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The Idea That People Define Themselves by Their Abuse Is Bullshit
There’s no right way that people need to feel about any of this.
Donald Trump was, and still is, an abusive person. And the day he left office, a friend of mine who was abused as a child and teenager posted on social media that she was glad to see him go, and had felt similarly when her abuser died. This person was abused in the context of a long family tradition of abuse. Her main abuser was her father.
Many of the commenters on this post said they felt similarly. Everyone who commented expressed sympathy. And then someone stepped in and said—and I am not quoting exactly—that it was tragic my friend was so entrenched in her victimhood that she could feel happy when someone died.
What would have been tragic is if my friend had killed her father, or one of the other people in her family who abused her, and went to prison forever because of it. This did not happen; all of them died of natural causes. My friend’s father did not even die in a terrible way, though he did die watching a terrible movie. My friend laughs when she tells the story, and it’s not because she hates her dad, it’s because she also loves him. It was fitting for her that he would die this way, he loved movies, even bad ones, it’s very him. She feels this way because for…
