#at least I'm immune to feeling embarrassed about this shit anymore

[jamiebluewind]

@sharkapologists ah. I see the tism bit me in the ass again. Carry on!

i swear some of the polls on this site look like

[symptoms-syndrome]

Yesterday in therapy (I've been switching up my days since I've been super busy) I ended up talking about cruelty. I'm aware this is very emotionally driven or whatever.

It started with me talking about that person I think I mentioned before, who I don't want to associate with anymore. My therapist eventually asked what I think would be the least cruel way to tell them I can't tolerate their behavior, and it sort of? Triggered something (or someone) inside me. I said I wanted, on some level, to be cruel. That people don't change behavior without a little cruelty. I wish I could say I don't believe that. My therapist also asked what I would define as cruelty, and I had a hard time because I can't think of a definition of cruelty apart from "hurting someone on purpose," which feels far too broad. Like. If I tell someone that I don't like when they chew with their mouth open, I do that knowing that it'll make them embarrassed but I don't do it to embarrass them. That feels like cruelty even though some would say it isn't.

Anyway.

It was a hard conversation. I said that I'm willing to be the bad guy for the greater good. That's a duty I have, because I have the guts to do it and not everyone does. I don't want to, but I feel like I have to sometimes. Sort of "spare the rod spoil the child" type thing but without like. Actual abuse.

My therapist said it sounded like some part of me (I don't know if they meant little p or big P) is very, very scared of punishment. And that's why I'm like this. And why I have such a hairpin trigger tolerance for loud misbehavior. Because I think punishment is coming. And I do. I think that if I don't do it, someone else will, and in ways that are more cruel than what I could or would do. There will be consequences for actions unless they change, and I can serve that consequence out of mercy so that someone else doesn't serve it out of malice.

Afterwards I journaled. The first thing that came to mind was my little sister. I think I had to be cruel, on some level, to her. Even though I didn't want to be. I had to very firmly establish that in the household we grew up in, there were strong consequences for irresponsible actions. It's not like I hit her or anything, but I did instill what I think was a healthy amount (considering the circumstances) of fear in her. It's like a vaccine. If she's a little afraid of the consequence then she won't experience the actual consequence and the much bigger fear and trauma. It's like. I don't know. I experienced a lot of pain and a lot of trauma and I was trying to innoculate her from it. Like telling her to be careful about who she spends time with and shit like that. Sometimes I exaggerated risk a little bit because a fear of something a little unreasonable is better than experiencing a very real pain from a very real malicious cruelty.

My therapist asked me also if I ever do this to myself. And I think the correct answer is probably yes. But I can't really think of how. I feel like I'm trying to prevent what's happened to me happening to others. Like I think I don't need the little vaccine because I've already had the illness and already have the immunity.

I'm not sure how this is related. But when I, at one point out of stupidity, told my birth father that his current wife was very unkind to me/made it very clear she didn't like me as a teenager (and still is/does,) he said that I was a very difficult child. That I made myself very hard to love and care for. That most people would be unkind to me like that with the way I behaved. That feels like a similar merciful cruelty. Don't make me beg for kindness when instead you can cut at the root so I don't waste my time and just accept the truth. Waiting or begging for kindness from her is a moot point, because I am impossible for most people to love. I can move right on past that to acceptance. That's a mercy. I won't wait for kindness that never comes and be hurt by how long it takes while I'm waiting. I just get the one hurt of knowing for sure it's not happening. That's mercy.

I don't know. I know, on an intellectual level, that trauma often makes you think the world is more dangerous than it is. I think that's probably what a psychoanalyst would say this is all because of. But I do very firmly believe the world to be very cruel. Because I've experienced it firsthand. And I think that a lack of a healthy fear is just setting yourself up for more pain than if you're already prepared for it. I can't see things any other way, even if I try. I can't even intellectualize it away. This is a very firmly rooted core belief and I very truly believe that anyone that thinks differently about this is ignorant at best.

I also think that my cruelty is one of the things that makes it hard for me to relate to a lot of other trauma survivors. I feel like I have a visual. Like, other survivors curl up into a smooth round ball and grow a hard shell. Or sometimes don't grow a shell at all and are just soft and vulnerable. But it feels like my shell grew with spikes. I am cruel in ways other survivors aren't, or don't have the courage to be. And that ability to be cruel always feels like a heavy burden and a duty. Like I need to be cruel out of mercy. Like killing an animal caught in a trap. Someone needs to have the guts to be cruel to reduce suffering. And maybe that means I can't be as well liked or loved as someone else. But that's just how duty goes. No one can love an executioner. And that's beyond my control, so it's not something worth dwelling on. I've known from the start that I am on my own.

[andavs]

I wish you would write a fic where... Stiles pauses too long when Peter asks him if he wants the bite and he gets Bitten. Though I'm equally tied about him becoming a wolf vs pulling a Lydia and getting Woken as Something Else...

Oh, I am 100% for it awakening something else. It’s one of my favorite things.

“Anything yet?”

