"I Didn't, You Shouldn't!"

"I've been through that too...but I didn't react the way you did.  You don't have to react that way."
"That happened to me, but it didn't affect me like that, so it shouldn't affect you like that."
Well, it just so happens that while there are many different things that can happen to many different people, and sometimes two different people may have the exact (or very similar) same thing happen to them.  But...these people are, as mentioned before different, which means that they will most likely have different reactions.
Sometimes a person reacts in a positive way to a terrible thing that happened to them, but another person who may have had the exact same thing happen to them reacts either neutral or negatively.  In some of these cases, the person who reacts positively might ask the person who reacted negatively, "What's wrong with you, this isn't as terrible as you're acting.  I'm fine."  Or the person who reacted negatively might go to the person who reacted positively saying, "Why are you acting so okay?  This isn't okay!  This has devastated me!"
An example (fictional, but so real) is in the book by Sarah Dessen, Just Listen.
This book is about a girl named Annabel who was raped by her best friend's serial rapist boyfriend.  He had a habit of raping or otherwise violating girls, then his girlfriend would get mad and alienate the girl.  Making sure everyone know that the rape victim was an [insert curse word here as I do not use curse words, even in quotes on my blog].
She either didn't know or didn't want to see what her boyfriend was doing.  So, when at the end of the school year, Annabel was raped by him, Annabel became alienated.
The rape devastated Annabel.  She didn't feel like she could or should tell anyone what happened.  She didn't feel like she should tell anyone the "real" reason why Sophie (former friend) wasn't her friend anymore.  The story circulating around school was that Annabel was a [bleep] who slept with Sophie's boyfriend.  She had no friends.
She was scared.  When she saw Will (the boyfriend) she threw up.  Not once.  Twice.  She didn't want to do modeling anymore (A family thing that she'd been doing since before she could walk), but she was also scared to tell her mother.
Near the end of the book, the girl who had taken Annabel's place, a Freshman named Emily, was raped by Will.  Emily wasn't silent.  Was she scared?  Yeah.  But she went to the authorities.  And because of that, Annabel also found the courage to stand up.
The same thing happened to two different girls.  The same thing.  By the same guy.  But they reacted differently.
It's like pouring baking soda over water, and pouring baking soda over vinegar.  The water doesn't react, but the vinegar has an explosive reaction (science fair volcano anyone?).  The same solvent, but a different solute.
Does that mean that everyone should be allowed to react however they want?  If I punch you in the face, is it okay to react by shooting me?  Uh...not exactly.  But in certain circumstances, understand...different people react differently to even the same thing.
For example (drawing from a research paper I did my sophomore year), sometimes when a girl is sexually abused as a child, she completely withdraws from sex and anything sexual altogether...other times, a different girl, even if it was the exact same guy, the exact same type of abuse, will have an extremely high sex drive.
This is just something that's been rattling around in my mind for awhile.
~Katie