tolerateit6sabe

[tolerateit6sabe]

shaking six year old me by the shoulders YOU WERE RIGHT. YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT LOVE AND ABOUT FAIRNESS AND ABOUT SHARING IS CARING. YOU WERE RIGHT. THE ADULTS DON’T KNOW ANY MORE ABOUT TRUTH THAN YOU DO. KEEP BELIEVING IN THE FAIRIES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GARDEN. NOTHING IS “JUST THE WAY IT IS”. I AM SORRY THEY EVER CONVINCED YOU TO FEEL SHAME. YOU ARE REAL AND A PART OF THIS WORLD. YOU WERE RIGHT.

[tolerateit6sabe]

[tolerateit6sabe]

Reblog this if you're the eldest daughter who had to mature at a really young age, were always seen as the 'quiet and unproblematic' one, were the overachiever of the family, were the so-called 'perfect child', so now you're literally terrified of doing anything wrong because you don't want to ruin your reputation and whenever you try to tell anyone about your fears or insecurities they just brush it off like "lol why would you think that you're worrying for no reason"

[tolerateit6sabe]

On Being an Eldest Daughter

Surface Pressure, Encanto // Mother, Florence + The Machine // Class of 2013, Mitski // Breathe, In the Heights // Mama Who Bore Me, Spring Awakening // @queeerpride​ // Mirrorball, Taylor Swift // Mommy Issues: Unlearning Inherited Pain, Joan Tierney

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My father said he thinks my brother and I are “so close” because we did martial arts together from when I was ten to when I was almost fourteen. And well, he’s not wrong that much of our relationship was put on full display during that time. We did three types: karate, krav maga, and capoeira, and the only class we didnt have together was krav maga. After all, my brother used it as an opportunity to belittle me, to overpower me, to constantly talk about how boys were stronger than girls and basically that I would never catch up to him. We didn’t talk during class, I didn’t even think to ask him for help when I was struggling with a concept because I knew he wouldn’t help, and we didn’t practice together unless we were paired. When we were paired for sparring, he wouldn’t just go all out, he would be vicious. There’s a difference between sparring and that. I know this for certain because, when I was twelve, one of my instructors suggested I join the adult Krav Maga class because my skills had started compensating for my height. We tried it for a day and she paired me with my brother because he was close to my height and she thought he would show me the ropes. When practice started, he looked at me like he wished I was never born and attacked. I defended and tried to find the rhythm of sparring, but he was incredibly offensive and kept attacking me even when I told him to slow down or stop. It got bad enough that the instructor saw and stepped in, separating him from me and refusing to pair us up for the rest of the day. I wasn’t injured, but I got the message. He didn’t want me there. I was in the way, a nuisance that he didn’t want anything to do with. So when my instructor asked if I wanted to join, I said no because I felt threatened by my brother, and she agreed with me. Eventually, I joined the class, but only when another student my age joined with me so that we could spar together, and that instructor never put me with my brother again. When I told my father this, he laughed. Said that was hilarious. I retorted that it wasn’t for me, and he explained that it was the opposite of what he had wanted for us to get out of martial arts, so the irony was amusing. I get it, but I’m not laughing. I still remember that day so clearly, remember me calling for him to stop and seeing him throw another punch, realizing so viscerally that he would probably hurt me if I joined the adult class under the guise of sparring. I don’t even know what to do with this knowledge. I know that after that, my space bubble became about twice as big, I shied away from physical contact with anyone, and that when my trauma is bad and I see someone coming towards me or raising their hand to comfort me, I flinch and my first thought is always that they will hit me. I wish I knew for sure what that meant. I know it’s another form of emotional abuse but...I didn’t realize how badly that one had affected me until I mentioned it to my husband and saw his eyes go wide. I wish I could go back in time and throw my brother off of me, to yell at him that he doesn’t get to hurt me because he’s having a bad day, to tell him that I would remember this day for forever. I didn’t even think to mention the incident to my father. I wonder what I would have done if he had seriously hurt me that day.

