Picking up the pieces of a shattered soul

Once I believed in absolutes. Absolute justice, absolute values, absolute devotion and absolute loyalty. Looking back I cant help but laugh at my naivety. I realise now that the flawed nature of human condition, which has proven to be the case again and again, makes it impossible to expect conduct which is devoid of a hidden agenda.

It's hard not being judgmental when the people around your existence, the ones you trust the most, are the ones who break it. The inner circle of your friends and family and your loved ones are the people you trust without a doubt and because of this the hurt caused by the betrayal is amplified. 

Once a person is marred by some sort of betrayal or deception he becomes vary of trusting new people and perhaps rightly so. I am talking here about the time when emotional trauma of any kind has already happened and one is faced with the task of getting hold of the shattered pieces of ones self. 

The question that why didn't the one confront the aggressor while it was happening and stop it then, is not relevant anymore, most of the times the person enduring such abuse seems to find no other way and feels trapped with no end in sight. 

When a person finally does try to pick himself up he is faced with the ultimate test, learning to trust again, cause for inner peace and general happiness there must be loving and fulfilling relationships with others & achieving that means letting go which is indeed an uphill climb.

What one must overcome is the tendency to equate present events and the intentions of those around you to what happened in the past. When one goes through a traumatic emotional experience, one develops mechanisms in the mind to avoid pain & suffering, like a specific expression one recognise's to mean something in someone's behaviour but not necessarily it would mean the same for someone else but we assume. Then there are other behaviours one adopts trying to avoid confrontation like agreeing to anything the other says, perhaps avoiding intimacy or bonding altogether as a protection from perceived suffering.

Even when those conditions don't exist anymore, these mechanisms and their triggers are still in place and they keep firing when confronted with similar circumstances. This in turn results in generating a feeling of being untrusted and alienation in others which in turn fuels the already present emotional break down in ones self.

Talking about your problem is important, many times the one on the receiving end of abuse of any kind, remains silent, the fear of ridicule, being judged, rejection or perhaps the humiliation from peers. Specially in eastern societies where there is a tendency to always blame the victim. One must find a way for expression, perhaps a sympathetic ear or writing down feelings in whatever form. Bottled up feelings can break the spirit of a person and sometimes lead to real medical problems too. 

The simple fact that one must comprehend is that, there is no choice but to move on, otherwise one will be caught in an unending cycle. The only one who can break this cycle is one's self. The only one who will benefit from this is one's self. This is an ongoing process and expecting immediate results is unrealistic. The first step can be to acknowledge the fact one has a problem that needs to be solved cause most of the times people don't even realise that there is something that needs fixing, they continue to suffer in silence not knowing that this cycle, can end.