#because his dad just died and he's been thrust into a caretaker role for his brother

[autism-swagger]

Yknow there's something about the way the Yellowjackets fandom talks about Jeff vs the way they talk about Travis that I really don't like.

[weepingpussywillowtree]

One account of generational trauma

tw: discussion of alcoholism, abuse, war, eating disorders, abortion, and myriad other upsetting topics.

This is sort of a writing exercise for me. its quite long and probably depressing. no need to read, I just wanted to put it somewhere.

It probably started before this, but to my knowledge it starts with my great-grandparents.

My maternal grandmother's parents came over from Ireland before she was born. Her father was a lawyer, her mother was a housewife. They were both alcoholics. He dies when grandma is around fourteen, and she is thrust into the role of family caretaker for her mother and sisters. Grandma takes care of great-grandma and her youngest sister, who is intellectually and physically disabled, until they both die. My mom tells stories about how when great-grandma got dementia, she would accidentally drink cleaning supplies because she used hide alcohol in them and would forget which bottles were liquor. These stories are apparently meant to be funny.

My maternal grandfather is orphaned at birth; his mother dies bringing him into the world. His father, having no idea what to do with a dead wife and a new baby, gives him up to an orphanage. No one knows much of anything else about grandpa's childhood. The topic is avoided in discussion, even after he is dead.

On my dad's side, grandma is raised by strict parents. Her mother is exacting and critical, and judgemental of grandma's size. Grandma is bulimic, and has been her entire life. Dad is conceived out of wedlock when grandma is a teenager. Her and grandpa have a shotgun wedding, grandma's mother is not happy about this either. Grandma's father is abusive. He sits in the basement of the house chain smoking, a beer always in his hand. Everyone is afraid of him. He only emerges from the basement to exact his wrath on the residents of the house. Great-grandma is much happier after he dies.

Grandpa rarely talks about anything except bird watching and how he dodged the Vietnam draft. Dad says that grandpa's dad was a world war two veteran who's parents came over from Sicily, and that he had darker skin like grandpa. He was extremely racist against Japanese people because he claimed that during the war when he was a prisoner, they locked him in a cage and called him a monkey and some other nasty racial slurs. Grandpa doesn't talk to any of his extended family. He has never mentioned his mother. A quick google search shows that his extended family that remain are mostly involved in lots of crime and domestic abuse.

My mother was abused by both her parents. Grandpa beat her and her siblings when they misbehaved. He used to say "this is going to hurt me more than it will hurt you". Grandma also used corporal punishment but she was more emotionally abusive. She told her kids there was something wrong with them, that they were born wrong. She picked favorites and iced people out. Her opinion was law in the house, always. She was emotionally cold and distant. It is eerie to me how much this account mimics my own mother's abuse of me.

Dad's mom taught him to be bulimic. Its something he still can't kick. Its a large reason i've struggled with disordered eating myself. His father is usually incredibly docile and quiet, but he has a secret explosive temper that is terrifying when it is revealed. Dad and his brother are both spoiled and abused. They are pitted against each other by their parents, smothered, subject to grandpa's temper, and grandma's paranoia and whims. Grandma forces my father to take a cocktail of cold and flu medicines most days when he is a child because she cannot accept that he is allergic to her cats. Similar stories dominate my father's childhood experience. Keeping up with the joneses is paramount and family trauma's and secrets are buried at all costs, usually with the assistance of binge eating.

As a child, my mother is cruel and exacting. Emotional vulnerability is forbidden and harshly punished. When she punishes us, she says that it is harder for her to do than it is for us to experience. Food deprivation, verbal abuse, and extreme isolation (months at a time alone in the house, which is possible because we are homeschooled) are favorite punishments, but being dragged, hit, kicked, and having hard or sharp objects thrown at you comes standard as well. She picks favorites on a rotating basis, but broadly, my brother is spoiled, my sister is ignored and looked down on, and I am hated with an unprecedented vitriol. My aunt says grandma always preferred her boys to her girls.

As the oldest girl, I am hated, but also expected to raise my siblings alongside my mother, and take on more domestic tasks. Despite my usual willingness to go along with this, as well as my tendency to follow every rule I'm given, I'm given the moniker 'queen bitch' by the whole family, a nickname passed down from my mom's oldest sister. Mom tells me that I was born with something wrong with me that I can never fix, I just have to learn how to suppress it. She tells our extended family that she believes I am insane.

On the top shelf in our kitchen, sit two angel bear beanie babies. Mom tells us they are my brother and I's dead siblings that we shared a womb with. I think about them on my birthday and wonder if they would have liked me. If we could have played together. I am older when I learn they are the result of a voluntary pregnancy reduction. Mom says dad forced her into it, saying he would leave her and withdraw support if she wanted to keep all four of us. Other relatives say that mom decided to do it independently to reduce our chance of having severe disabilities or dying straight after we were born. My guess is that neither story is completely true. Mom wants to bury the remains of the two fetuses and have a service. Dad takes them in the middle of the night and leaves them at the dump. The idea that anyone might know about this procedure is too shameful.

