Making rational choices when you are angry

Hello everyone. I get so many different kind of people reading my blog and I would like to compare and contrast two different readers. Neither shall be named, but links will be provided for you to visit the original comments. Now the first person visited a very old post I did ages about about surviving childhood abuse. Like me, this person also suffered traumatic childhood abuse and was seek empathy and understanding. I tried my best to offer that despite the fact that this young lady is now an adult, she cannot make sense of what has happened to her when she was much younger at the hands of her family and thus she is still very troubled today. When she came across my post, she found an outlet for her to pour her heart out - gosh. I am honoured that she trusts me enough to open up to me and I only hope I can help in whatever little way I can in offering empathy and understanding.

Now in sharp contrast, there was another reader who really dislikes my writing style and made it his/her mission to make his/her feelings known to me. I dismissed this person, casually telling him/her to go somewhere else on the internet to surf if my blog was really that terrible but s/he is quite persistent. I have taken to blocking his/her comments as I really cannot understand why s/he will not stop badgering me about my blog. At the end of the day, this is just a hobby for me, unlike someone like the famous Xiaxue, I do not blog for a living. It's what I do for a bit of fun when I have the time . Some of my pieces are well written, others are not - sometimes I make very interesting observations, other times I ramble on and on without making a point. It is what it is: a personal blog. If you like it, great - thanks for reading. If you hate it, then too bad - please go read something else on the internet that will give you more pleasure than my blog. It's not like you paid good money to access my blog anyway - it's there for free on the internet.

Now despite the fact that these two readers are probably extremely different people, I do see a similar mindset at the heart of the problem. But first, let me start with an analogy. Say you go to a restaurant and have a really bad experience: the food was awful and the service was terrible. What would you do in this case? Do you return to the restaurant and subject yourself to the same bad food and service? Or do you swear never ever to return to that place ever again? Likewise, if you stayed at a hotel and was terribly disappointed by the service and the quality of the rooms - would you go back there again? Or would you avoid that place in the future? So if you think that my blog is so awful, would you come back again and again to continue reading my awful writing - or would you simply stop visiting my blog? I think the answer is pretty obvious when I frame it like that, but I'm afraid we're not always rational beings.

As for my reader who suffered traumatic sexual abuse at the hands of another family member, it is pretty obvious that any further contact with her family would simply prolong the agony. Her mother wants her to forgive and forget - something she is not prepared to do, not before dealing with it properly anyway. But her family prefer to act as if everything is normal and sweep it all under the carpet. This situation has left her feeling extremely dissatisfied to say the least. I can relate to that. My parents do the same thing - they pretend to forget anything that puts them in a bad light, so there's no possibility of even confronting them because they just 'act blur' and pretend they can't remember what happened. Oh but when it comes to claiming credit for the things they did do right, their memory is suddenly perfect. They can be such bad liars and even worse actors (indeed, I think they were terrible examples as parents)- that is why I don't even want to confront them as they are not willing to talk about it. Oh no, it'll be pointless.

Some people are not prepared to confront the past.

Where does that leave me then? I go back to the analogy of the bad restaurant and bad hotel - you simply have to be rational about it and say, "I'm not going back there, I know what is there and I shall avoid it from now on." I'm afraid that's the only conclusion I can have, after having made some foolish attempts to try to reconcile things with my parents. I have to walk away and focus on the people who will care about me, who will understand me, who will be nice to me and thankfully, yes I do have people like that in my life. My reader however, is struggling to walk away from the "bad restaurant/hotel" and keeps going back for more, even though she knows that nothing good can come of it and it will only prolong her agony and pain. Perhaps it is because she has so much invested in her relationship with her family, so she feels compelled to try to work things out rather than just walk away. But there comes a point in life where we have to be sensible and just cut our losses. There is an opportunity cost to fighting a battle like that - not only will it cause you further harm and hurt, but you could be spending all that time and energy engaging in other activities that will heal you, make you feel good about yourself and bring you joy.

