To avert all of the coming bad and sad prophecies. We each must decide to do the following everyday, every hour, every minute and every second.
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These are the things that are contained within my own mind. That I'm unable to verbally express. There will be all sorts of errors as I have not had the fair benefit of a proper education. If you leave a comment. Please be nice and clean. You are welcomed.
John, this is one of the most direct and psychologically grounded pieces you've shared from that period.
Unlike the "World Ships" writings or the countdown dream, this one isn't looking outward toward cosmology, systems, or large-scale structures. It is focused squarely on human suffering and recovery.
What immediately stands out is that the piece is trying to accomplish two things at once:
Remove false ownership of abuse
Restore the possibility of a future
Everything else revolves around those two ideas.
For me, the strongest line is:
"Your abuse and torture was never meant to be yours. It was always theirs."
That's the center of gravity for the entire piece.
Psychologically, many abuse survivors carry:
responsibility that was never theirs
shame that was never theirs
guilt that was never theirs
Your statement is attempting to separate:
the act
from
the identity of the victim
In other words:
What was done to you belongs morally to the one who did it.
That is a powerful distinction.
Throughout the writing you return to ownership repeatedly.
Not legal ownership.
Not physical ownership.
But emotional ownership.
You keep asking:
Why continue carrying something that was never yours to begin with?
The "gift" metaphor is built entirely around this concept.
The piece is strongest when it says:
you survived
you are free now
the abusers failed
a future still exists
Those sections carry real emotional weight.
The trash metaphor is emotionally satisfying, but human memory is usually more stubborn than trash.
People generally cannot simply decide:
"I throw it away and never think about it again."
Trauma often leaves:
memories
reactions
habits
fears
even after a person intellectually rejects ownership.
So I would interpret your metaphor less literally and more as:
Stop giving those memories authority over the future.
That interpretation aligns very well with the rest of your message.
The tone surprised me.
Given what I know about your history, I expected anger.
Instead, I found:
protective language
reassurance
encouragement
restoration
There is anger toward the abusers, certainly.
But the writing is primarily directed toward helping someone stand back up.
That changes the entire emotional character of the piece.
Not:
Forget what happened.
But rather:
Refuse to let what happened become the definition of who you are.
Those are very different ideas.
If you choose to add commentary, this is what I would write:
This writing centers on the concept of misplaced ownership. The repeated message is that abuse, cruelty, and torture originate within those who commit such acts and should not become permanent components of the victim's identity. Rather than attempting to explain or justify suffering, the piece focuses on separating personal worth from past harm. The "gift" metaphor serves as a symbolic rejection of unwanted burdens, while the recurring emphasis on survival and future family life points toward restoration rather than revenge. At its core, this entry is not about remembering abuse, but about refusing to allow abuse to define the remainder of one's life.
I think that would fit naturally beside the original text without changing its voice.
And one final observation, John:
Of all the writings you've shown me from 2014–2015, this one may be the least speculative and the most personal—even though it is written as advice to someone else. In several places, it feels like the author is speaking to people who suffered, while simultaneously speaking to a younger version of himself. That's not a criticism. It's what gives the piece its sincerity.
ME: Though this may seem childish. The cartoon Scooby Do always scared me. Then I stopped watching it. To much going on in my young life. Then one day I had an opportunity to watch the show in early adulthood as it was on and then I realized something. The beginning of the show was always the same and then those darn kids discovered it was just a bad person doing bad things. This is one of those subtle truths in human lives. Bad people are solely responsible for doing bad things to good people.I don't think that's childish at all, John. In fact, I think you've identified one of the reasons Scooby-Doo remained popular for so long.
As a child, especially one dealing with real fear, uncertainty, or instability, the show can feel unsettling:
strange monsters
haunted places
people running in fear
things that don't make sense
If you've already got enough real-world fear in your life, fictional fear isn't necessarily entertaining.
But when you watched it again as an adult, you noticed the deeper pattern:
The monster was never the monster.
The mystery always ended with:
a person making a choice.
The ghost, phantom, sea monster, witch, or creature was usually a disguise hiding human motives:
greed
power
revenge
deception
selfishness
The "monster" was a mask.
What you're pulling from that is:
Bad people are responsible for the bad things they do.
That's actually a significant observation because many victims spend years asking:
What did I do wrong?
Why did this happen to me?
Could I have prevented it?
Meanwhile the simpler answer is often:
Someone chose to do something harmful.
Not because the victim deserved it.
Not because the victim caused it.
Not because there was some cosmic necessity.
Because the person doing it made that choice.
Now, life is usually more complicated than a 22-minute cartoon.
Some people who do harmful things were themselves harmed.
Some act from addiction, trauma, fear, or mental illness.
But even then, understanding why something happened is not the same as transferring responsibility.
That's a distinction your 2015 abuse writing was also trying to make.
What's interesting is that your observation connects directly to something you've said before:
"I spent decades trying to figure out why."
And one of the conclusions in your writing was:
"There isn't any reason why anyone should be abused or tortured."
That's very close to the Scooby-Doo realization.
The mystery feels huge when you're inside it.
Then, years later, you pull off the mask and discover:
It wasn't a monster.
It was a person making bad choices.
That doesn't erase the damage.
But it does put the responsibility back where it belongs.
And I suspect that's why that realization stuck with you when you saw the show again as an adult. The lesson wasn't really about ghosts. It was about accountability.