(Reader Discretion is Advised) Reflections on abuse, guilt, pain, and suffering

Abuse is never acceptable; to harass someone is not acceptable. It is a shame that I've witnessed such things from people. I feel it's self-explanatory why it is wrong, but obviously it either isn't obvious for some people, or some people don't care. Here is how God feels about abusers who abuse others: "It [would have been] better for [them] that a millstone were hanged about [their] neck, and that [they] were drowned in the depth of the sea." God doesn't treat abuse kindly. I beg for abusers to repent and take the sour pill of the repentance required, before the thief takes you. And I pray for many of my friends and family, both living and dead, who've been abused and harassed in unspeakable ways, that they can understand that they are loved and that God will bring them peace. Abuse is treating a child of The Almighty God, an eternal being of agency, as an object. Suffering and trials will come, but woe unto those that bring it, that choose to give undue and purposeless suffering. Unless you repent and turn away from that darkness, it will be with you, and you'll desire that you could command the mountains to fall upon you to cover yourself from the light, due to being full of that darkness; the mountains won't fall, and you won't be able to avoid the eternal consequences. If you abused unknowingly due to human weakness, I ask you do the same, but with more tenderness, turn to God, try to repair your wrongs, and God will forgive you; Repentance is always possible, but it doesn't make it easy. If you have been abused and harassed, you don't deserve shame, and those who shame you will never be justified. You deserve love. It is agony to know that so many don't get the love and support they deserve, and are instead shamed. This is what I'll say about them who shame and take advantage of your weakness: "Fools mock, but they shall mourn!"

There is a song from Hazbin Hotel called Sera's Confession, which I really loved—I don't really like Hazbin Hotel, but I do like many of their songs, and there's no doubt in my mind that something can be learned from them. There are two sections that felt impactful to me: "You're looking for light only you can ignite, Every transgression must serve as a lesson, Yesterday, you drew sorrow, What will you do tomorrow?" and "You can't know, though time flows on, So you must bear the cross bestowed upon you." In life, there is a lot we don't control: we don't control how others respond, we don't control the consequences of our decisions and the decisions of others, and we can't know every little thing. We are imperfect; we are all capable of fault even with the best intentions. The reason that "You're looking for light only you can ignite, Every transgression must serve as a lesson, Yesterday, you drew sorrow, What will you do tomorrow?" had a large impact is because of what it says. Transgressions can be accidental; in the full context of the song, despite how terrible and wrong it was, it was still accidental. Every transgression we do, whether it be from a miscommunication, a failure, or some other personal weakness, it cannot be erased from history. You cannot change the past, and there is no point dwelling there besides for the purpose of making a better future. My greatest fear and anxiety I have is making someone else uncomfortable, making another feel afraid or feel violated. When I accidentally, whether directly or indirectly, cause such things, it feels like a punch in the gut, a stab in the heart, and to me is the worst feeling in the world. After it happens, I cannot just undo it. "Yesterday, you drew sorrow, What will you do tomorrow?"—this is the question we must ask ourselves. Even if we were ignorant, now that we know, we have an obligation to act and to learn from it. When much is given, much is required, and now that we've been given knowledge despite how bitter, we must use it. It doesn't matter that we want to wither away and to ignore it, and it doesn't matter that "[we] can't know" the best possible choice; we have a duty to ourselves and to others to try our best and to learn and grow, for "time flows on, So [we] must bear the [knowledge] bestowed upon [us]". If you don't know what it is you've done wrong, but you know you've caused hurt, continue trying your best, and repair what you can anyways. Turn away from the transgression, try to repair what was harmed, try to learn, and then you have done good.