[tolerateit6sabe]

What no one likes to talk about is the hours lost to trauma. The hours where nothing can be accomplished (or it will be so crappy you’ll have to redo it afterwards) and you just have to sit there steeping in your emotions and experiences and everything that has hurt you because it won’t go away goddammit and it hurts so badly but it is so much worse whenever you try to do anything else. How you can just sit there consumed by memories and emotions and revelations and zone out for days or weeks or months. I lost months of time to processing an entire lifetime of trauma, but whenever I realize something else that was fucked up, I have to go through it all over again and relive all my anger and hurt and all the helplessness I feel now thinking about the small child I wish I could go back in time and protect now because there was nothing they could do.

[tolerateit6sabe]

Hhhhhhhhh I hate turning people down, but...poly or not, it’s hard to find someone I want to add to my relationship. There’s only been one I’ve added and I still miss him, but...I’m happy with what I have and who I have. Finding someone to add to that dynamic is tricky. Still wish I could just make everyone happy though.

[tolerateit6sabe]

Love my future mil asking my fiance when the two of us are going to find “real boyfriends” the moment I’m out of earshot. As if we haven’t been engaged for over two years and stay up late discussing kids and are each planning on working multiple jobs during college to become financially independent as soon as possible. Like. This is why you know nothing about either of us, ma’am.

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I'm going to have so many family rants over the next few days because I visited them for a week with my husband recently and Wooooooooooooow. Like, don't get me wrong, it was better than I thought it would be and they have definitely gotten better and I got a few apologies and it was an overall good time. But holy shit are there issues and I just get caught on those because they've hurt me for so many years and I can't overlook this sort of thing just because we share blood. I can't get them all out at once, but if that's something that my few watchers don't have the emotional space for, I'd advise muting me for about a week. Take care of yourselves, lovelies!

[tolerateit6sabe]

I'm so fucking done. So my dad gave me a super old camera for my film class (no clue where he found it) and I found that processing the film was almost impossible but it was a great camera and my family could find ways to process the film. Both my parents like photography, so I carefully saved the camera and brought it back to them. I explained that photography wasn't for me and I wanted them to have a good time, making sure to bring extra film for them. So I come back home and my dad asks for the instruction manual. I was super careful to keep it all these years, but things have been vanishing around the house (including things that were in plain sight) so I wasn't super surprised when I couldn't find it anywhere. I told my dad and explained the situation (terrified but reminding myself not to assume the worst and that I had done my best) and asked for the model so that I could find instructions online. So he gets pissed, basically calls me irresponsible, and tells me that the camera was useless now. I felt like shit all day and was beating myself up while simultaneously trying to remind myself that I had done my best, and then I get a text from my mom. She's saying how much my father loves the camera and how much fun he's been having with it. I ask if he figured it out okay without the manual and she laughs it off, saying of course he figured it out because he's just that smart. Not that he fucking bothered to tell me. Because why tell the person who saved something for you for over a year that their present is making you happy and is in fact perfectly fine without an instruction manual? But no, he just had to manipulate me and make me feel like I have to be perfect in every way or everything I do is for nothing and I'm just the family failure. Thanks, I certainly learned quite the lesson from this one.

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Mother of fuck I can feel myself spiraling and I'm just so tired I just visited my family for the first time in two years and it went better than I thought it would but I can see that some things just won't change because they've decided that they're the way they are and I wish I was worth enough that they would change to not hurt me because this isn't me liking it better one way this is them abusing me and me asking them to stop abusing me and they still act like my boundaries mean I don't love them and they trample all over them and act like it means I love them when I'm too scared to tell them off when all it means is that I'm still traumatized and even though I'm away now my brain keeps getting mixed up and genuinely thinking I'm back in my house and it always takes me a minute or two to snap out of it and I'm so fucking scared this never happened before and it's getting better the longer I'm away but it wasn't even this bad during my ptsd attacks and I can't see a therapist for another month and I'm so fucking exhausted because I have so many responsibilities and I feel like I'm just broken and made of shattered edges and goddammit I'm so scared that when I finally shatter completely I'll let everyone down and hurt everyone around me like I was hurt and that's the one thing I never want to do and I need to be strong and I'm terrified that I might not be strong enough to be what everyone needs from me.

