Please don't call me special

I've been called a lot of things through the years, but by far the most hurtful has been "special."

I know that sounds insane. Reverse humility, attention seeking... No, it's really not.

The fact is, hearing that I'm "special" because I survived the trauma that led to my PTSD is like a knife to the gut. If I'm "special" for surviving, what does that make the other victims who did not? Less special? Less deserving? Those ideas send survivor's guilt into a spiral.

I'm not special because I survived. I'm not special because I pieced myself back together, hid the entire thing from my family, and tried to get on with my life. None of it makes me special, or conversely, less deserving.

Hiding was a form of survival.

What happened was not an object lesson. It was not God carrying out some mysterious purpose. It was not a sound bite, a media clip, or a podcast topic. It was horrible, tragic, terrifying, and awful. It was loss. It was hate. It was anger and terror and the stuff nightmares were made of. It was not "special," and it did not make me a better person.

The idea that God "has a purpose for everything" is ingrained in much of Christian culture. Some take comfort in the idea that, in an out of control world, God is in control always. And (I believe) he is. However:

We live in a fallen world. That means that God's vision of perfection- humanity working in harmony with one another and with the Earth, was derailed. We got too much knowledge too soon as a species, and, like kids exposed to something we weren't ready for too young, we're still acting out the consequences.

As a friend is fond of saying "Death, loss and separation were never in God's plan for us.
We were not meant for death. Eden was the plan. We were made for Eden."

We are fallen human beings. God is sovereign. He is omnipotent- that is, he is capable of controlling everything. But does he? No, and for a very good reason- Free will. If God controls every human action, what would be the point of Creation? The entire experiment becomes completely pointless if He controls everything. Free will was the entire point of creation- we are created as autonomous creatures. That means that sometimes, we do truly awful things to one another. Out of our brokenness. Out of our own hurts, failures, and fundamental flaws, we sometimes do the worst things human imaginations can produce. The idea that God controls everything, and has a "purpose" for everything, is fundamentally mistaken.

Bottom line? Not every event has "meaning." Sometimes, incredibly shitty things happen to people who don't deserve it. The trick to finding peace, at least for me, is to learn to be OK with that, to find peace in the center of a storm of chaos. Not being "special," but rather, acknowledging being caught up in the swirling insanity that was unleashed when that fatal first bite was taken.

Please don't call me "special" because of what I've suffered.
Being myself is quite enough.