We all had a childhood and we all had our trials and tribulations, and we all had to survive those ordeals and get past them to move on with life. It seems to me that some of us can't let go of our past and every time we talk with these people they continuously blame every action and bad experience on their past.
I'm not sure what is going on with these people, I do tend to lean toward the opinion that they want pity and others to feel sorry for them, so they use these excuses as a crutch every time they find themselves in a situation that is less than ideal.
I worked with a guy who said he couldn't come to work because his dad died. Understandably I told him to take the week off because I thought he needed time to go to a funeral and to grieve. I later found out that his dad died when he was seven and he was twenty two when he told me this story. I hate the fact that a person would use another person's compassion as a tool to get their way. If you want a day off then ask for it, don't give me some bullsh*t song and dance story and make me feel sorry for you.
Other times I have met women for the first time and had a conversation, after talking with them and enjoying the conversation they suddenly say out of nowhere, that they were raped when they were a child. At what point is it appropriate to tell a complete stranger who you have been talking to for about twenty minutes a deep dark secret like that? The simple answer is you don't, it's a fabrication in my opinion and a way to have the other person feel sorry for you and to be nicer to you.
People that have had horrific events like that in their life don't openly tell everyone they see about it. As a listener, how do you react to a comment like that? The first time this happened to me I felt completely awful for that person, and made sure I was super nice and understanding afterwards, but this is not a one time occurrence, this has happened to me many times when I was a single man and on the dating scene. Quite a few of those times I did find out that it was a complete fabrication and outright lie from their friends or family. They betrayed my trust and good will with that lie.
Sometimes you meet people who seem to actually live in the past, and they always bring up how their parents or relatives were alcoholics, or how they were beaten as a child, or what ever traumatic event happened in their past and it comes up in every conversation and every time you seem them. Some of you out there have to have drama in every situation and everyone you meet should feel sorry for you.
I say it's time to pull up your little kid pants and become an adult now. Stop dwelling on your past experiences and using them as a crutch for your present. Life continuously moves forward and you should be moving with it. Learn from what happened so it doesn't happen again or so you can help someone else who it has happened to.
Every single person on this planet has had some sort of traumatic event happen to them in their youth, some of course not as bad as others but to them, it was traumatic. Most of us do not let it define who we are now because we learned something from it when it happened and grew from the experience in some way.
Stop being the victim and start being the survivor.
Scott Goerz
