Reconciliation

I was getting caught up on my DVR recordings tonight. Last week's episode of "Numbers" was a sort of throwaway about a group of boys who had been molested by a teacher and who all became different people as a result. At the end, one character said that he wouldn't have become the man he was if it weren't for the molestation, and that registered. As painful as periods of my life have been, and as difficult as it still is for me to work through the repercussions, I often feel the same way.

I like myself. Hell, I love the person I am.

It isn't easy living with my brain, but I make it work. But I have a VERY hard time reconciling my current state of self-acceptance with the abuse I suffered. I feel like being happy with ME means being ok with the things that made me who I am. And that it's wrong to accept my flawed state of being, because it means accepting the terrible things that led up to it.

Do I think I might be a better, more healthy, more productive human being had I not been abused? Absolutely. But a part of me wonders how compassionate I might be. How accepting I might be. How forgiving I might be. I hope that my positive traits aren't solely a result of the abuse. I hope that I would have developed into someone similar without the trauma I suffered. But there is no way to know for certain. Not that anything in this life is knowable. I just get irritated that as a natural second-guesser, I was dealt an especially tricky hand.

And then, as someone who believes in some greater Something out there, I am reminded of Neil Gaiman's statement in Good Omens (I guess it could have been Terry Pratchett's assertion; stupid collaborations): "God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time."

I have to believe that someone knows what the cards mean. I'm mystified.