#but i guess it means theyre just getting a taste of the hopelessness HE felt

[qoldenskies]

Something so sick and twisted about the way you turned Donnie’s bone-deep need for attention into something that only brings him terror. He hated being forgotten, it’s how that whole mess started, but by the end it was the only way he thought he could ever be free asdfghjkl and when he can’t even stand S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N or his dad looking at him? Just the mere act of being stared at being enough to make him shiver? Blowing up forever and ever

all of this, every sacrifice he made over the course of those three months, the accumulative weeks he spent rotting his life away working even before the curse, it was because he felt it was the only acceptable stipulation for him to receive love. it was such an easy thing to topple over because his own struggles with self-worth never made praise and attention permanent in his eyes, over and over again he felt like he had to keep earning it, to outdo himself, and then suddenly his struggles became the center of mockery, just another reason to call him delusional for ever expecting anything, especially anything of himself. so when this happens its so much easier for him to reframe his perspective of himself instead of realizing he's just being treated wrong, because in his eyes consistent failure would make this an inevitability. even before this he's already hid his vulnerability away behind what he had to give in order to protect himself, like his whole life he's done nothing but brace for a blow

and in the end the thing that frees him from the curse is that feeling that he deserves it, sunk all the way down to the marrow of his bones, and it's powerful enough for him to tear away from a piece of his soul that they don't even know about yet. this is before they learn about ninpo at all, and the first time any of them use it here is when donnie literally destroys his :(

he built his identity around exchange and now he's convinced there's nothing left to give that will satisfy them, and that he's never been worthy of receiving even from the beginning. that's something that's going to be so hard to undo, if it can be done at all

[abs0luteb4stard]

Year's Edge. Year: 20

I wish I could focus. My head is scattered at the years end.

It's a standing at the edge of a precipice. Another year went by with little accompliment. For me it's not just that. It's the arrested development of myself. Often I feel my life just carries on but I don't carry with it. I'm another year older every year, but I'm frozen, I'm not moving forward.

And I'm not. Not really. I have nothing to show for it. All the dreams I had in my pre-teen years were stomped out before I had any ambition or determination to do any of them. Some say don't blame the past, move on, success is the greatest revenge. But how?

It still crosses my mind often enough. The names and faces, the pushing my books out of my hands between every class period, spitting on me, calling me every name that can be called. Making fun of my clothes or how I look, or my name. Choking me, hitting me, making up rumors about me to get more people to avoid me or bother me. Sexually bothering me, harrassing me. Watching friends abandon me, betray me, make fun of me too.

This wasn't when the mood struck them or when they saw me, these bullies were in almost all my classes, when they weren't in my class their buddies were. Always threatening me hurting me all day, every day, for 2 years in middle school, then it continued but with a more casual frequency as the more vocal and focused 'leader' of them went to another high school than I did. Although it wasn't a hierarchy like so many fictional stories portray, it was a loose but interconnected group that somehow took to finding me their scapegoat.

If I fight I get into trouble. Of I don't I get bullied. If I'm provoked nobody cares, they only care when I retaliate. Should I have fought a group of them? Gotten beaten up, bloodied of maybe killed? All it would take is one too many of them or someone to hit me in the temple hard enough or the back of the neck and paralyze me. They could say I started it. A thousand things could happen.

I could have easily gone there and shot a few of these assholes with a big fucking grin on my face. I knew where my dad's gun was. But what then? Go to prison? Or a death penalty? That wasn't going to help me either.

So now what? Two thirds of a lifetime later I'm still trapped in my head. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Whatever it is. It doesn't change that this is where I am. Call it PTSD or lactose intolerance. The name and description doesn't mean anything to me. It's the broken spirit. It's that I can't move on even now when it's so far in the rear view mirror, but it doesn't matter because it's effect is still embedded in me, like a deer tick gives you Lyme disease even if the tick is removed, your liver is still going to be fucked from it.

So now, I look up the first bully, the one who got the ball rolling. Probably not good thing to do emotionally, but I did it. He's got a wife and kid and house and is a regular person. He's balding, so at least there's that. He got a picture from some wedding where he's drinking a beer but he's got a nasty looking booger in his nostril.

