Hurt People Hurt People

I’ve been boiling over with rage lately, and the resulting scalding water of words that I let rush over my partner isn’t really encapsulated by “hurt people hurt people”. Instead, it’s more like “hurt people explode for seemingly no reason and take innocents down with them.”

I was hospitalized recently for a medicine change, and for the first time ever, my tests came back showing something was wrong. I had weekly panic attacks, and my anxiety showed up in every test they ran. While I was grateful that I finally had something to point at and say, “look, that’s what’s wrong with me; it isn’t in my head.” I also came face to face with the fact that this chronic anxiety was caused by being raised by and living with a sociopath until I was about 21. And, while my depression could be blamed somewhat on the trauma my father had caused, it was only that he had aggravated a condition I already had. So the change in diagnosis, or addition of chronic anxiety to my diagnosis, can be traced back directly towards my father. And with this revelation came hot, bubbling anger. I know the details of my trauma intimately, obviously. Still, suddenly this trauma was having a horrible effect on my daily life, that I could not hide from myself or anyone, and I knew exactly who to blame.
There’s just one problem, my father isn’t in my life, so I can’t scream and rage at him for what he’s caused; in fact, there is no one who is blaming him. It feels like he’s committed crimes, and he’s never even spent one night in prison. He hurt me, and he’s just walked away.