trauma doesn’t often feel like trauma is ‘supposed’ to feel. it feels like indifferent detachment, watching from outside yourself because nothing can hurt you there. it feels normal, just how people interact, so why are you making a big deal about it? it feels like a joke – just how kids play, just how adults tease, just how some relationships work.
you wake from nightmares five years later and still wonder if you made it all up.
trauma can look like bad behaviour. like the stubborn refusal to get better, to stop self-destructing. trauma is putting yourself in harm’s way because you don’t really mean it, or because it’s funny, or because you just want to feel something, or because you just want to stop feeling. it’s wanting to destroy and reassemble yourself into another person entirely, so your real life can begin. because this isn’t real. because really bad things don’t happen to people like you.
trauma is the constant feeling of being an impostor. it’s the drive to survive twinned with the impulse to make yourself more sick in more ways. to hurt yourself to prove how bad you feel, or to punish yourself for exaggerating. you want people to believe what you’ve been through, to tell you your feelings are real, that your memories really happened. but when people do take you seriously, you play it off as a joke, apologize for bringing the mood down.
you go on and on about how it wasn’t that bad. you seek permission to still love the ones who hurt you, because it’s the people closest to us who can hurt us most deeply.
you can feel like the people who hurt you are the only ones who really knew you. in low self esteem, you can mistake cruelty for honesty.
there will always be people who have been through worse. that doesn’t make what happened to you okay.
there will always be people who don’t believe you. that doesn’t mean you are lying.
at some point, you have to take yourself seriously. you have to make a life you can stand to live. it’s the only way to survive.
Neglected children will sometimes reassure adults that they’re fine, even when they’re in a horrible state. Neglected kids will feel guilty if anyone is worried about them because they don’t want to be a bother, feel badly for taking anyone’s attention, and don’t want to cause any concern. If as a kid you reassured and convinced people that you’re okay, when you were anything but, know that it’s normal for abused kids to do that. Concern and worry are often things we get guilt tripped for, we’re told we’re “bad” for making anyone worry, “selfish” for causing any kind of distress.
This doesn’t mean anyone is allowed to use this to change the narrative into ‘but you said you were okay’ when you finally admit you were not. Pain and struggle is visible on a child, regardless of how good an actor the child is, for anyone who bothers to pay attention. You pretending you were fine does not absolve anyone of hurting or neglecting you. A child always left to their own devices, reassuring others and insisting they don’t need any attention ever, is obviously not fine. Healthy children thrive on attention and always try to get more.
This is about Sci-Hub. yeah we get it.. gatekeep knowledge and protect the interests of capital…
I get so fucking angry when people try to rationalize why parents abuse children and it’s always “oh parents have been thru it too” “oh they had a hard life” “oh they were abused too” “oh they never knew love so how could they give it” and what they’re basically saying is: Well, the child is suffering but it’s not anybody’s fault. It was inevitable. And you know what that means? There’s nobody to blame, there’s no way to stop it, parents who have had difficulties in life will always abuse their kids and children will just have to suck it up because that’s life.
Well then, what about me? And others like me? We’ve been brutalized by our parents severely, we haven’t known anything except neglect and pain and hatred, and would never do it to another living soul on earth, much less a child. What are we then? An exception? Are we so much fucking smarter and intelligent and insightful than all the parents on the world that we figured this out? Are we special cases? Are we miracles? How come our parents couldn’t have figured out what we have, that hurting a child is an act of evil and that we cannot claim to be a good person after we do that? How come something so fucking simple and obvious has eluded all of their eyes over and over again but we know it? How come if everyone abused has no choice but to become a monster themselves, we’re not monsters still? If we could suffer abuse and remain human, why couldn’t they do it to?
We’re the proof that abuse does not produce abusers. Abuse is a choice, every single time a parent abuses a child they’re making a choice to do it. And the easier this choice is to make and get away with, the more abusers we will have. This world is run by abusers and makes it easy for abusers to make that choice, even relives them out of the guilt for choosing that and provides them with many “worse” examples and excuses and rationalizations so they would still feel good about themselves! This world is fighting to continue child abuse, to continue worshipping abusers. This needs to stop, all excuses need to die. All abusers need to be held responsible for their own actions, every single one. No sad backstories, no tragic histories, no debate about how much harder it would be to not abuse a child than to abuse them. If we could make a choice to not abuse others, so can they. Their last excuse is burned to the ground by our existence.
I'm Sorry - Gator Days
Truth 💓
The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.
-James Baldwin
The Bird of Luck is so kyooooooot 💗
Please and thank you, lil' cutie!
Abusers love to pretend to be misunderstood and dealing with a lot of pain, guilt, concern or fear at all times. They love to make out their past so it seems like they’re some kind of tragic hero, or someone who is only abusive because of everything they’ve bee thru. They will yell at you for “not considering their feelings enough”, you can recognize it in phrases “do you ever think about how it is for me? do you think i enjoy doing this?” as if you are the one ignoring their feelings, and not the reverse. Even when they look happy you’re supposed to always assume that deep inside they’re in some kind of pain and be as understanding as possible.
Don’t get fooled by this. People who are dealing with a lot of pain, guilt, concern, shame, and fear don’t take it out on their closest ones. People who are aware of what compassion is wont yell at you for not taking enough of their feelings into account. People who are living with pain and regret don’t look fucking smug and self-important all the time! People who live in shame wouldn’t risk hurting you and increasing shit they’re feeling ashamed about! People who are hurt and living in a lot of pain wouldn’t just go and try to make you feel awful about yourself too! They wouldn’t make inappropriate jokes or call you names or try to convince you that if they feel bad, you need to feel bad too, and if they are doing that, then you are not supposed to take their feelings into account anymore!
Your empathy should not extend to those who have it as a goal to hurt you, when another person wants to cause you pain, this is where your empathy for them should end. No matter what they’re pretending to go thru, doesn’t it feel a little bit too convenient that their lives are so “tragic” and “misunderstood” and for that reason you’re supposed to just let them take it out on you and “understand where they’re coming from”? If they’re leading you to believe you’re a bad person if you don’t let them hurt you, they can just fuck off! It’s just a sham to make you believe that allowing them to cause you pain is noble from you, it’s not, your life has bigger value than to be a punching bag for someone, noble thing is to protect your life from that kind of parasite.
I don’t know if it’s this way for everyone, but being abused made it so impossible for me to come forward if I’ve done something wrong or a mistake, even if it’s a tiny little thing, even if I know it would be forgiven instantly and not even taken as a digression, I can’t do it. I feel the second I admit I did something unfavorable or wrong, I’m going to be condemned straight to hell, I’m going to be despised, my crimes are going to be enlarged and put on trial, I’m going to become untrustworthy, evil villain in everyone’s eyes.
I end up hiding things that people have no reason to hide, just because I’m too scared to admit to the tiniest mistakes, because I can’t handle people thinking worse of me, for something so small, something that doesn’t warrant being demonized. Something that doesn’t even hurt anyone but could, in my mind, be perceived as less than perfect, less than ideal action.
I hate it. I hate that I condemn myself and hide in shame before even giving anyone the chance to forgive me.