#birthmom trauma

[childofcoffee]

I've now been asked not to touch my receptionist's picture of her daughter. She'll try to be mindful and not have it "in my vicinity" but it really bothers her that it keeps moving.

Well bitch, it really fucking bothers me that I'm certain you're fully aware that to seeing your daughter every time I cover your lunch is a trigger for me and you don't seem to give even a fraction of a shit about it.

This is just further proving that my observations are correct. You're a self-absorbed, entitled bitch who doesn't care about her job. You want what you want when you want it, regardless of who it inconveniences. Or triggers.

[cherrybombfangirl]

Hey you, yeah you! Interested in my in progress Ninjago fic that I'm fucking obsessed with and want you guys to become obsessed with as well?

Ao3 Link: Battle Cry (8840 words) by cherrybombfangirl

Wanna read a Ninjago fanfic that spans everything from the pilots to Crystalized? It includes me fixing everything that needs fixing in my humble opinion as a writer myself (love triangles be gone), and my ninjago OC and the small OCs that come with her. 

Yeah you wanna read it!

This fic includes:

My Original Character Amy. She’s a human clone and a former assassin/child soldier, the Master of Space (forcefields and portals), falls in love with Lloyd and is very protective of him plus they have a cute aspec romance, and her arc is all about learning that her emotions aren’t a weakness to let people love her and that’s she’s not a broken monster.

The rainbow colored ninja being very queer as the universe intended: Gay Ace Cole, Trans and Pansexual Kai (plus Lavashipping galore!), Trans and Bisexual Nya (she and Kai swapped genders and names), Trans and Bisexual Jay, Genderfluid and Pan Zane, Asexual Demiromantic and Genderqueer He/They Lloyd, Genderqueer and PanAce Pixal and other characters are obviously queer as well.

Mental health issues galore that you can’t convince me these ninja don’t have at this point: everyone has PTSD, depression, anxiety, and lots of trauma!

Also autistic and adhd ninja because i said so: Autistic and ADHD Lloyd (he gets the autism from Garm and the ADHD from Misako), ADHD Kai (gets it from his mom), ADHD Jay (also from his mom), and Autistic Zane (his father built him that way because he is also autistic).

Addressing the Garmadon family’s generational trauma BECAUSE THE UNTAPPED POTENTIAL-

Lloyd’s relationship with his mom is complicated BUT after Lloyd has an understandable anger outburst Misako realizes “Fuck I messed up and hurt my kid” and spends a very long time trying to be better and fixing her and Lloyd’s relationship- and they do have a good relationship by the end! (because fuck doing nothing over actually working on fixing their mistakes and actually making up for it and people being complicated and imperfect people)

Love triangles are OUT, trauma triangles are IN

Jay actually gets character development in Skybound AND KEEPS SAID DEVELOPMENT, including Jay having to learn how to have a healthy relationship with Nya and stop bulldozing over people’s boundaries/having unhealthy obsessions with people (which is actually a result of trauma)

^^^ also actually exploring Jay’s birthmom in Prime Empire instead of introducing her then only mentioning her once several seasons later (and not even by name)

Also more sibling stuff in general over the romance because Jay and Nya’s relationship over Kai and Nya’s WHY?!?! (also Smith sibs adopting Lloyd, and all the ninja being even closer as a family obviously)

Consider the stupid love triangle with Wu Garm and Misako GONE. Don’t worry though, I give the brothers a much more believable and angsty reason to start fighting in Season 4 :))) (hint, it has to do with their repressed trauma from their dad’s not so great parenting)

Kai gets his own season with plenty of angst and character development as he deserves. The Green Ninja thing and Chen’s staff thing and being abandoned with a baby sister to take care of and putting all his worth on protecting others will ABSOLUTELY BE DISCUSSED

^^^ also Lavashipping will be included with Kai and Cole finally confronting their feelings for each other and going from on and off friends with benefits to the cutest boyfriends/husbands ever

Exploring the Dragon vs Oni and Creation vs Destruction concept more and using Lloyd and his family to illustrate that what the world really needs is a balance of both (also Lloyd and his dad keeping some Dragon/Oni features at the end!!!)

