Looking for Someone to Blame

Trish and I have talked several times recently about a phenomenon we're both experiencing, her moreso than me. Despite the good times we both had in our Fundy years, we both walked away with a lot of soul wounds. And we now find that we're looking for someone to blame. As Trish said a few weeks ago, "I wish there were one person I could look at and say, 'This is your fault. You're hurting a lot of innocent people. Stop it.'" But there isn't anyone. That's the sad thing about Fundy-ism. You can't point at any one source and say, "You're to blame." Certainly you can find someone to blame for specific incidents, but there are wounds that are more general - and interestingly enough, these tend to be the deepest wounds - that can't be credited to anyone. They're just there as a result of having been a part of that movement for so long. And the lessons they engrave on your heart and mind follow you for years, crippling you in some ways and making you question and doubt and fear what you know to be true.

I talked about this with my boyfriend for awhile last night, and he had some things to say that I agreed with. He said that, in essence, the only person you have to blame is yourself. Ouch. But I wonder if he's right. I've said more than once on this blog that I bear more responsibility for the wounds on my soul than anyone I encountered in Fundy days. It was as though Fundy-ism taught me how to wound myself and then set me loose to see how much damage I could do. But that just makes me want to find the person responsible for pounding these things into my brain. Sure, I could blame my leaders and teachers, but what good would that do? There was no malicious intent on their part. In fact, they too are wounded, victims of the same weapons wielded by invisible hands.

Trish and I talked just yesterday about how there are times you feel as though you've been a victim, but no perpetrator existed. It's quite unsettling, really. You desperately want someone outside yourself to hate or to do war with or to hold accountable, but you can't find anyone. And even looking at yourself and blaming yourself for the ways you created your own state of fucked-up-ness, you still want to find the person who trained you to do such a thing and demand restitution. But there's no one, and it's a most frustrating thing.