Deep breath

I'm still stinging and feeling nauseous. I wish I knew how to speak of this in a useful way. I wish I hadn't been so... what. Trusting? I don't wish that. I believed I had reason to place my trust where I did and I did not do so blindly. What then? Perhaps that's the thing that has tipped me on my head -- I don't know how to respond to this.

I feel a gazillion whirling things. Blinding rage at being played for a fool. Eviscerating, debilitating sorrow at the shame others must have felt that led to the choice to lie. Sadness at unspeakable and completely needless loss. Bewilderment at being judged a poor risk -- else why keep this so carefully buried? Am I really likely to hurl back razor blades upon revelations of vulnerability? Am I giving off some indication that I'll morph into some mythical howling monster if my understanding of things is challenged? I guess I keep coming back to an odd, imperfect compassion -- as wretched as I've felt over this, how horrible would it be to be the persons keeping a secret they believe will destroy them and everything around them if it gets out? How much must those people have suffered in doing so?

And that part breaks me. I cannot begin to understand the amount of suffering already borne over this. I know only my own, parts of others, and can guess at that of the extended circle(s). It defies perception. That part, the suffering part, is pure, distilled evil. Perhaps that thought brings me full circle, to this. It's the only thing I've got any say in -- a renewed commitment to end the suffering, to not engage in storms created by anyone, anywhere, to lay it down, over and over again, until the motion of it becomes so fluid that I don't even notice myself doing so.

Oy vey. Deep breath. Here we go, then.

(Please God, let it be...)