The ninja actually having to recover from when they very severely injured, or say, fucking possessed (why didn’t they even mention how Lloyd would’ve had to recover from that, the fuck)

Also Wu being confronted multiple times for his bullshit (which, suprise suprise, is a result of trauma), and he actually has to fix his mistakes and try to be better

Fixing everything wrong with Rebooted, Skybound, March of the Oni, Fire Chapter, Prime Empire, and Crystalized (I’m a writer myself, there are some things that drive me crazy and I NEED TO FIX THEM-)

More family time and mundane domestic stuff in between the ninja-ing- just the ninja spending time together and acting more like family/roommates in general

Prime Empire actually makes sense, Jay gets actual character development AND we actually explore his birthmom

Morro and Harumi are deeply traumatized BUT they let said trauma make them assholes and use it as an excuse to hurt people and they become even worse (Morro and Harumi stans BEGONE THIS IS NOT FOR YOU)

^^^ this will include Harumi developing an unhealthy obsession with Lloyd and it turning into creepy/predatory behavior, and there will be off screen sexual assault at some point, be wary of that

Exploring what life with Lloyd and his parents pre-banishement was like, complete with angsty-fluffy feels

Actually talking about addressing everyone’s trauma in general (and giving them more trauma because I’m that bitch :DDD )

There’s probably more I’m forgetting but that’s the gist of it for now

[symptoms-syndrome]

Talking about comfort and why I can sometimes. Be triggered about it.

I can't say that I wasn't comforted as a kid, because that would be a lie. But it was always...not about me?

With birthdad, he would comfort me only when he really fucked up and couldn't avoid it. Like, he would often accuse me of stealing things if he couldn't find them, demanding I give them back and yelling a lot. If he found it in his room, and couldn't say that I had just put it there because I felt guilty or something, he would basically turn around and say he's so sorry he yelled at me, and can he give me a hug to make it better? And all I really remember about that is being really scared. I didn't want to be hugged. But I'd end up being hugged anyway, very tightly, and I remember being scared the whole time. He'd say he's sorry and I'd say it's okay (because what else am I to do?) And things would move on like nothing happened.

With birthmom it was really different. I also got comforted by her only on rare occasion, if I was visibly and clearly very upset. But it was always this sort of..."it's okay because I'm here, right? You feel better because you have your mom, right? I'm a good mom right? Because I make you feel better? I feel so sad seeing you like this. I don't want you to feel like this." And it would turn right away to me comforting her. Telling her she is a good mom. I do feel better (lie.) I'm sorry for getting worked up like this.

So it's just. I don't know. It's stressful to be comforted. Which is so antithetical to like...trauma recovery. I need to learn how to accept comfort. But I don't know how.

[gettzapped]

Motherless: Ode to Mother's Day

Motherless: Ode to Mother’s Day

Elegance, sophistication, beauty & grace. Charming, generous, selfless, & kind. Everybody loves the ring of all those words. They seem applicable to a woman in your life who you admire or simply: a mom. “A MOM POEM“ The steadfast ally, your hero, support staff, or even a sorta saint. The lady who loves you through all your shit, makes sure you always have a birthday cake & that you’re never a…

[confessionsofbirthmothers]

[openfootinsertmouthproject]

You’re So Brave & Selfless

Bravery and selflessness are ways to describe people’s reactions to single things. Bravery is a reaction to fear or danger. Selflessness is a response to other people’s wants or needs. When you call someone “brave” you are assuming fear or danger into their situation. When you call someone “selfless” you are assuming other people into the situation.

