Victims Of Abuse Will Be Like, This Person Has Now Made Me Cry Myself To Sleep About 30 Times, I Have

We never really talked about it but The Ugly Ducking that grew up to be a beautiful swan was still probably pretty fugly from a duck’s perspective

in another universe, i learn to be at peace with myself. there is no rage, no grief, and i love to my fullest.

thinking about how when you experience a lot of shame in your formative years (indirectly, directly, as abuse or just as an extant part of your environment) it becomes really difficult to be perceived by other people in general. the mere concept of someone watching me do anything, whether it's a totally normal activity or something unfamiliar of embarrassing, whether I'm working in an excel spreadsheet or being horny on main, it just makes my skin crawl and my brain turn to static because I cannot convince myself that it's okay to be seen and experienced. because to exist is to be ashamed and embarrassed of myself, whether I'm failing at something or not, because my instinctive reaction to anyone commenting on ANYTHING I'm doing is to crawl into a hole and die. it's such a bizarre and dehumanizing feeling to just not be able to exist without constantly thinking about how you are being Perceived. ceaseless watcher give me a god damn break.

friends asked me to draw a bee with a binky here you guys can have it too

Tracy Emin, Take what the fuck you like, 2001

i feel like i‘ve lost my spark and trying to get it back is fucking exhausting

Abusive parents constantly undermining your accomplishments until you no longer believe in yourself is such a specific and insane experience. You’re going thru life and you’re doing what you’re supposed to do, you work hard, you try to do your best and get acknowledged for at least something, and it’s already hard because your confidence is awful and you don’t feel yourself able of much, but then you do something for what everyone else is celebrated for! You win an award, or you finish school, or you win a contest, or you gain a title, or you learn to drive a car, you get thru a difficult course, you start creating something people like and admire, you get a job, you manage to get something done despite huge obstacles and low resources, you get thru exams even tho you’re all sick and stressed, you actually manage to do all the things your parents were telling you from the day one you wouldn’t be able to do, and then what happens?

Nothing. Your parents skim across it as if it was nothing. They refuse to pay attention to it at all, and act like it didn’t even happen. Or even worse, they immediately create a diversion, some family drama or start celebrating some dumb accomplishment of their own to make it all about them, and completely bury anything you’ve done. If you dare remind them that they acted like you could never do it, they act like you still didn’t do it, you just got lucky, it must have not been hard at all if even “you” have managed to get it done. You see your friends, other people you know, being congratulated, being thrown parties, given presents, patted on the back, being told they’ll go far and accomplish much, them getting it done is a Big Deal! But why not you? How come when you do it, it suddenly doesn’t count? How come when someone else finishes school or a difficult course they’re being regarded as smart and capable, but you’re still proclaimed dumb and incapable of anything? What it is about you that makes even your accomplishment invisible, unworthy of attention of praise, unable to reclaim you from the supposed dumbness and incapability you’re always accused of? What are you supposed to do then, to no longer be stupid and inadequate? And you chase bigger things, bigger accomplishments, maybe if you’re the best, the best of everyone, they’ll be forced to acknowledge you, they wont be able to pretend anymore that you’re nothing. But no matter what you do, it’s just snorted upon, and you’re brutally reminded how you’re nothing, how you wouldn’t even be able to live if your parents didn’t feed you. As if everyone else wasn’t fed by their parents. 

This pushes you either into insane perfectionism and feeling like nothing you do is ever good enough, or into helplessness, no longer wanting to even try anything because it’s painful, and scary to do so much and still not move from one spot. You end up believing what they tell you, that it’s impossible to redeem yourself, that nothing you could do could make you not dumb, not incapable, not unworthy of praise. 

It’s infuriating because the reason parents do this is nowhere near “trying to help you be better” or “because they know you the best and can tell you the truth about you”, most often it’s precisely to put you in the state of helplesness so you would stay dependent on them! They want you in the state of belief that there’s nothing you can do right, and that you’re only alive because of them, and cannot survive on your own, because then they can control you and blackmail you with your life on line! And there’s two more reasons and they’re disgusting, the first is jealousy, abusive parents are actively jealous if their child manages to succeed where they couldn’t! They will readily bury and humiliate a child just to feel better about their own capabilities, to convince themselves that they’re still better, superior, that their accomplishments count more than children’s ever will, they do it to reassure themselves that the child is dumb compared to them, when the reality is everything but. 

And the last reason is, to push the child so far into achievement it destroys the child, but then they can take credit. They can brag to everyone how their child’s incredible results are of parent’s making! They get to act like they’re amazing parents and that’s why their child is achieving high results! If they can, they will even make money and gain fame from a talented child, and if they can’t, then the talent is worthless and should be repressed and insulted for not bringing anything to them.

Your parents lied. Even they know your accomplishments aren’t nothing. If they were nothing, they would never be a threat to them. They would never have to talk them down. They would never try to take credit. They would never spend time convincing you that you’re dumb or inadequate. They would never have to convince you that you cannot live independently. They would never feel the need to out-shine you or to make it all about themselves. Their actions show they knew. They consciously tried to keep you down, not because you were down, but because you were going up. And they didn’t like that.

Even as I write this, I know it wont make it better, not until you get proper acknowledgment, credit, congratulations and praise from people you believe in, you wont be able to believe in yourself. We are social creatures who need social feedback to believe in ourselves. We should get it. And those who deny it to us do not want us good things.

Even if they say “they didn’t mean it”, they’re still responsible for what they did.

Even if they say “they don’t remember it”, they’re still responsible for what they did.

Even if they say “you’re delusional, I would never do that, you made it up”, they’re still responsible for what they did, and for trying to gaslight and invalidate your memories.

Even if they say “I didn’t do it, and even if I did, I would be right to do it”, they’re still guilty for what they did.

Even if they have excuses, they’re still responsible for what they did.

Even if they act like it would have been crazy to expect from them to act any different way, they’re still responsible for what they did to you.

Even if they come at you with an entire agenda of how you should perceive what they did so it actually “benefits you”, even if they insist they did it for your own good, they’re still responsible for what they did to you, and for lying about it.

Even if they cry about how much it pains them to be accused of hurting you, they’re still responsible for what they did to you.

Even if they cry about how much they love you and how they did it all out of love and never meant to hurt you, it’s still their responsibility for what they did to you.

Even if they act like what they did shouldn’t have hurt you and you’re the one responsible for taking damage, for being sensitive to being abused, it’s still their responsibility for what they did to you.

Even if they blame you for what they did to you, they’re still responsible for what they did.

Even if they insist someone else did it to them too, even if they insist they had it worse than you, even if they say it’s a cultural thing, they’re still responsible for what they did to you.

Even if it was long ago, and they act like you’re wrong for remembering such old wrong doing, it’s still something they did, and they’re still responsible for doing it.

They can lie and deny and accuse and blame and invalidate and gaslight. It doesn’t absolve them of responsibility for what they did. It doesn’t absolve them from guilt.

Nothing can absolve abusers from responsibility for their own actions. Nothing.