When Abusive Parents Hurt You, They're Not 'doing It For Your Own Good' Or 'disciplining You', They're

D'awwww!!!

Naptime (㇏^. ᵥᵥ .^ノ)

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.

If you experienced trauma in childhood or had a rough childhood, dude listen to me. Offer yourself play. You were deprived of it.

Keep bubbles in the house, blow bubbles in the yard, blow them in your room, get a coloring book that doesn’t have to be an adult one with mandalas, watch cartoons, laugh at stupid things, dress up as a superhero for Halloween, wear a Santa hat on Christmas and big light up snowflake earrings, lay down on the floor, lay down in the grass, eat eggos for dinner sometimes. It’s not stupid. You’re not childish. You’re giving your inner child what they had taken from them. They deserve it.

💓

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.

Truth 💓

The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.

-James Baldwin

Studying Trees by Fabian Rensch

An old and homely grandmother accidentally summons a demon. She mistakes him for her gothic-phase teenage grandson and takes care of him. The demon decides to stay at his new home.

this korean butch lady is so cool she legally changed her name to lesvos, a variation of lesbos the birthplace of sappho. which is also the name of her lesbian bar, the first one ever established in south korea in 1996.

link to article here

If you’ve been thru a phase of your life feeling hopeless, depressed, broken, scared, suffering pain that you didn’t believe would ever stop, or having your whole will to go on eaten away by something devastating that happened to you, and you were alone and abandoned and ashamed of feeling this pain, I want you to know that it wasn’t okay.

Every human, especially young humans, can get overwhelmed and devastated and drown in their dark thoughts and fears, and nobody deserves to go thru that alone. If you were living close to other people, and they failed to notice, or ignored your state, or tried to make sure that you feel guilty for it, ashamed of it, deserving of it, or responsible for it, that wasn’t okay. That’s not what’s supposed to happen. Human society isn’t built on kicking someone when they’re down. Humans are not supposed to see someone suffering and deteriorating and then go ‘serves them right’ or ‘it’s their own fault’. That’s despicable.

You were not supposed to be left alone in your pain. You were supposed to get help and support. Even if you couldn’t imagine how that support and help would look like, if you couldn’t believe you deserved any, even if you felt so worthless and unimportant that taking someone’s time and energy would have felt horrible and selfish to you, you still deserved help and support during the worst period of your life.

Someone should have checked up on you. Someone should have made sure that you don’t spend all or most of your time alone, drowning in your own fears and pain, neglected. Someone should have offered you conversation and reassurances, even if they wouldn’t have fixed the underlying issue. You shouldn’t have been going thru it alone and unchecked. Someone should have taken measures to make sure you know you’re cared for, that people are going to put an active effort into changing your situation for the better. You should have been reminded, with actions and words, that you are still lovable, that you’re desired to be a part of society, that you’re not something to leave behind in a room until you either get your shit together or fail and be forgotten. You should have never feared for your relevance or your value while already suffering from everything else. You shouldn’t have been left to your own devices, with your social needs completely unfulfilled, with society turning their entire back on you.

That kind of situation makes you feel alone for a long, long time. That’s the kind of thing that makes you lose hope in people, and it should have never come to it. You should never have been in so much pain and alone in it. You never deserved that kind of cruel and contemptuous abandonment. You should never have been thru something that makes other people feel like a threat or a dead end. Your problems should never have felt so large that your place in the world your humanity and would be revoked over them.