When you attribute specific words or descriptions to someone’s loss or trauma you are assuming things about their story. But the only thing that is safe to assume about loss or trauma is that it is hard. Beyond that, everyone’s story is different, everyone experiences loss and trauma in different ways, on different timelines - everyone is unique. SOME people were brave, some were cowardly, some didn’t feel fear or experience danger in any significant way.

Further, regardless of the story or situation, these words are problematic because they condense the entirety of an experience to one or two emotions. Loss is complex; trauma is complex. They can’t be described in a few words. Our reactions to loss and trauma don’t really fit simple compliments like “brave” or “selfless.”

Instead of knee-jerking to a word YOU value, just tell people you think they’re great. Or that you really like them. And thank them for sharing their story with you. And that’s all.

*I’m continuing my adoption-related posts for the month of November - National Adoption Awareness Month. For more information about the complex healing process for women who chose to place their children for adoption, visit Lifetime Healing, LLC.

[kelyon]

Speaking of fics surprising you - what the biggest curve ball any of your fics has ever given to you?

Not so much the fic itself, but the audience reaction to the darkest parts of Golden Cuffs really threw me for a loop. I had to do some major course-correction to address Belle’s trauma in a way that would be satisfying to the audience and also true to the characters. 

All of Golden Cuffs surprised me a little. I wasn’t aware of how *real* the characters would feel as I wrote them. Like, my original draft was a lot rougher than the finished product. And that’s because in my first draft I was just kind of throwing Belle and Rumple into situations and *making* them react however I wanted them to. Once I started really writing, I started paying more attention to emotional continuity and how one chapter built off of the other chapters. 

Seeing my audience reacting to stuff I thought was mild (such as Belle spending the first half of the story in a dungeon) made me more aware of how what I write affects people. And it made me more careful with how I consider my own characters. 

Also, in Nephila Chapter 3, when I decided I needed to throw in all of Mary Margaret’s birthmom story, that was also when I realized that to make it pay off, we had to get Emma involved.  

[bunny-pros]

we only got hit with most of our “backstory” about our family tree before we got adopted from our birthmom yesterday(?) and it’s definitely a lot to take in for all of us collectively lol.. adoption trauma is a whole different level forreal

[kgstoryteller]

dark presence-today’s poem de jour-from “surrendering to transcendence” and my eulogy for MomAdele

abandonment’s despair

hides helplessness

painfully powerless

separation terrifies

laments longingly

cosmically wounded

silently screaming

nears nothingness

embraces emptiness

risks trusting

darkly hoping

silently sustained

cosmically connected

whispers wholeness

passionately present

achingly open

divinely delivered

image: The Sea The Art of Emptiness - Seagulls; Poetry and Photography of Kavi Jezzie Hockaday -

[samsterham]

I'm a birthmom, and I had the CHOICE to give my daughter up for adoption. Despite it being the best decision for her sake, it was still devastating & traumatic, & something I'm still working through over 7 years later.

I absolutely CANNOT FATHOM the pain & trauma of these desperate mothers at the border who are FORCED to give their babies away to our evil government. I know and love Hayley's adoptive parents & did by time I made my decision, I get to be part of her life; and I STILL cry over her every once in a while.

I am in TEARS for the desperate mothers & fathers who's babies are ripped from them by cold strangers, with no idea who is caring for them or if they'll ever see them again.

If you haven't yet grasped how evil & immortal and just FUCKED UP this this whole policy is, then I hope putting it in this perspective helps. HOW WOULD YOU FEEL LOSING YOUR CHILD AGAINST YOUR WILL & NEVER KNOWING WHAT HAPPENS TO THEM.

FUCKING THINK. HAVE SOME FUCKING EMPATHY.

I'll bet you as a citizen, or most of you can't explain to me how to get into this country legally. I'll bet you don't know where to start without doing a Google search. So how the FUCK do you expect desperate uneducated people to know??

Seeking asylum is lawful. Even crossing unlawfully is only a MISDEMEANOR, no worse than a traffic ticket. So if you think people should lose their kids for crossing illegally then you should lose yours for running a red light.

