Bitten By Bad

I remember when I was a small child playing with my cousin who is almost a year younger than I.  We were just having fun out in the front yard at my aunt's house when he grabbed my arm and bit me.  Hard.  Left a circle of teeth marks.  And bruised almost immediately.  I ran inside crying, holding my arm in search of my mother to protect me. 

For whatever reason, whether it was fear of conflict with my aunt, or a real belief in what she was saying, she responded, "Well, what did you do to make him bite you?"  Upon my insistence that I'd done nothing to provoke the attack, she insisted, "You must have done something.  He wouldn't have bitten you unless you did something to him first."  

My takeaway from that situation?

1) Bad things happen to me.

2) Any bad thing that happens to me must be my own fault.

3) Mom isn't going to take my side, no matter what bad thing happens.

These were reasonable assumptions for a child of four.  Not true, but logical in a child-like mind.  These assumptions of the reality of the world around me had a profound effect on the rest of my life up to this moment.  

I still struggle with the idea that every bad thing that happens to me is my own fault.  That something I've done, or said, or thought, provoked the bad thing that happened.  I have struggled all my life with feeling powerless over my own destiny.  Intellectually, I know that's not true, but emotionally, I have a deep-seated undergirding belief that I will always lose because I'm a loser and it will be my own fault.  

I've always expected pain, difficulties, personal attacks, with no defender to come to my aid.  That's my reality.  I've fought against that reality on the surface, while deep down thinking I have no right to complain or make things better because I deserve my "loser-ness."

Princes on white horses were great for others--they deserved such wonderful futures--but not for me.  I suffered whatever came my way in silence and without argument because it wasn't unexpected.  I was a "bad-magnet."