Lucaland - Huh

aquarium

twitter/ insta/bluesky/ store

when you grew up as a lonely uncool girl it will never stop haunting you by the way. you will meet a cool person at a bar or the train station or at a friend's party and you can wear your most stylish outfit and striking eye makeup and you will swear that they can see through all of the facade and see the lonely terribly insecure teenage girl you used to be who desperately wanted to connect and you will swear that they know that there is like an insurmountable gap between you. this will happen forever

sorry for how i acted when i was being myself

“I wasn’t an easy child”/“I was a bad child and hard to love” is such an upsetting thing to hear people say. I used to believe it about myself before I got my autism diagnosis and reevaluated my childhood behavior and realized most of it wasn’t born out of a desire to be a difficult little monster. but even if you were an evil child on purpose 24/7, it’s fucked up that your parents/caregivers made you feel that that was just an innate part of you, a literal actual child.

Abusive parents keep making you feel like you’ll miss out on something if you leave, like they’re just waiting to become this loving, supportive person the second you turn away from them, it’s maddening how far they’re willing to go to, just to make sure you can’t leave. When a parent changes their face constantly, being loving and nice in one second, and then cruel and terrifying in another, the only “reward” you can get from enduring all the pain and fear is by actually being around for those 5 minutes they might be nice to you! And if you’re not, it feels like you endured all this for nothing, almost like you’re missing out. It hurts.

You’re not supposed to only feel safe around people when they’re in a good mood and when they don’t have specific motives for hurting and manipulating you, you’re not supposed to be enduring horrific tantrums and emotional abuse just to see if in next half hour they’ll decide to turn nice again, it is not humane or normal to act in this way. Good people are good all the time, bad people make you feel confused about who they are so they could keep getting away with all the bad. 

There’s a difference between parents who want you to be happy, and parents who want you to look happy.

 If your parents want you to be happy, they will be there for you when you need them, and help you with your struggles. They’ll take your pain seriously. They wont make fun of your problems when that hurts you. They’ll point out your good sides. They’ll let you know they hold you valuable and important no matter what the rest of the world says about you. They’ll make sure you know they’re on your side, here to protect and get you out of trouble, that if something happens you have backup, you have a safety to fall back on. They’ll make sure you have a place you belong to, place where you’re welcome and wanted. They’ll be a source of comfort, warmth and support.

If your parents want you to look happy, they’ll demand that you stuff down your emotions and play an act of a child who doesn’t need anything or anyone, who is just fine the way things are, no matter how bad things are for you. They’ll dictate what you’re allowed to think of them and how you’re supposed to react on anything and everything they do. They’ll demand you hide your pain, your symptoms, your anger, your fear, anything that makes them look like less than perfect parents has to go. They’ll let you know that they are important, you aren’t. Their emotions and needs and desires are important, yours aren’t. Their pain has to be paid back, yours has to be ignored and forgotten. Your life falls back on what is and isn’t convenient to them, every part of you is judged only by how much use they can have of it. And of course, they’ll tell you they did it all for your sake, because if they didn’t, who knows how awful you would turn out. 

If they say they want you to be happy, but their actions tell you that you need to look happy “or else”, they’re abusive parents, and they do not care about your happiness.

Hilary Mantel, from Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)