[She shrugs. She has no idea what supposedly normal families are like. Her only experiences are her old life, the barge, and a handful of breaches.]
The point is, I was denigrating each of us for different reasons. Wanda because if she was just her weakness, if she was just what I thought of as her betrayal of me, then it didn't matter if I hurt her or used her, I didn't have to feel guilty. Myself because it was just what I'd been taught since I was very small, because everyone around me reinforced it, because my mother was the only other human I knew and she broke.
I had to learn to accept shame and pride, and those didn't come neatly, or together, and my brother - who, he didn't deserve what I did to him, but he was still a jerk, I'm just not that fussed about it - I didn't really care about him as a person until I managed to generalize it to a principle.
[Private]
The point is, I was denigrating each of us for different reasons. Wanda because if she was just her weakness, if she was just what I thought of as her betrayal of me, then it didn't matter if I hurt her or used her, I didn't have to feel guilty. Myself because it was just what I'd been taught since I was very small, because everyone around me reinforced it, because my mother was the only other human I knew and she broke.
I had to learn to accept shame and pride, and those didn't come neatly, or together, and my brother - who, he didn't deserve what I did to him, but he was still a jerk, I'm just not that fussed about it - I didn't really care about him as a person until I managed to generalize it to a principle.
Complicated.