FUCKING. THINK.

THEY ARE HUMAN. IMAGINE YOURSELF IN THEIR PLACE.

THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP UNLESS YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND ABOUT THEIR HUMANITY.

[childofcoffee]

Knowing damn well that you're fully aware that I'm a birthmom, that I placed my child in a domestic infant adoption, maybe you should stop and think about that heavy fact before you open your mouth sometimes.

All I really wanted to do when I heard you say, "Now that I have her, I don't know what I'd do without her," was punch you square in your face. Did you think about who you were saying that to? What made you think that I would feel any modicum of sympathy for you being back at work and away from your daughter when you know that I've spent the last almost 9 years away from my daughter?

I don't know what your problem is, but you give off the air that you believe this job is beneath you and people needing things from you is an inconvenience. All your ego does is make starting and ending your lunch coverage a painfully miserable "silent changing of the guard".

Opening the interaction with "Is her picture a trigger for you?" doesn't exactly make for a comfortable conversation. And it really should've been left alone when I told you "yes" but you had to make it like you thought I have something against you and your child. (Spoiler: I do.) If you were going to take it personal, without taking a second to think about what I've been through with a different version of motherhood, opening your mouth should never have happened. But your whole world revolves around you, so it shouldn't have been a surprise to me.

My trauma with motherhood aside, looking at a picture of your baby every single day when I cover your lunch is painfully uncomfortable -for multiple reasons:

Your child is not as cute as you think they are - you're biased because you're mom.

Who in their right mind thinks a two month old baby needs to wear a lace dress? That thing probably cost more money that anyone should spend on clothes the child will outgrow in a month.

If I tell you that having a picture of your baby, or any baby for that matter, staring at me is a trigger as a birthmom, leave the fucking subject alone. Don't keep asking questions about it.

I recognize that it's *your* desk and I'm "only up here for an hour", but I have to come up here every day and be able to function so you can go take your lunch.

[symptoms-syndrome]

Sometimes I wanna just throw trauma memories into the void of the internet and be like "damn how fucked up is that LOL"

Anyway.

TW for abuse, suicide ment & a mention of animal death/harm. This is literally just traumadumping and is hella triggering. Proceed with caution, DDDNE, etc. Don't reblog, not sure why you would want to.

My first memory ever is of my birthmom screaming at me to stop crying, saying she was allergic to crying and if I kept doing it she'd die and it would be my fault.

All through growing up I was a messenger. "Tell your dad he's a bastard." "Tell your mother she's a bitch." Back and forth until I learned to just keep my mouth shut. Still, both parents treated me like a therapist or a marriage counselor.

Growing up I considered her the "good" parent. Eventually, when I was around 16? I stopped going to my birth dad's house and just lived with her.

She was a hoarder. I didn't realize how bad her house smelled until I returned there after not being there since I was kicked out a few years earlier. I was always yelled at and teased by my birthdad for smelling bad, but I sort of realized then it wasn't my fault. She just didn't clean. The stink of the house was stuck to all my clothes and my skin and my hair and my everything.

Related, but I never had clean clothes. I picked clothes literally out of a huge pile in my room. I had a laundry pile but I can't remember it ever being cleaned. I wasn't allowed in the basement but once I went down there when she wasn't home and I found clothes I had been looking for for years. The washing machine was full of dust.

She rarely made meals. Our kitchen was a disaster and our dishwasher never ran because it was just storage for moldy dishes. Sometimes she made box mac and cheese and somehow never got it right.

Whenever I'm startled (which, you know, PTSD makes that semi frequent) and I made a sound (like a little yelp) she would SCREAM. She got so mad. I'm not sure why. I tried very hard to not yelp, but it's a reflex. I can't help it when I'm caught off guard.

I wasn't allowed to take any pictures in the house. She thought someone would use pictures I took to track her down or something. She had three locks on all the doors to the outside, and two on all the doors inside, like to the bedroom or the bathroom.

