The life of a victim is complex. From the outside in, everyone sees a broken individual, the unfortunate circumstance of a well-intentioned life waiting to live. Roadblocks are scattered in reasonable places, and the path seems relatively difficult to traverse. Their clothes tell the story: their shirt is as ragged as the journey, their trousers soiled with the unbelief of their fate, their shoes gasping for air, barely able to travel another mile.
The eyes of a victim are the period in a sentence. Before their clothes can finish telling you what they know, this person's eyes are filled with a strange and certain conviction saying, "and here I am". You want to ask where they have been but their eyes ask you if you really want to know. Their body is stiff and bent, wrestling demons crawling inside the skin, still accounting for the damage and stress from when the journey began. Whatever it is that was coming for them is still coming for them now. It is hard to determine if a moment of peace is all that is needed for their pursuer to finally arrest them for good, or that helping them puts you in the same kind of danger. You try hard not to imagine that scenario as you reluctantly close in for help.
Reluctantly, because it is hard to miss the fact that their body is sending the message that help does not exist even as their mouths move to ask for it. You get the feeling that you're trying to soothe an animal that is trapped behind a cage. If only you could free them from their misery and remove them from this hideous cage, perhaps they could find some peace... Kind thoughts like these have limits when you realize you are well adjusted to the world you are presently living in, while they are removed from theirs. You do not know how far away their last semblance of home is, or if they know how to get back home, let alone if anyone is still waiting for them. Kind thoughts like these have limits when you realize that only you know how miserable it is to be trapped behind a cage because you are the free one. They do not know what it is like to be free, and neither does freedom exist.
Kind thoughts like these have their limits when you realize that they do not want freedom from their misery unless they can exchange the free life you currently have with their caged life. They imagine that to work one's way out of misery is misery itself. That is not a belief based on reality, but even that does not matter when you realize that reality is misery to them.
The life of a victim is complex. From the inside out, reality is misery. There is no such thing as a well-intentioned life waiting to be lived. The roadblocks are placed squarely in the path that is impossible to traverse. Their clothes prove that tenfold. The eyes of anyone with the intention to help will wear on a victim with scorn and pity and for that will be made to pay. Scorn and pity to a victim's misery is like flint to firewood - their pride burns because of it. The pride they did not know they had catches flame and just as fast as they realize their humanity in the burning light, it is gone. A victim's gratitude is being able to repay you in kind by allowing you to see the burning vestiges of your own pride. Inconsequentially, if it burns brighter this is because it is not meant to be burnt. This is not something a victim knows beforehand.
They ask for help only because it seems to garner the attention they need at the moment. No amount of help is going to remove the impossible obstacles set before them anyhow. After all, to them help is misery. Eventually, the obstacles having stood there for so long transform from cage bars into stable walls. Inside of these walls, help may appear to them to be moving furniture from one side of the house to another. Outside of these walls, it appears to be a request to truck a portable home across the countryside highway. One's ability to accomplish these tasks do not astonish a victim much, since work itself is a miserable task.
If a victim becomes acclimated to misery long enough, soon misery becomes the one and only true friend, something a victim is now able to live for and it is in threatening their friend that you become a victim's victual.
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