How nice for him. The others aren't too different, some balding, some are losers druggie assholes, some are happy go lucky successes and sell outs.

But they look pretty damn well off socially, they're in their own places with mortgages and all that. I don't know if they're happy from pictures. Even the most depressed person on earth is happier than usual from time to time.

Honestly I don't care. I hope in my heart that theyre suffering, that they have some horrendous medical issues, that theyre relationship is on the rocks, that their loved ones are dying, that their kid died from a dog mauling. I hope to the depths of my soul that they are suffering in some horrendous way. They don't have to suffer as much or more than me, but I hope they are. I hope they are breaking inside like I did. I hope they're contemplating suicide like I have many times over, everyday coming home from school hopeless and defeated by their cruelty. Too worn out to care about my grades or my education or my future.

I'll always hate them and wish them unending tortures. Whether I ever find any peace in myself or not.

I tried forgiveness. I've said and even prayed for it when such a thing even used to cross my mind, I was never a very religious person, but even as much as my family was, I tried even that in my desperation to get over their cruelty.

What else is there to do in desperate existential crisis, a war that both inside and outside of them? Coming home after school, After My dad left to go to the store, My fingers interlocked so tight I would leave nail marks on the backs of my hands, tears uncontrollably coming out of me, asking why "would God give Moses the power to split the red sea, or send word to Noah that he should build a boat, but not rescue me from this thing that would effectively end my dreams. Because I didn't care anymore. And I still can't find a reason to care all this time later. I have very little to care about in regards to myself.

It cut me down early enough in my life that after food never tasted the same, that I'm forever marred in my sensations of the world. Faith broken, not just in some silly God that I only half believed in anyway, but broken that anyone would ever do anything when there was injustice being visited on me. Countless principal visits, both when I retaliated and when I needed help, needed this bullying to stop, needed to be shown that the ones who hurt you are punished, but they weren't.

So here I am. In my insomnia I traveled into this painful introspective territory that I usually pretend to ignore all year until the last week of December.

Sadly it always brings me back to the movie quote from "Scent of a Woman" (1992), probably because I saw that movie for the first time all the way through about when I left community college because of my social anxiety/phobia took it's toll and pushed me out of school.

"I've been around, ya know? There was a time I could see. And I have seen. Boys like these, younger than these. Their arms torn out, their legs ripped off. But there is nothing like the sight of an amputated spirit. There's no prostetic for that. You think you're merely sending this splendid foot solder back home to Oregon with tail between his legs, but I say you are executing his SOUL!"

- Lt. Col. Frank Slade (Al Pacino)

Because it was how I felt in school, how I felt ever since. I feel all the spirit I had until tha point in my life was gone. Growing up I had birthday parties with friends, i had people come over, I was always a deeply shy little kid, but my mom got the whole thing together, and when I was around a few people I felt comfortable with I was able to come out of that shell a little, sometimes at regular hangout with 1 or 2 friends I was talkative and had as much fun as my bad little knee pains would let me have.

Now I look at the pictures of myself from grade school or the ones on the wall when I was 5 and I see a cute little boy, who's smile came naturally, who had some kind of answer for "What do you want to be when you grow up?" When it was asked.

Now if you were to ask me I'd have a hard time telling you anything. If it was particularly bad day I could say "dead".

But even then in all my self doubt, insecurity, anxiety, and hopelessness I prefer being alive to dead.

I mean being is better than not being. At least there are a few good days in with the bad ones. My parents love me, And I've made a few friends that make things enjoyable and even lovely to have.

But I just can't get free of those traumatic experiences, and I still feel even with all the good parts of my life that made me happy, and sometimes feeling content, there are parts that are still war ravaged and are like salted earth where nothing can grow ever again. That my spirit is amputated as the movie quote says. Because I feel truly dead inside in that way. I have little hope for the future.

How does anyone escape that kind of prison by that kind of prolonged thing happening to them? I guess you don't or you do. There's no middle ground, because I've tried the "processes" of one day at a time and all that buzzword bullshit. So that's all there is to it I guess.