"I hate most people" - the darker side of things

That was a clip from the movie "There Will Be Blood". Daniel Day-Lewis played an ambitious, smart, cut-throat oil baron during the petroleum boom in California at the turn of the century. Under his sometime personable, even charming surface lies all this bitterness and venom. If we're going to be frank, a lot of people find resonance with what's said in this clip. Some may argue there's a lot of good in humanity. Creativeness, kindness, love, selflessness... None of which cancel out the darkness some of us encounter during our lifetime.

In keeping with being frank, I want to talk about some things. Things that are dark but real.

When I was around 10, I was molested by someone I trusted. It was a sunny afternoon. I was left in his care. He'd asked me to come to bed to take an afternoon nap. While I tried to fall asleep he put his hands all over me and inside of me, and asked me how it felt. I felt pain, and told him so. Either out of guilt, or perhaps he'd heard footsteps outside that he took to be my mom, he stopped. That was the only time it happened.

He carried on from then on as if nothing had happened at all. I never told anyone about it. I was a kid. Not particularly mature or smart for my age. I didn't really understand what had happened, but intuitively felt it was something bad. So bad that if I talked about it both he & I would get in a lot of trouble. Deep down I felt betrayed. Now I had to carry the burden of this secret. I grew to feel lonely and hollow inside. When the messy and scattered thoughts became too much to handle for my juvenile mind I simply blocked everything out. After so many years I sometimes even started to doubt my own memory.

Over the years, I was left in his care many more times. Nothing sexual happened again. There was plenty of verbal abuse over trivial things and the threat of physical violence. One time, in utter rage over me leaving bread crumbs on his kitchen counter, he threw a tea cup at me, hitting my forehead and leaving a visible wound. I was in high school. Heavy foundation & the cliche lie of "I fell down some stairs" got me over the next couple of days. I didn't tell anyone about what happened that time either. I felt that was simply not an option for me at the time.

Recently he sent me an e-book, saying it would be quite good for me. "Non-violent communications - a language of life"... I have not and will not send him a reply. I'm simply quite speechless at the moment.

So yea, sometimes I feel the same way as Daniel Day-Lewis' character in the earlier video clip. I know the trick is to not be consumed by this feeling & end up a lonely raging drunken recluse. If you've watched the whole movie you'd know what I'm talking about.