Dad spends most of his time in the basement or living room, eating and playing video games. We learn not to bother or interrupt him at a young age. He's usually quiet and nervous, but he has an explosive and terrifying temper. At night, I hear him purging from his binges in the bathroom. I ask my mother why dad is always sick and she makes a face. When dad does spend time with us, he alternates between spoiling us with all the latest toys and experiences and piles of junk food, and taking his anger out on us. As I'm older, I become his emotional support. He treats me like a second wife, and regularly calls me by my mother's name by accident. He leaves the bedroom door open while masturbating and leaves pornography open on the family laptop. When he has a mental breakdown and ends up in a psychiatric hospital when I'm a teenager, I learn he was sexually abused by a sports coach as a child. I learn he was not allowed alone with us when we were infants after he left hand shaped bruises on my body for crying when I was only a few days old.

I am filled with sadness as a child, a deep sense of tragedy and pain that I don't understand the gravity nor the source of. Now, I understand, at least partly, where this feeling comes from.

I only see my family a few times a year. My sister is in a cult, seeking the attention and acceptance she never got as a child, and dating a man twenty years her senior who recently got out of prison for murdering a woman by beating her to death. My brother is seen as gentle, reliable, and an intellectual genius, but he has a manipulative streak and a nasty temper, which becomes violent if you push him too hard. I worry for his girlfriend. My mother is in a second marriage with a man who's first marriage ended when he choked his wife in a fit of rage. She has no friends, and bemoans to me how alone she is. But when I visit, she begins belittling and picking fights with me within a day. I wonder how much of it she means and how much of it is an echo of what her mother told her. Dad is alone. He does crossfit, goes to concerts with friends, takes care of his dogs, and is successful in his career. He went to therapy after the divorce, and is on anti-anxiety medication. I know that he will never apologize to me, but I'm happy for him.

When I was deciding if I'd ever have children, I asked myself a lot of questions, but one of them was if I could commit to breaking the cycle. If, when faced with the typical difficulties of parenting, I could do something other than fall back on what my family has been doing to each other for generations. And the honest answer is that I don't know. There are many other reasons I don't want children, but answer to this particular question is why even if I wanted children, I would be very hesitant to have them. Because here's the truth: after everything I said about my parents, it seems obvious to you, the reader, that they are recreating the traumas they experienced, but both of them thought that they were breaking the cycle. That they were treading new ground. And the idea of that, that I could have a child and bring them into a soup of pain, tragedy, and confusion, all while sincerely believing that I was different, terrifies me more than anything.

Mom gave me scars on my forearm with her fingernails when I was eleven. In a few days, I'm getting a new tattoo in that same spot. I want that part of my body back, and so I'm taking it. I'm going to make it beautiful again. I woke up a few months ago, and realized that I was happy, and that for the first time in my life, I wanted to be alive. I look at myself in the mirror, and I see a little girl who deserves good things, who needs someone to protect and take care of her. My family can never be those people, but I can be that person for myself.

[firelxdykatara]

I just found out that this guy I started dating hates katara... like he called her annoying and whiny... what do I dooooooo?

ok but truly, in all seriousness, while i wouldn’t necessarily advocate actually ending relationships over opinions on fictional characters, i would try to figure out exactly why he thinks she’s ‘annoying and whiny’.

is it because she talks about her mom’s death a few times throughout the series? then ask him if that means he thinks zuko is annoying and whiny, too, since he talks about his father constantly--or if sokka is annoying and whiny for talking about his dad and how his absence has affected him. (he brings up hakoda at least as often as katara brings up kya.) ask him why he thinks a fourteen-year-old girl is ‘annoying’ for still being affected by the trauma of knowing her mother died protecting her at eight years old, leaving her to be thrust into a maternal and caretaking role within her family and the tribe much too young. and ask him why he thinks she’s annoying and whiny, but the boys, who talk about their issues with their fathers and their own traumas, are just fine and possibly his favorite characters.

and if he thinks she’s annoying because of her bossy nature and the nurturing caretaker role she takes within the gaang, ask him why it doesn’t annoy him that sokka is constantly taking the lead and proposing plans and getting irritated when the others mess them up. and further, ask him why he finds it annoying, rather than tragic, that this fourteen-year-old girl has been traumatized to the point where her first response to finding a twelve-year-old kid who’s supposed to be able to save the world is to mother him, because that’s the role she’s been forced to take up ever since her mother’s death, and it was second nature long before aang ever came out of the ice.

if his response is that he thinks katara should just get over it and stop bringing her mother up all the time, or stop acting like the gaang’s mom without acknowledging where that behavior stems from, then that doesn’t say great things about his ability to empathize with women and girls (especially when he doesn’t hold the boys to the same standard), and i’d just say... be careful, in that case.