#living with abusers

[furiousgoldfish]

It doesn't matter if they only lift a hand on you once. You still knew they were capable of it from that day on. You knew they could do it again anytime, and with this knowledge, you knew you had to go out of their way to please them, obey them, make sure they never get angry or upset, only to protect yourself from possible violence. It set you up for a life of fear, for the potential that you live in a violent place and your actions alone could change it from temporary peace to violent assault.

Even if they only threatened violence, they were telling you they were capable and willing! They were telling you 'Do as I say, or I will assault you'. You had to face the possibility that you live with people who would cause you pain to force you into actions against your will. You were forced to live in anticipation of violence, change your behaviour to actively try to prevent or avoid it. You had to make it your responsibility to prevent being assaulted in your own home. You had to live wondering when and if they were going to do it, or do it again. Since the moment they did it or threatened it, you were not safe. You lived with people you knew wanted to hurt you.

[violetsandshrikes]

I met a girl when I was fresh out of high school in undergrad who frankly, annoyed me quite a bit, but I also had an inkling to continue to be compassionate to her given a few things about her life/background/family

I ran into her two years ago. Last week, her daughter turned 1. This girl, let’s called her “P”, is a really good example of why I never feel comfortable mocking trad wives

Her perfect trad husband, who was a shining young figure in the local religious community, volunteered in all sorts of groups, well loved in his workplace and everything else, beat her up at 1 month post-partum. I reached out to her after seeing her desperately asking for a stroller on a page, confused and slightly concerned knowing both of them came from wealthy backgrounds.

The reality for lots of tradwives living “perfect lives” is this: P was immediately ostracised. All the wealth of her husband and her family meant absolutely nothing if she wasn’t in favour and doing what she was told. Her child and her well-being didn’t matter. P, at 25 years old, was basically deemed an oopsie, and left on her own to figure out how to pay for herself, a baby, find housing, and every other task you can think of.

Having known many of these women (and supported many of these women), another factor most people don’t consider is this: they are intentionally raised to be helpless. When I immediately offered my support to P, she really needed it. This young woman needed to be guided through how to apply for government assistance, how to weigh up rentals and apply for them, how to apply for jobs, how to sign up for childcare. How to sign up for your own power and internet, and how to connect them.

It wasn’t that she was “stupid”, or incapable, or spoiled. While it looks like they’re being sheltered, in reality, these women are practically being held hostage. Sure, they might be allowed to learn things that are expected of them (see: basic cooking, baking, cleaning, child rearing, women’s bible studies, hosting, and so forth) but they are heavily controlled from family life into marriage life, and they are never given the opportunity or the reality of what many of us would consider basic adult tasks.

She’s doing okay now. Her daughter turned 1, is happy and healthy. They live frugally, but they have a roof over their heads and the essentials. I often babysit for her so she can attend counselling, or go to a woman’s support group. She is painfully aware that she has so much to learn about how to live as an adult.

I don’t envy tradwives, but I don’t find any joy in mocking them either. Even when they live the most picturesque lives, they’re also practically living a real life Jenga game. If (and often, when) it comes tumbling down, they’re screwed too, and they often have 0 skills to help themselves or find community (that again, isn’t carefully curated).

[chloesimaginationthings]

The FNAF Vanessas meet their younger selves..

[apollos-olives]

before october 7th this blog was a meme page btw.

[its-simply-just-krys]

anonymous ; found on pinterest

[uncanny-tranny]

"Treatment" for addiction that requires you to lock up, confine, coerce, or otherwise strip addicts of their autonomy, it isn't treatment. It is a revenge fantasy that prioritizes your desire for subjugation over the actual betterment of addicts.

[hajihiko]

It runs in the family

[welcometogrouchland]

♫ I do what I want/Crying in the bleachers and I said it was fun/I don't need anything from anyone ♫

(ID in Alt) you guys ever think about your own posts and get upset?? Anyway Damian Wayne I love you I'm so sorry your life is like that

[furiousgoldfish]

I think there's a deep kind of injury we get from spending such a big chunk of our life loving people whoa are abusive. Because we give our love and attention to them, we care not to hurt them, if they seem hurt we try to comfort them and make it better for them, if they need help we offer a hand, we even forget all of our feelings in order to prioritize theirs and try hard to make them happy.

But they do the exact opposite to us. They don't care not to hurt us, if we seem hurt they use it as an advantage to do further damage, if we need comfort they give us disgust, if we need help they humiliate and ridicule and shame us. They prioritize themselves to the point where we don't even exist except as a resource. And we get used to it. To the point where we don't know how any other type of love looks like. To the point where we don't even expect anything else.

And sometimes they go and do something so incredibly cruel to us, it feels like a betrayal. We work hard to protect these people from harm, we light ourselves on fire to keep them warm, we fight for them, we stand on their side. They then go ahead and push us into the worst pain we could possibly experience. It's shocking, disarming, almost unbelievable that anyone could do this, that anyone could be that cruel, and for no good reason at all. Having our love be returned with cruelty damages us permanently. We no longer even expect the same love back when we love someone, we are just hoping they won't turn around and damage us. If we get completely neglected but not actively attacked, we feel grateful!

