If You’ve Been Thru A Phase Of Your Life Feeling Hopeless, Depressed, Broken, Scared, Suffering Pain

Happiness Will Come To You.

If you really like someone’s art/writing/etc, even if you’re scared to talk to them, tell them. I have really bad anxiety myself, and I’m usually scared to talk to people I like, even online. But when I have actually worked up the nerve to tell someone I like their work, literally every time the person has been nice, and even thankful. Why? Because nothing feels better than to know that someone loves something you created, or that what you made has helped them through a rough time. By telling them what they’ve done for you, you do something for them too!

There’s this really specific experience in growing up with abusive parents, because they act so emotionally immature at all times. And when you’re a kid, it just feels normal, right? You’re emotionally immature, they’re immature, you’re on the same level, you don’t know any better, you think that’s how humans are. 

But then later, you actually develop some empathy, awareness of other people’s feelings and their inner worlds and thoughts and situations, and you outgrow your parent’s maturity. And at that point you’re just so used to tolerating their shit you don’t even think twice, you’re the adult now, you let them have their way, you forgive and forget, clean their messes, take care of their feelings and make it all okay for them.

But then at one point, you realize you have adults acting like literal spoiled children, when you’ve outgrown this a while ago, and you ask yourself, when they gonna grow? When they gonna develop some self awareness? And then you go and assume they just never had a mature presence in their life so they had no way to learn (which isn’t true because then how did you learn it?), and you go and try to teach them by showing them a good example. You become extra nice, patient, explain things to them, cater to their inner worlds, try to explain to them that there’s people other than them on this world, who have feelings and hearts and deep inner world and this is significant and needs to be respected. But all they ever respond with is “yes I am those people now cater to me”. 

It is impossible to teach abusive parents by showing them a good example. They will insist you do it over and over again, and then exploit your kindness to the max. Literally the kinder you get, the worse they get. They soon expect you to run after their every need, to jump at their every whim, and in return they insult you for a good measure, call you worthless and lazy, then they go to sleep without a care in the world. 

Do not do this. They’re not growing up because they benefit so strongly from acting like a kid. Once all of their immaturity privileges and tolerations are suspended, and they’re forced to act like a proper human being in order to keep gettinng what they want, suddenly they’ll know exactly how to do it. 

Your parents are not immature, they’re abusive. They’re not childish, they’re manipulative. They’re not silly, they’re self obsessed, selfish and forceful. You gave them enough benefit of the doubt, you do not have to wait all your life for them to grow up. Their due for that was long time ago and they have no business expecting you to be their parent.

Watching the “you will excel at what you measure” trap devour basic moral practice in real time is fascinating in a terrible kind of way

Every single time abuse victims gather the courage to speak about their abuse, they’re not doing something simple and easy for them. They’re going against everything they’ve been conditioned and groomed into.

Every abused person has been forced by their abuser into some form of secrecy; maybe they promised, or they swore they wouldn’t tell, or maybe they were intimidated, threatened into silence, or the worst one, blamed and forced to acknowledge the abuse is their fault, making it so much more terrifying to tell someone, because telling then becomes an admission of their own guilt. And abuse universally makes victims feel ashamed. Because to admit they were powerless and cornered and dehumanized, it risks so much ostracizing and judging by others who do not want to acknowledge it’s possible to be in such a situation and to be able to do nothing about it. People will prefer to turn their back to victims, than to accept it can happen to anyone, even them, and that nothing they do could possibly prevent it.

Sometimes, the abuse will be too horrible to talk about, or to even think about. Sometimes, mere thoughts of it force a person into a panic attack, or a fight-or-flight mode. Some trauma can make us black out. Sometimes just thinking about it is unbearable and makes us wish we weren’t alive for it.

To go against all of that, and to trust someone to listen, acknowledge it, take us seriously, and sides with us, it’s a huge risk. We risk every single retribution from the abuser, we risk our own emotional and mental state, we risk venturing into the unknown territory of having someone else know our most painful, shameful and vulnerable moments, it’s a risk not everyone can make.

For a person to side against us, after we’ve done all this work in order to be able to speak, is devastating. For someone to call us liars, to accuse us of ulterior motives, of making it up to hurt the abuser, of wanting attention, of burdening them with this, it’s almost unbearable punishment for speaking out. Even worse, siding with abuser and agreeing they had the right to do this, or that it is our fault, it’s the worst possible scenario. It inflicts incredible damage on our lives. Makes it impossible to speak out again. It’s often a risk of speaking out in horrible desperation, only to be silenced forever.

And sometimes, it doesn’t even matter if we want to speak out, because there’s nobody who could help us. Our friends, acquaintances, peers, authorities, we can tell they will do nothing even if they knew. We can tell they will easily side with the abusers, because we heard them supporting the same rhetoric abusers use to justify themselves. Even if they felt sorry for us, we can tell they’re not going to do anything to help. For some, the knowledge of the abuse would only be a burden we don’t want to inflict.

You are not at fault for staying silent. You are not responsible or guilty of a sin if you never told anyone. You are not responsible for the abuser’s actions. You are not responsible for anything. Chances to speak out were either denied or ridiculously risky and/or hopeless to grant you rescue. Even if you stayed silent because your abuser lied and threatened you, you had no way to know for sure. You couldn’t have risked what little safety you had for the possibility of being hurt even worse. You’ve walked with this on your shoulders for so long, you should get to put it down without risking a thing.

💓

The older you get the more you will realize that your friends are people who have made mistakes and bad decisions and even just fucked up and hurt people.

And obviously your boundaries with your friends are completely up to you but you do need to recognize that if you cut off everyone who has done something wrong, you’re going to end up with no friends (and you yourself will have also fucked up in your life, and not lived up to those impossible standards either).

I’ve found it’s much more constructive to learn how to say “hey dude, that was massively fucked up of you,” because most people are really willing to say “yeah, it was, I need to work on it/not do it again/apologize and make things right” ESPECIALLY if they are hearing it from you as their friend.

Reblog if you genuinely support asexuals

It terrifies me that there’s so much raging passion in the lgbt+ community that insist on marginalizing asexuals and implying that asexuals don’t deserve to have safe spaces. There’s still so much acephobia so I just wanna know which blogs are genuinely supportive and a safe space for asexuals

It is incredibly important to train yourself to have your first instinct be to look something up.

Don't know how to do something? Look it up.

See a piece of news mentioned on social media? Look it up.

Not sure if something is making it to the broader public consciousness, either because you don't see it much or you see people saying nobody is talking about it? Look it up.

Don't know what a word means? Look it up.

It will make you a better reader and a better writer, but it will also just make you more equipped to cope with the world.

So often, I see people talking about something as though it is the first time anyone has ever acknowledged it, when I've been reading reports about it on the news for months or years. Or I see someone totally misinterpreting an argument because they clearly don't know what a word means--or, on the other hand, making an argument that doesn't make sense because they aren't using words the right way.

Look things up! Check the news (the real news, not random people on social media)! Do your research! You (and the world) will be better for it.

I hope the next months bring you the courage to do something you have been dreading to do, that you recover a bit, that you can feel less pain and more love, that you can find some solutions to your problems, and find new opportunities to grow and live a better life according to your own needs and desires. I hope you develop beautiful friendships and that the relationships you already have keep improving. I hope you get to try new things you have dreamed of. I hope you feel more safe and secure. I hope you feel more confident in your own abilities. I have hope. I will try. Please have hope. Please try.