TPND, I came up with one of my wilder flights of fancy earlier today. It happens to run way farther in the psychoanalytic direction than I'm ever comfortable going. Since we already happened to be having this conversation (well, the more sensible part of it anyway), I decided I wanted you to be the first one I ran this by:


If I were a little kid living in an abusive situation I imagine I'd resent the heck out of whoever was abusing me (along with whoever was letting them), but I'd also be depending on them for pretty much everything -- my survival. I'd probably accept an awful lot of bad stuff if the alternatives all looked (for all I knew) like being thrown out of the house, or killed, or being made the family scapegoat. ****, I might even settle relatively quietly for the scapegoat's job in preference to one of the other two.

The time would almost certainly come, though, when I'd want to reconsider the deal I'd made. Of course it would be too late to actually get un-abused but I can see myself taking some position like, "You sons of *****es, I once let you abuse me in exchange for my survival but now I say I made a rotten bargain. Take back the bleeping abuse -- and yes, I'll refund you my survival too -- here!

If I were making such a demand, realistic or not, very, very earnestly, I might very well choose to punctuate it with something like SI-ing and/or starving myself to death. That would, of course, sound crazy enough even to me that I'd be a bit hesitant to admit even to myself that that was what I was doing -- so I might very well wonder (even as I was doing it) why the devil I'd want to do something like that.


Whaddaya think? Worth entertaining further, or should I scrap it?

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You read it here first: my new personal best for craziness!