And if someone later does even a tiny thing that hurts us, we start re-living every past instance where our love was returned with cruelty and the pain of it can crush us. We can't cope with the slightest injustice anymore because it's triggering, it's been so far over our limit we'd rather not have anyone in our life anymore than be betrayed over and over again. It makes us vulnerable and crushed by betrayal so much worse than the average person would feel it. Where we should get mad we feel broken, horrified and helpless.

[girlyteengirl16]

as i get older i really do understand why people abuse substances now

[stonebutchery]

it's kind of baffling to me that entire sub-groups of queer folks endured a decade of being singled out and targeted for being asexual, aromantic, bisexual, pansexual, nonbinary, polyamorous, etc. and i have yet to see any substantial apologies from people who were directly responsible for causing genuine harm. i find it completely bizarre that there are so many people who want to sweep their past contributions to widespread lateral aggression toward specific queer groups under the rug like it didn't happen so they can wash their hands of it... there are people who are irreversibly traumatized because of this. there are people who took their lives because of it.

i'm wording the post like despite the fact that exclusionism targeting these groups (and more) continues to persist partly because it was a really frighteningly common trend to harass people just because they were ace, aro, bi, pan, nonbinary, poly, etc... and it's crazy to me that many of the people who were affected by this massive multi-pronged public online bullying campaign against the 'unacceptable types of queers' are the ones still receiving messages like "my url got put on an aphobe blocklist in 2016 because apparently a post i made making fun of asexuals got some teenage asexuals harassed and i still distrust asexuals to this day because of that" ...are you fucking kidding me?

we will never achieve any kind of unity as a queer community while we are insisting upon ignoring the hurt that lateral aggression has caused, and acting like the burden lies on the shoulders of the people who were harmed to forgive the people who harmed them and 'just move on', many of whom are not sorry for what they did! or they don't consider what they did to be wrong! how is that not deeply disturbing and troubling to more of you?

03/06/2024 edit: i’m putting a complete moratorium on this post because i am really sick and tired of having my point not only completely misconstrued and distorted entirely but also weaponized against transfems (particularly in replies i have decided to delete about how “ugh yes, exclusionism, and now transfems are bullying transmascs”) i find that really sickening and i’m demanding that it stop, and i can make it stop by turning off reblogs. so i have.

my objective in writing this post was never to request an apology from people who have been laterally-aggressive exclusionists in the past. i don’t think we’ll ever get more than a handful of apologies from those people, anyway. my point was that it was pretty terrifying to witness and experience a lot of lateral aggression that transferred from the real, in-person world to the deeply online spaces back into the real, in-person world in a really fucked up feedback loop and being a young queer person during this time and having that shape me, snd shape the experiences of my queer friends who have been traumatized by it.

however, it is absolutely unacceptable to me that the issue of transmisogyny is so blatantly overlooked by our entire community. for decades, transfems have experienced oppression and exclusion from transmisogyny-exempt women and queers. their exclusion from political queer liberation movements has caused many of the major schisms within our community we are still having arguments about to this day. if you want collective queer liberation, you must uplift transfems. there is no other option. you don’t get to write off all transfems just because one person who happened to be transfem was mean to you online or something.

i have answered and responded to way too many conspiracy-brained transmisogynist reactionaries to allow this post to keep fucking snowballing with people writing paragraphs in the tags about “transmisandry” or “transandrophobia.” please get your heads out of your asses.

this absolutely is the transmisogyny website, as always, and the place where all basic textual comprehension skills go to die, apparently.

[alwaysbewoke]

[uncharted-constellations]

~You were just a kid too, huh~

Again, I refuse to make adult mm link edgy sorry.

[thatexygurl]

there's so many things in tsc that just come at you all at once, so it's hard to focus on just one thing to break down, but the most glaring thing that stood out to me is how hard it is to really put someone back together. especially someone so shattered that it's nigh impossible to glue them back and pray they don't crumble under your ministrations.

if jean is neil's foil, then jeremy is andrew's direct antithesis. whereas andrew is a steady bedrock because he's been broken too many times to know how to weather the storm, jeremy is too soft hands and an even softer soul. he cares and cares and cares. so empathetic and so gentle it almost breaks your heart. you pray for the impossibility that jeremy can survive knowing the truth because if he doesn't, then what hope does jean have? so you pray he can be steady too. that he can weather the storm as well. that he will not break when knowing that just under the surface lies shark-infested waters.

but then you remember the beginning. "even knowing everything could go completely sideways, you'd make that choice every time"

in every other universe, jean has not survived. but in every other universe, he did not have the trojans.

[dragonheartstring360]

can’t emphasize enough how when you grew up in a toxic environment, being in the room with someone who’s angry or frustrated - even if it has nothing to do with you - is absolutely terrifying cuz you’ve been 1000% conditioned to assume frustration = all hell is going to break lose and be aimed directly at you

[xvelvetcoffinx]

You see, if everyone around you tells you you're the problem. You eventually internalize it. I wish I never existed, maybe then people around me wouldn't be so miserable. They'd be happy. And that's all I want.