“Still no,” Stiles said, again, and Derek resumed his pacing up and down the aisle. Kind of dickishly, though, like he was the one being inconvenienced here. As if his uncle hadn’t been the one to bite Stiles in the first place.

Peter was dead, so at least that problem was out of the way, but now Stiles was stuck with Derek as the only alpha north of San Francisco, spending the full moon in an abandoned train depot he didn’t know existed before tonight, and a bandage on his wrist that made the kids at school whisper and give him pitying looks. And yes, he’d already pointed out the lack of healing and been very ignored.

He got it, he’d witnessed firsthand with Scott that a new wolf’s judgment was a little skewed around the moon, but a very much un-supernaturally-healed wound was a pretty objective, non-skewed fact.

Stiles was not a wolf, and no one would listen to him.

“I feel like it didn’t take this long with Scott,” Stiles continued after some uncomfortable silence. “He was a total dick the entire day. It was pretty obvious.”

Derek sighed, annoyed. “You’re always a dick, it’s hard to tell.”

“Wh—me? Look who’s talking!” Stiles sputtered indignantly, and Derek raised his eyebrows in a challenge. “You slammed my head into my own steering wheel!”

“You made me strip for your friend.”

“You threatened me into harboring your fugitive ass from my dad.”

“You accused me of mass murder.”

“You kidnapped Scott’s boss.”

“I was trying to find the alpha!”

“Well, great job there, buddy!” Stiles snapped angrily, and Derek’s eyebrows shot right back out of their angry furrow. “That wasn’t the moon, that was because your psycho uncle bit me and I’m still pissed about it.”

“I’m not exactly thrilled about it either,” Derek shot back, and resumed his impatient pacing up and down the dilapidated train.

Stiles made an ugly face at his back and wished he’d gotten Scott as a moon buddy instead.

But no. Scott and Allison were across town with Lydia because Peter had also bitten her, so no one was having a good time tonight, but those three were probably having a slightly better experience. Not in an abandoned train station. And Lydia probably at least got padded restraints, whereas Stiles got literal manacles straight out of the middle ages. They were heavy and gross and clinked every time he moved, which was very often because he was so bored.

Derek wouldn’t let him have his phone in case he wolfed out and broke it, and he wouldn’t even let him have a book because you need to focus, Stiles. Except there was nothing for him to focus on, and a Stiles without anything to entertain himself and an impatient alpha staring him down, making him very uncomfortable, was a restless, dickish Stiles who apparently looked remarkably close to a new wolf feeling the pull of the moon.

Derek’s phone pinged with a text and he frowned as he read it, but didn’t stop his pacing.

“I’m hungry,” Stiles said into the tense silence, and the douche didn’t even look at him as he responded,

“Tough.”

“I didn’t eat lunch today.”

“Should’ve planned ahead.”

“I did, you threw me in your car before I could grab my sandwich.”

“Be faster.”

“I can’t be faster, because I’m not a wolf,” he said for the sixth time that day, and also for the sixth time that day, Derek responded,

“That’s not possible. Either you turn or you die, no one’s immune.”

“Maybe he didn’t bite deep enough.” He was recycling old arguments, he’d been over this with Derek, Scott, and Lydia, but at least it wasn’t dead silence. “Maybe Adderall affects it somehow, or maybe—”

“Stiles!” Derek interrupted loudly, now opening glaring. “Shut up.”

“I’m not a wolf! I don’t know what else I can do to prove it, I mean, do you want to see my scab again?” He gestured to the gauze covering the still-healing puncture wounds from Peter’s teeth. He didn’t always cover them, but one look at the manacles Derek pulled out of the equally medieval wooden trunk, and he was running for the first aid kit in his backpack. He wasn’t a wolf, and they were clearly tetanus traps.

“Or should we maybe note the complete lack of super strength?” He tugged at the chain keeping his butt firmly in the plastic train seat covered with questionable stains. “How about the fact that I can still barely run a ten minute mile?”

Derek wasn’t even looking him in the eye anymore, his gaze had dropped, probably in shame and embarrassment for needlessly chaining up a teenager.

“I don’t have a homicidal temper,” Stiles continued, ticking his points off on his clawless-fingers, “my eyes haven’t glowed once, my howl is laughable—”

“Stiles,” Derek tried to interrupt again, but Stiles wasn’t having it. He’d been dismissed one time too many since all this shit started, and he was finally snapping.

“I don’t have super sensitive hearing, I can’t smell anything, I tried to do one of those werewolf backflips and almost broke my neck—”

“Stiles, stop!” Derek ordered, and before Stiles could stop him, he was grabbing his wrist and yanking it up.

Stiles was already halfway through an indignant protest when it finally registered that Derek wanted him to look at his fingers—not because of claws, but because his fingertips were glowing an eerie yellow.

Like, firefly butt yellow.

It was a little warm, it felt a little tingly, and he could tell by the confused and concerned frown on Derek’s face that werewolves definitely didn’t do that.

“Yeah, um—” he swallowed loudly, forcing it down past the knot of fresh anxiety and fear that had lodged in his throat “—I don’t think I’m a werewolf.”

Derek glared.