[tolerateit6sabe]

Nothing quite like seeing your abuser on Twitter for something completely harmless and not directed at you, and all of your productivity and plans for the day completely shutting down. Thanks, brain.

[tolerateit6sabe]

People who bully their sibling at home and then act like their hero against bullies outside of the house

Like, asshole, you’re doing the exact same thing as them! 

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Sorry to ramble, but ya know something I never really see talked about? Witnessing siblings get abused, especially if you are the older sibling. Like, the immense pit of guilt that causes? It's suffocating. You look back and think, "hey! I'm the big sister/brother I'm supposed to help protect him! I am just a shitty person for letting it happen, I'm just as bad as my parents..." And that just sticks with you. Like yeah I was like 10/12 but I should've stood up to them and helped him out, and that's such an unhealthy and unreasonable thing to ask of yourself but you feel bad anyway. And then it just influences you as a person, like all I do is fly under the radar and distance myself from people that draw attention. I've seen one study on witnessing siblings get abused and it came up with huge results in the effect it has, so I really can't understand why it isn't talked about more. Just seems weird considering that I'm sure it happens a lot.

[tolerateit6sabe]

You were the scapegoat role in your dysfunctional family not because you are “weak” or “flawed” or “crazy” but actually the opposite: because you call attention to the very real dysfunction in the family, you think for yourself and refuse to play along with the toxic family narrative of DENIAL. Painting you as the “crazy” one serves their version of reality that there’s nothing wrong with them, you’re the problem. Abusers are masters at deflecting blame. You can begin to deconstruct the emotional abuse and gaslighting that has characterized your “relationships” with your family. Gaslighting is rewriting of events to make you question your perception of reality and trust the abuser so they can keep abusing you and you’ll keep taking it. “It wasn’t that bad”, “That’s not how I remember it”, “There’s no way that could’ve happened”, “Why are you just bringing this up now?” All of these are disgusting ways to respond to a person in pain. But this is all you’ll get from narcissists, and why confronting them won’t lead to resolution (which they don’t want anyway because they feed off of chaos..) but them doubling down on how they’re right and you’re wrong. I knew there would be backlash the final time I confronted my mother but did it anyway because I knew the bridge had to be burned. I knew she had to dig her own grave for me to finally see how under all the mind games, she’s just a pathetic, mean person. I had to see how she responds when I try to set boundaries or have god forbid some backbone. A narcissist will shame you for being too sensitive in one breath calling you weak, then respond with rage if you try to assert yourself. The sick dynamic becomes exposed: they were causing you pain to feed off that pain, then mocking you for feeling that pain created even more pain for them to feed off. And how could this not traumatize someone? Especially a child being treated like this by their mother? Trauma bonding is how I bonded with my mother when she would switch between moments of tenderness and cruelty. This makes a child attached to their abuser, feeling like they just have to be good enough and they’ll get another moment of love, some day. What a heartbreaking way for a child to think of their parent. Narcissists teach children that love is highly conditional. There is not a secure attachment. There is not trust. There is fear, guilt, brain fog, confusion, tension.

Emotional abuse can cause chronic guilt and shame that follow you wherever you go: into every job, every relationship, no matter where you live or who you’re with or what you do. No matter how hard you try to push it out of your mind, the trauma you suffered in your development (at the hands of your caretakers that you trusted) has left scars. You’ve become so accustomed to life being heavy you don’t even realize you’re carrying this heavy burden. It’s said that emotional abuse leaves invisible scars, but they become very visible to anyone who takes any time or effort to get to know you. If someone looks hard or long enough, they’ll see the fear in your eyes, the lack of trust, the flinching, the withdrawing, the tip toeing, the constant apologizing... Don’t underestimate the fatigue and self neglect from years (especially your developmental years) of walking on eggshells... Don’t underestimate the emotional toll it takes to mask who you are to manage the moods of your abusers, to abandon your true self and your needs to avoid abuse. Emotional abuse is traumatizing. And what does it take to trigger memories of that trauma? Any interaction with other human beings. Having conversations is exhausting when you’re constantly scanning for changes in tone, facial expressions, body languages to frantically avoid abuse. You go into flashbacks mid-conversation/interaction without even realizing what’s happening. You don’t realize you’re responding to the flashback in your mind, not what’s happening in the present moment. A mind and heart fractured by emotional abuse takes time, mindfulness and lots of patience to ground in the present moment. It’s no wonder my family members numb their emotions with substances, it’s a lot less work than working through them. I’ve realized a huge key in my recovery from emotional abuse is learning to accept emotions themselves and not shame myself for having them. If you’re taught to be ashamed of emotions, well you’re going to be full of shame. Emotions are not good or bad in and of themselves. They just are. This sounds so simple but is so powerful the more you embrace it. Emotional abuse after all is using emotions to abuse you.

