2009, 23:33:04 UTC

Given that I have been prescribed anti-depressants, I know, better than I ever did before, how much the brain can fool you. The brain does not really care what the conscious mind thinks, wants or needs, it just needs it's quota of switches flipped ( ... )