Any Excuse

The fact for so long you had no idea what you were dealing with resulted in you engaging in an anticipated behaviour. This behaviour is one which we regularly rely on in order to keep you in the dark. I have made mention of the various traits which we look for in those who make the most useful victims to us. One of those traits concerns your ability to try to find the good in everyone and everything. This is a typical empathic trait and along with all of the others which you possess causes you to flare up on our radar when we are seeking an excellent primary source. Your desire to see good means that it obscures your ability to see the bad or perhaps more accurately, to accept the bad. This is something we desire because it prevents you from truly recognising what it is that is happening to you once your devaluation has begun. We of course love to operate from a position of plausible deniability, we court ambiguity since we enjoy and need to twist and turn in order to achieve what we want. If you saw everything as stark and clear as I now describe our machinations to you, you would be more inclined to escape us and bring about that unwelcome cessation of our primary source of fuel. It would also make it harder to apply those hoovers when we wish to return you to the fold and have you engage in our cyclical endeavours once again. We present you with the truth of what we are on a repeated basis but although we offer it up in front of you, we never let you see it clearly. We draw a veil across certain elements, apply a smoke screen, obscure some parts and distort others. The reality is there before you. It is evident and plain but because of the way in which we purposefully manipulate you, you are unable to see it. It is akin to us pointing out a ship on the horizon. It is obvious for us to see but when we hand you a telescope to gain a better look at this vessel, the lens has been smeared with something which distorts the view, or we place our finger over part of the lens blocking your view.

The consequence of this distortion is to prevent you from truly seeing what we are. This in turn means that you are unable to form a clear and coherent view of the person which has taken hold of you. This becomes infuriating for others who we have not been able to drag into our façade, but who recognise full well what we are. These observers tell you what you are dealing with. They may be circumspect to begin with, hoping not to offend your sensibilities but over time their increasing exasperation causes them to come out and say it straight. Yet, such candour rarely finds favour with you because you do not like to be told something about someone as wonderful as us (or at least someone who was wonderful). You do not like to think that the golden period has gone. You do not like to be deprived of the idea that what you once had will never come back or even that it did not exist to begin with. Most of the reasons why you think like this is as a consequence of our manipulative behaviour, which further foes to underline that it is not your fault. Even your desire to see the good in people is not your fault either. That is who you are. We know that and we exploit it. It is our fault again but of course in the midst of the battle that we engage in with you, we will never admit that anything is our fault. That will never do.

Thus, your view of us is obscured and because of this you will always issue excuses to explain away our behaviour, our words and our actions. You make these excuses time and time again, to others and to yourselves. You believe these excuses because this is how you think and you have been led towards this train of thought by the schooling you have received at our manipulative hands and mouths. You also utilise these excuses to continue to convince yourself that the unsavoury elements of our behaviour are just an aberration, on occasional blip in respect of an otherwise magnificent person. Your charity is amazing and naturally most welcome for through this blinkered approach you divest us of responsibility for the things we do, something which aligns with one of our many stated aims. You prevent yourself from examining further the reality of what has now ensnared you and the repeated application of these excuses keeps you in situ. We want you to utilise these excuses. We want to hear them. We want them said to us and to others. Your excuses frustrate and alienate those who are against us, your excuses support out manufactured façade and most of all they ensure you deny to yourself that which is directly before you. Here are twenty-five of those such excuses. You will have said them and probably more than once. Understand that each time you utter one you have used a further death knell for your prospects of escaping us.

1. He is just tired; it makes him snap.
2. He doesn’t mean it, not really.
3. You don’t have to pretend with me, I just want you to be yourself.
4. He has a lot on his mind at the moment.
5. Work is particularly stressful for him.
6. He sometimes has a bit too much to drink, but hey, who hasn’t been there?
7. I think perhaps I am too harsh on him at times, it is my fault really.
8. He is in a bad place but he will come through it.
9. He is a complex person; you don’t understand him like I do
10. It is just the way he is; I have got used to it.
11. I know it seems bad but he does so much that is lovely; this is only a small part of what he is like.
12. Nobody knows him properly, that’s why you think bad of him.
13. He is a popular guy so he is always going to have women hitting on him.
14. He has a temper, I know, but that’s part of what he is and it’s not for us to change him.
15. I need to be more supportive and then he will be better.
16. He’s not well at the moment but I will help him get through it, you will see.
17. You’ve only heard one side of the story; he is not like that at all.
18. Yes, well, his family would say that about him to cover up what they did to him.
19. All he needs is to be loved and I am the one who is going to do that for him.
20. You don’t know what you are saying anymore, it is okay, I do understand.
21. It was a one-off, it won’t happen again.
22. I know it was wrong but this time he has promised that he won’t do it anymore.
23. You don’t understand the way that me and him are together.
24. You are just jealous of what we have. Why can’t you be please for us, for my sake?
25. I’m sorry, it was my fault.

Sound familiar?