When I tried to kill myself (the most recent time, when I was 18) I texted her. She was downstairs in the kitchen. I texted her that I overdosed and was scared and needed to go to a hospital. She replied with "hm." I went downstairs to beg her. She yelled at me that I was scaring my little sister. When my friend called 911 she screamed I could rot in the hospital for all she cared. She came to inpatient just to tell me I couldn't come back to her house. I had to crawl through the back window of her house like a burglar to get my ID and wallet and some clothes.

While I was homeless she put down my dog. I didn't get to say goodbye or anything.

Now she acts like we're best friends. I guess she sort of acted like we were best friends before, except when we weren't. It's very weird. I sort of wish I could lay all this out. One time I told her in therapy that I think she tries very hard but she just doesn't meet my needs. She got very upset about that.

[confessionsofbirthmothers]

[prehistoricsilverfish]

Unrelated, well, kind of related to the anti-abortion Zootopia comic, but I went to this abortion vs. adoption panel a couple of weeks ago. If you know me you know i’m a BIG proponent of adoption! So I was like, cool, there’s going to be an adoption panel on campus featuring a birthmother, an adoptive mother, and a post-abortive woman all talking about their experiences. I thought it would be really valuable to go. But the second I walked in the room, there were all these posters everywhere.... “LIFE IS PRECIOUS” “I REGRET MY ABORTION” “KILLING BABIES IS EVIL” and yknow stuff like that and I was like... whoa... I didn’t know this would be THAT kind of panel

I stuck around anyway and to listen to the birthmom & adoptive mom, and then I stuck around a little while to listen to the post-abortive woman. At first she started talking about how she had felt pressured by planned parenthood into having an abortion as her only option and never mentioned anything about adoption? which? idk, I can believe that, she and I are from different generations and planned parenthood was probably a lot different back then, idk maybe it still does that but I don’t know cause i’ve never been there. And then she was talking about her post-abortive trauma and how she kept it a secret from her husband because it was “shameful” and “sinful” and made her feel like “a bad Christian” and that’s kind of where I lost her.... also when she started going on her tirade about All Those Evil Leftists who want to abort the world’s babies to end poverty? yyyyyeaaaah that’s about when I walked out.

So yeah, obviously it’s terrible that this woman didn’t get the post-abortive counseling she needed. And I hope that post-abortive services are better in today’s world, and can keep getting better. For some people getting an abortion will be traumatizing. But for some people carrying a pregnancy to term can also be traumatizing! For some people giving up a baby to adoption can leave a horrible psychological scar! Any way you look at it, unwanted pregnancy is probably going to be traumatizing no matter what decision you make! And if you hate abortion, that’s fine! This woman had every right to hate abortion in my opinion. But talking about it like it’s the evilest of all evils, telling everyone that supporting people’s right to a safe abortion makes you “a bad Christian” (which makes me laugh because I guess everybody is Christian now?) is never something you should do!! Tell your story certainly, promote adoption as an option DEFINITELY, but don’t perpetuate the idea--or let your church guilt you into thinking--that abortions are “shameful and sinful” smh.

[mcfricken-gay]

you know how fucking hard everything is? im in foster care, im mentally ill, i miss my siblings, one of my brothers is in the army and another is a runaway who’s missing and prolly homeless, my sisters dont ever talk to me and school is so fucking stressful. like Fuck i know i dont have bills to pay or student loans to worry about but i have trauma leaning over my shoulders and im constantly fucking terrified of everything and everyone. Trust issues for days and all i wanna do is lay down ANYWHERE and throw a blanket over myself. Even in this 105 cali heat. everything’s really hard rn. Going through a breakup, dont know who my birthfather is, my birthmom’s husband is dying and they want me to donate part of my liver after they abused me for 15 years. I ran away from home two years ago after getting punched so hard on my ass that my whole fucking right buttcheak was purple. sometime’s im too scared to get up and get WATER because if i just GOT UP AND MADE SURE I WAS HYDRATED I’D GET SLAPPED OR YELLED AT OR THROWN DOWN THE HALLWAY. life’s really rough man. fuck everything right now, as a foster youth my chances of graduating highschool are 20%. 1/5. im on track to graduate and i’ve only got 9 months left but. fuck. i could just not and people would just shrug because im not expected to amount to much, if anything, anyways.