I've been thinking about one of my favorite movies that came out this year. I watched it during a rare moment of time where my family had a Netflix subscription and I was bed-bound. K-pop Demon Hunters—even though there are a lot of plot holes, I would recommend it to almost everybody. It's a story about how to deal with shame. What is shame? Shame is, from my understanding, unproductive guilt; guilt that lingers, sometimes guilt that isn't deserved. Guilt isn't a bad thing necessarily, just as pain isn't necessarily a bad thing. Pain tells your mind that a part of your body is damaged or needs attention, and guilt serves a similar purpose, telling you that part of your behavior or thinking is damaged or needs attention. Neither are necessarily bad, but excess or long-term of each can be terrible. "Guilt tells you that you've made a mistake, but shame tells you that you are the mistake." Gwi-Ma feeds on shame, and shame grows when isolated and reinforced. The demons sang "I'm the only one who'll love your sins"; they don't love you—they love your destruction, your shame built off of guilt. They sing "Don't let it show, keep it all inside, the pain and the shame, keep it out of sight, your obsession feeds our connection, give me all your attention." This is a common manipulative practice: isolating the subject of the manipulation, trapping them in the bands of shame and lies, and pretending to be their savior—or, as the demons say, they'll "be your Idol." They separate the victim. "No, I'm the only one right now," "Keeping you in check, keeping you obsessed, play me on repeat in your head," "Don't you know I'm here to save you." And when the mask is mostly uncovered, they make the victim feel trapped with no escape. "Living in your mind now, too late cause you're mine now, I will make you free, once you're all apart of me." "No one is coming to save you." Manipulators like this aren't that uncommon; they are empty and feel a kind of high from taking control over others. Whether the shame comes from manipulators, addictions, confusion, or from past guilt, the most common lie is "don't let it show, keep it all inside." That lie traps us and damns us like a dam damns water. In the movie, Rumi—who's struggled with shame coming from her parents since the start of the film—enters right before the crowd gets swallowed by the flame Gwi-Ma, interrupting the demons' song. Rumi comes in, her demon half visible, and Gwi-Ma taunts her with truths. She doesn't deny any of what he says, but she denies his framing, breaking the bands of shame she has had throughout the entire film. She started with "I tried to fix it, I tried to fight it, my head was twisted, my heart divided, my lies all collided, I don't know why I didn't trust you to be on my side." She hid things she was ashamed of—her heritage, her markings, her secrets—and didn't trust her closest friends with that knowledge, and made them feel betrayed and hurt. It was all due to her shame and fear. She continued, "I broke into a million pieces and I can't go back, but now I'm seeing all the beauty in the broken glass, the scars are part of me, darkness and harmony, my voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like." She broke and made mistakes that she can't come back from. There isn't an undo button in life, but what she can do is grow and learn from them, and try to make things better for herself and for others around her. This breaks her friends out of the trance they were in, and they start to join her. Her friend Zoey starts singing, "Why did I cover up the colors stuck inside my head?" and Mira: "I should have let the jagged edges meet the light instead." Rumi then asks them, "Show me what's underneath, I'll find your harmony, the song we couldn't write, this is what it sounds like." Of course, Gwi-Ma tries to stop this, because it takes away the power he has over others. Their singing helps transform the shame into something better, something he can't use. The girls start to sing as they fight: "We're shattering the silence, we're rising, defiant, shouting in the quiet, 'you're not alone.'" This breaks the first part of shame—"keep[ing] it out of sight"—"we listened to the demons, we let them get between us, but none of us are out here on our own, so we were cowards, so we were liars, so we're not heroes, we're still survivors, the dreamers, the fighters, no lying, I'm tired, but dive in the fire and I'll be right here by your side." This broke the other part, where we ignore the shame and damn ourselves from growth, through isolation or through giving up. They break it by connecting to others. We all have darkness and jagged edges, and when we accept them and bring it to the light, we can finally heal—just like the song invites us to do: "Get up and let the jagged edges meet the light instead," "Show me what's underneath, we'll find your harmony, fearless and undefined, this is what it sounds like." Together we can do hard things more easily. We're so much alike, and our diversity, our strengths, can be used to make a brighter future for all of us.