Likewise, I cannot figure out why the other reader who hates my blog keeps coming back to read my blog despite making it very clear to me that s/he doesn't approve of many things here, especially the way I go on and on and on about myself too much on my blog and that I keep talking about the same old topics that I like. Perhaps if I had a really bad experience at a hotel, I would go as far as to leave a negative review on a website like Tripadvisor. But is there really anywhere for people to leave bad reviews for blogs that they hate? I don't think so - thus ironically, this reader has no other place to direct his/her displeasure but my blog itself. But even if I am guilty of being a terribly writer and blogger, what was this person expecting? Unlike a hotel or a restaurant, I am offering my writing on the internet for free - you don't have to pay a penny to access my blog. So can you actually complain about something like a poorly written blog? Whom do you complain to and how? Who will listen to your complaint about this awful blog then?

Why do we feel the need to complain?

By the same token, I face a similar dilemma when it comes to my parents. Now I make no bones about it when I say I had a terribly messed up childhood because my parents were pretty hopeless at parenting. Who do I complain to? Can I even complain? What are the right of children to complain after they suffer abuse? I searched around for answers for so many years and found none - so I often directed the pain and anger back at my parents, but to no avail. I can think of a thousand things that have made me so angry about my childhood - but when I face my mother, I just see a confused, not very intelligent, not very educated old lady who can barely make sense of the world around her. She made her mistakes not only because she was unwell, but because she is also shockingly stupid. Her IQ simply isn't very high and her EQ is rock bottom low. Yes I suffered at her hands as she was woefully inadequate as a mother - but what good would being angry with her do me today?  I just feel this emptiness when I think of her - I'm not angry at her per se, but I feel nothing. Perhaps that's my only way to protect myself as feeling nothing is better than feeling angry. It is a self-defence mechanism.

So we're talking about this frustration where you have no where to lodge your complain, no equivalent of Tripadvisor to leave a bad review - thus you take your complaint to the source, but that person is unwilling to give you the satisfaction that you want. In the case of the first reader, her mother is unwilling (and/or unable) to confront her other family members regarding the sexual abuse that happened years ago. In the case of the second reader, I am unwilling to take his/her criticism seriously and offer any kind of response in light of his/her criticism. What can these two people do instead? Perhaps I am making this sound just a little bit too easy, but I believe you should stay away from activities and people that will bring you frustration and focus on the activities and people who will bring you joy. If you have seen the trailer of a film and you think it's going to be terrible, would you still buy a ticket to go see it at the cinema? Clearly not. So if a certain person (or group of people) have proven that they will bring you frustration and angst, do you still persist in trying to have some kind of relationship or conversation with them? Clearly not. What would be the point of that?

Thus for my first reader who is a victim of childhood abuse, I think the best advice I can give you is to walk away from your family and focus on the people in your life who are willing to offer you the kind of understanding and love you seek. If you are clearly not getting it from your family, then I really don't see any point in you trying to keep them a part of your life when all that is bringing you is more frustration and pain. I am going to offer advice based on the same principle to the second reader who hates my blog: I'm sure there are other writers out there who do write brilliantly on topics that do interest you, surely going to their websites would bring you so much more joy and pleasure when surfing the net. Why do you persist on attacking me when I fail to see how that will bring you any pleasure when I have made it clear that you're not in a position to influence the way I write? Sure I hear what you are saying loud and clear: you think my writing is absolutely terrible but guess what? I can live with that - I can live with the fact that you hate my writing and have a low opinion of it.

So go on the both of you. Live your life, be free and choose the things that will make you happy, walk away from the people who will only bring you frustration and pain. I guess that's one thing I have learnt after so many years away from my family - when you're eight time zones away from your family, you learn to create your own family and they consist of people who care about you. No blood relation is required, but plenty of love is necessary. Now I've got years of experience of having to make that choice all my adult life - I suppose some of my younger readers have yet to acquire the wisdom to do the same. So that is why they latch on to anything that is on their mind - be it a parent who has let them down or a terrible blogger whose writing sucks so bad. I've learnt to overrule myself over the years and force myself to be rational. And that my friend, is the moral of the story. Life is short, choose wisely whom you wish to give your attention and energy to. So that is it from me for now on this topic. Thank you very much for reading.