When you grow up in a meat grinder, the gnashing gears etcetera just become part of the wallpaper. You don't even notice them. You adapt, you make conversation about the weather. Maybe you take up yoga and crying in the rain.

But at some point in your adult life, you realize that you can't seem to connect with people, you're incapable of handling authority, things that seem so easy for other people are impossible for you*, and then you go to therapy.

And then you realize that meatgrinders aren't nurturing spaces for growing a human being, that the adaptations you took on to survive are counterproductive for an adult, and that you've been damaged.

But who wants to be damaged? Nobody! Who wants to be a victim? Nobody! So sometimes its easier to feel like you're not that badly off, because to look at how badly off you are is to feel the full weight of the horror of that meat grinder, and that's too much to take all at once, or sometimes even a little at a time.

*This may fit some, all or none of your experiences.