As a child, I was trained to hide my emotional needs to serve my narcissistic mother and not bother my cold, distant father. Not only could I not acknowledge my needs/how much pain I was in, I was actually trained to comfort and give advice to my mother who would come to her children in tears, burdening us with her personal, adult problems. Seeing your mother routinely in this state is distressing enough, to then have to abandon my own needs when I was the child and instead mother my own mother is (needless to say) sick. My mother would often express how displeased she was with “this family”, constantly laying the burden on us to make her feel better. Now I understand that was called getting supply. We were expected to give endless validation and support to her, but not expect any from her. “Her problems were always worse”, as if children are trying to win some kind of suffering olympics by having basic emotional needs. She responded to my basic emotional needs for comfort with resentment, contempt and ridicule. A narcissistic mother doesn’t give comfort, she expects her children to comfort her.

She baited and provoked me ruthlessly and if I tried to get away to not feed her sick dysfunction, she found ways to control me. She would bait and provoke me to get a reaction and then shame me for the reaction. Such is the game with a narcissist: you can’t win. They feel superior by making you feel inferior. Your shame is their supply. My brother mirrored my mother’s treatment of me and bullied me mercilessly, making a game out of making me cry. I still remember the creepy smile on his face as my face crumbled, I remember my sister joining the “game”, the panic of being ganged up on. I learned to hide my crying as best I could, at times physically running away, or hiding in my room. I learned no one cared when I cried, and it was then I started grieving my family. I knew in my heart that this cruelty was wrong, as strong as the blame games were to make me feel like something was wrong with me... I still thought, Even if I am sensitive, why is it so hard to be nice? I’m nice, why can’t they be? Because they were cruel but still occasionally said “I love you”... I ended up getting in sexually and emotionally abusive relationships because, like many survivors of childhood abuse, I thought abuse was love. My intuition would tell me, something’s wrong with this person, and I would still feel a strange pull to the familiar feeling of pain. This would have continued had I not learned the things I’m writing about right now.

All abuse starts as emotional abuse. All abuse has an element of emotional abuse. Every family member who emotionally abused me also physically abused me. When I find myself believing the gaslighting even for a moment, I remember how even society acknowledges when they physically abused me they showed the lack of respect they had for me, how low they regarded me. There were no apologies. I had to keep living under the same roof as these monsters knowing they could physically and emotionally hurt me at any time they felt like it and I could not stop them. No wonder I disassociated to survive. It’s not just that I didn’t feel safe: I wasn’t safe. Shame and guilt are the building blocks of an inferiority complex, the needed foundation for abuse. Deconstruct the inferiority complex by deconstructing your chronic shame and guilt. It’s all connected. Use your voice. Don’t suffer in silence. You didn’t deserve any of it. It was never your fault or a reflection of you.

[tolerateit6sabe]

Abusers will really have you thinking, “Yeah they’ve shown me beyond a shadow of a doubt that they don’t give a single fuck about me, aren’t honest with me and consistently bring me harm... but remember that one time they were nice to me 10 years ago?”

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Can people please validate the abuse some people endure in friendships? Legitimate abuse, especially emotional. And can people validate the abuse in relationships with siblings as well? Can we just validate every single form and source of abuse ever and get its victims help?? I’m sick of it being limited to certain people, it can happen from anyone, to anyone.