Thoughts on the tenacity of sick systems

[issendai]

Sick systems are solid. It's amazing. They act like they're on the verge of perpetual collapse, but they go on and on--two-thirds of the employees leave, the abuser's wife divorces him and two of the three kids go no-contact, and the system rolls on unaffected. As long as there's a single other person to support the founding member of the sick

Comments

[kitan]

Part of it is accepting that the only thing that might have triggered change was you leaving. If you hadn't left, nothing would have changed. After all, you'd have proved that as long as they said the right things or shaped up for a little while you'd stay. The odds are depressingly that you leaving didn't trigger a significant change, either.

The important thing to remember is that if they really did change when you left, there is *no way* you could have possibly benefited from it. If you'd stayed, there would be no change. If there was change, it was dependent on you leaving. It's not a Venn diagram - there is no overlap between you staying and change happening. You do know this, but the lingering guilt that if you'd only tried a little harder then maybe it would have finally happened is *killer.* You tried everything you had available, and when nothing else worked you changed the only thing you could. You left and broke the cycle.

It is one of the most painful things I have ever done, because it is the death of hope. It forces you to give up the dream of the way things were supposed to be, how they were when things were good, how the two of you could overcome everything together. Acknowledging that you never really had the wonderful relationship you thought you had, and that having it with this person is impossible is so heartbreaking that most people never get there.

The second-guessing is totally normal, but your realization that you had to leave or stay in that cycle forever was absolutely correct.