Hiiiii
I’ve started writing a few times, got distracted and never finished those posts, so who knows those might come back around some day, but I’m gunna start fresh because none of those felt along the lines of how I’m feeling today.
In case you haven’t figured it out my mood changes a LOT. Day to day, hour to hour. I’m all over the place. Much much less so now than say, a year ago. Whats changed? Why, I’m so glad you asked! I’m not getting abused any more.
Simple as that. Well, maybe not simple. This shit is fucking hard to deal with. Imagine trying to navigate around a house that you have never been in but all the lights are off, and you have no way of seeing. Oh, and no like seeing in the dark bullshit here. Idk if you’re superman or a cat, that doesn’t apply here. (Someone’s salty today eh?). A few points I want to touch on, and I know I’ve talked about this a lot, surprisingly its kindof a big deal in my life right now, so I”m just going to keep on talking about it. I want to say a couple things that have come up via others throughout the last year.
1. The fact that the abusers are family does not mean you deserve to be abused. If it was anyone else treating you like this would you let them keep doing it? Would you expect your friends to tell you to suck it up and deal with it? No? Then why is it okay for someone to abuse you just because they share your blood? Its not. That simple. No one should be in your life if they abuse you, treat you terribly, and make you feel awful. So stop with the ‘but they’re your family’ crap, or ‘maybe they’ll come around one day’ stuff. Yes, it sucks, and it was extra hard to tell them to stop, and gtfo. Yes, it feels horrible that the people who are supposed to be the most supportive and loving weren’t in my life. But please stop saying comments about how important family is, or blood relations are. How they might come around cuz frankly it feels shitty, and feels invalidating and makes me get right back onto that ‘this is my fault for being a shitty daughter’ train.
2. Emotional abuse is a thing. Period. It exists, just the same as physical and sexual abuse. Its not a contest one isn’t better than the other, one isn’t easier, one isn’t more valid. Abuse is abuse. If you’re not really sure what emotional abuse is there are tons of websites that go into more detail. Tons of warning signs. Here are some red flags: humiliation, gaslighting, invalidation, hurtful comments made as jokes, withholding affection/sex/money as punishment, guilt, feeling emotionally responsible for abuser. Honestly the list could fill pages, and when you read them its so easy to say well humiliation looks like this, so what I went through doesn’t count, plus Its probably just me being too sensitive. My lovely friend, stop blaming yourself.
I’m just going to go through a recent realization along the lines of humiliation and power shit. I say recent because I had forgotten about it until the other day. Ok, so when I would sit at the kitchen table, and my mother would stand behind me or you know, be like doing whatever kitcheny things she was doing and moving around, I would tense up, feel very uncomfortable, and a bit scared. Because quite frequently my mom would walk by me and do something small and ‘playful’ like pinch me, tickle me, or hit me on the head with something, or use the back of her hand. Not hard, but I really didn’t like it. I’ve always been really sensitive, so just that unannounced startling hit would make me really uncomfrotable, I didn’t like it. I asked her to stop several times. But she would say its just a joke, or get mad that I didn’t find it funny, or brush it off. But I really hated it. I felt kind of violated, and disturbed when she did it. My trusty therapist and I were talking about it the other day, and we were talking about how it was like…a power move. Because it would often happen with other people around when I felt like I couldn’t say something. She, without knowing it more likely, was kindof proving she could do what she wanted, showing she had the power and the upper hand. I really doubt she knew this was the case, she probably had some other thing in mind, but it was something more. Just the fact that I was saying I didn’t like it and she kept going is a red flag. It happened for years and years.
My point is, quite often humiliation or any of the tons of signs of abuse have many faces. It might be different than it seems, and often it takes an outside perspective to see what is really happening. Talk to your best friends, chances they are they might see whats going on, or can help guide you to a more neutral, less guilt ridden perspective.
If you have any questions or even resources about any of this please do share them in the comments. Its a really hard thing to get through alone. So know I’m here if you ever need.
Thats all for now, thank you for listening, I really appreciate it. Thanks for reading, coming back, sharing with your friends, being you. If you wanna help me out there are tons of ways.
-be your amazing strong self and keep fighing to heal
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