[princelucivaryaslana]

hngh

what’s it like having parents that care about you?

Like, lemme be clear; the only abuse my parents can be accused of is emotional negligence and, in the case of my mom, emotional abuse. I write in tags and stuff all the time about how both of them have the collective emotional intelligence of a 7-year-old with adhd, and I wish to god I was exaggerating. But that’s all, the only physical stuff I dealt with was the occasional spanking on my behind with a hand.

My dad has a reason for being the way he is, since his mom emotionally (and probably physically let’s be real she was a huge bitch) abused his dad and probably him, and he vowed never to let a woman treat him that way, even if it meant treating his wife the way his mother treated his dad.  As for my mom, as far as I can piece it, despite having six siblings she was at least her dad’s favorite, and she idolized her mom something fierce. I can only imagine being married to a man who didn’t love her and who emotionally (and probably physically lets be real he used to not even let her visit her family and made her quit a well-paying job because it wasn’t “a woman’s place”) just so she could have children like she wanted, only for her husband to have some accident that left him infertile and left her only the option to adopt two children who had already experienced trauma and to watch her husband emotionally (and definitely physically, my mom told me of instances where he’d broken their teeth and gave them bruises) abuse them as well as her and to exacerbate that abuse because it was the only way she could feel in control.....could do that to a person. 

Luckily for me and unfortunately for my aunt and birthmom, I was a pretty low-key kid to raise compared to them, what with my aunt exhibiting behaviors that could be attributed to borderline personality disorder and my birthmom having stereotypical “daddy issues” and running away at 16 to be with some guy, only to come back home covered in lice. They also had the misfortune of living with my dad when he was still young and hadn’t lost 80% of his lung capacity to pneumonia yet, so he hadn’t mellowed out and had a lot more energy to take out his own trauma on them.

I was fortunate in that 1) they had me my whole life so I didn’t have the chance to have sexual and physical trauma thrust upon be before age 5, 2) despite the fact that I was a grade A brat when I was little, all you had to do was scold me sternly enough to make my emotional ass cry and I’d immediately give in and come to you for comfort, and 3) despite having some.....deeply disturbing thoughts, I enthusiastically honored and feared authority (unless my mom told me to fold the laundry and sweep my room lmao) and drew and read when I wasn’t doing homework, so I wasn’t very much trouble at all compared to them. The worst I ever got was when homework started getting hard for me and my parents couldn’t understand why, so most of our conversations about that ended either with me in screaming arguments with my mom about grades because neither of us knew why I was doing so poorly (hint: it was undiagnosed inattentive ADHD that no one knew I had because I enjoyed quiet hobbies) and me being grounded V E R Y frequently, or else it ended with her bargaining with me to try to motivate me to do better (hint: it never worked because when I tried to force myself to do homework I always ended up crying because I couldn’t make myself do it and I had to rely on in-class work and tests to coast by). Since that was the worst of it and not me, say, sneaking a boy into my room so we could fuck, only for my dad to find out and chase him across the yard with his rifle to scare him away, they didn’t really have a whole lot of trouble with me. That’s not to say my dad wasn’t ridiculous still, I’m p sure he threatened to call the cops on me a couple times when I was like 19 despite the fact I wrote him a note telling him where i was going and what exact time I intended to be home by that day, although I can’t for the life of me remember where I was going. All I know is that my mom talked him out of it by telling him exactly how dumb he sounded and how the police would never take him seriously because he cosigned me onto the car insurance. 

