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Are you guys watching The Bear?
In Season 3, Episode 10, there is a scene that deeply resonated with me. The main character, Carmy, has been dealing with PTSD, which was exacerbated by working with a narcissistic chef named Winger early in his career. We get a glimpse of their working relationship, where Winger constantly tells Carmy he isn’t worthy of being a chef or even worthy of being alive. These words linger in Carmy’s mind and drive him insane.
In the present day, Carmy is haunted by his past, unable to let go Winger's words. Despite running a successful restaurant, his motivation isn't passion but proving his worth. In the last episode, he runs into Chef Winger at an event and tries to get closure by cursing him out. However, Carmy doesn't get the satisfaction or closure he wants. Many survivors of abuse never get repentance from their abusers.
Carmy tells Chef Winger that he thinks about his words every day. Not only does Chef Winger not remember his name, but he also tells Carmy he never even thought of him. And to make things even worse, Chef Winger tells Carmy, "You're welcome," suggesting that if he hadn’t been so awful, Carmy wouldn’t have become successful.
This scenario from The Bear reminded me that we often find ourselves haunted by the ghost of our past. We breath life into these memories and allow them to linger and live in our minds. We need to stop giving people life Chef Winger our precious time, our mind, and control over our hopes & dreams. They should remain as mere fragments of our past, without the ability to define who we are. There's no need to dwell on their hurtful actions or attempt to uncover their motives. Sometimes, people are simply assholes and that's that.
There's no need to dig deeper on ghosts that continue to haunt you. Let them fade away. And truthfully, those who have hurt us are not even thinking about us anymore. We need to shift our focus to our own personal growth and seek out happiness.
Living well is the best revenge. Self-care, heal, move on, live your best life and don't look back. Don't expect closure from bad people or reach out to demand an apology - they usually don't care and sometimes will blame you for their actions.
Just like this scene:
Or abusers don't even think of us, yet our lives revolved around them.
Forgive yourself and move on. I'm still trying.
I remember a quote from Gavin de Becker's Gift of Fear, slightly modified: "if you hate someone, you make them a part of your life". Ignore, forget, outperform.
The axe forgets, the tree remembers
Trauma focused therapy helped me.
EMDR allowed me to let go of abusive people and interactions that had haunted me for years. I feel free now.
I needed to hear this today, so thank you ❤️
Never watched The Bear and don’t plan on doing so, but your post is inspiring and written beautifully, thank you.
I hate to say this to survivors out there but do you really want "repentance"? lol cuz that will be fake, if you are someone who went through cycles of physical abuse you alreayd know an abuser's "repentance" is essentially just love-bombing ...and you already know if you escaped how that ends, they definitely are not genuine when they try to get you to come back. Just an observation but I feel this is important because I have seen this play out.
Side note: this statement I made does not apply to any woman reading it who is experiencing post-separation or post-divorce abuse and retalation. (I realized there are so many women like this after being in FB group Jane Does Well.)
For those women, you are still going through it and you have every right to ignore what I said because - ETA the pain is in your present day and you're frustrated with the behaviors not the person -.
For you to heal, just heal, don't worry about what other think of your unique situation if you're still in the remnants of any abusive dynamics you cannot go anything but low contact from.
Doubly so for women who have gone no contact, but suffered physically disabilities from any SA's or physical attacks or scarring, and are leery and their "ghost" is not the person but their nightmare of living the physical health issues, or scarring from any past abusive assualts.
Please know that my heart goes out to you and I know that when you are struggling its not your attacker or ex partner you are struggling to get over but the internalizing that we women do that is recrimination from realizing how different our life is now, and trying to daily learn self-acceptance.
you have to just not worry about others opinion of how you do your healing. We cannot judge you and no, this is not your fault.
So spot on. Love this!