Funny how they only ever had my back if it went against each other.

Whatever. Despite all that, and despite how well they looked after me physically (I went to the doctor annually and the dentist semiannually, any dental work I needed done got done, they fed me well enough I’ve been fat my whole life and Mom bought me so many clothes I only ever wore 1/3 of them regularly, and they even indulged me with books and, a little more rarely, art supplies), they were always...kinda ass...at taking care of me mentally and emotionally. Like I said, neither of them could figure out why I was doing so poorly in school after showing so much promise, and while they were really good at the emotional care that little kids need (my dad used to read to me and let me take naps on his belly and rode bikes with me, and they both used to take me on car rides and tell me about the world and their pasts), the older I got the less equipped they were to fulfill my emotional needs. Even when I finally decided I needed to talk to someone about the severe depression I developed after I broke up with a guy who enjoyed exacerbating the guilt I felt for breaking up with him and after the whole AidanReese fiasco, my mom had to go behind my dad’s back to take me to therapy because he doesn’t believe in psychology and thinks that all psychologists think Christians are delusional and sick in the head, and all I ever heard from my mom was that fact and the fact that she was super shitty that she had to pay $20 every week for me to go to therapy just to see no improvement on my “attitude” and grades, despite the fact that she refused to drive any farther than the town she grew up in and despite the fact that that “therapist” was a lawyer with a PsyD who did therapy on the side. Mom’s real good at making you feel bad about things you can’t control.

I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt by saying they’d never had the chance to develop that skill because they hadn’t ever had a “normal” kid before, because though they didn’t understand my passion for music and art and stories, they tried their best to support those parts of me, and I will never forget that no matter how much I hate them now. My dad even funded my brief time as a music performance major because he and I genuinely believed that I loved it enough and was good at it enough to make a life out of it, and he never once tried to convince me to do something else when I told him it was what I wanted. I’ll never forget that either, as much as I have to hate him. Also, my mom sorta understood, although she could never really accept, that I wasn’t exclusively into dudes and that I didn’t want to get married, and she was even the one who actually came to me about me being trans because she read an article in the paper about it and realized a lot of what the lady in the article talked about could be attributed to me, although I couldn’t confirm nor deny it to her because it’s impossible to explain nonbinary as an identity to 70-year-old women. She never spoke a word of it to my dad. That was genuinely the closest she ever got to acknowledging my personhood, and I will never forget that either, as much as I have to hate her.

The only thing I wish they’d been able to give me is the love I needed. I wish I didn’t find the idea of openly sharing myself with my parents as grotesquely absurd and hilariously nonsensical as I do. I wish that my mom could see me as a person with desires and needs, and not as a sentient malfunctional doll. I wish I didn’t have to move away from my parents to finally have boundaries with my mom because she couldn’t ever really respect that I am a person and not her toy. I wish my mom wouldn’t see every behavior and ideal of mine that wasn’t in line with hers as an intentional and direct slight and an indication that I hated her instead of just an expression of myself. I wish my dad wasn’t the type of person to subtly give me the silent treatment the year I chopped all my hair off, just to start speaking to me again when I realized the reason for the silence was because he thought I was indirectly telling the world I was gay and I reassured him that I wasn’t (it was a half-truth, after all, so I wasn’t technically lying). I wish that I didn’t have to actively lie about small details of my life because the simple idea of me not wanting children and not wanting to have sex with another human being isn’t one my mom accepts or my dad would understand, so living with primarily men as a “girl” would make them see me as the same as my aunt and birthmom, which is ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE to me. I wish I didn’t have to drop subtle hints to my dad that I’m still a Christian for fear of him finding out I’m not and removing me from his will.

I just...wish my parents loved me instead of either just doing their duty as a parent or seeing me as a toy, and I wish I loved them enough to not only see them as the gateways to the bee farm I intend to manage when they die and I get their house.

because i really need a hug from a parent figure that I care about and who cares about me right now