When you can't convince someone of the truth, you lose trust in everything else they say.
If I am to ask for help, I receive one of four responses
I am mocked for needing it
My request is ignored
You tell me it's too late, and that I should have asked for help before I knew I'd need it
You remind me as painfully as possible that all human suffering is my fault
You tell me you just want me to try my best, and that you'll always be there to help me
You prove to me that neither of those statements are true
I can't ask for help because I end up getting the opposite, but I've spent my entire life trying to catch up and can't do anything without help
If the promises of support and care you made to him had been honoured, xe would have felt comfortable taking about the things that led to my existence
If they had been able to trust you, I would not be stuck in the driver's seat of a body that hates me, at the helm of a life I am not capable of living
You forced it to mature before she was ready to, and as a result I am denied even the memories of an actual childhood
I, as me, am barely capable of anything, and the others I share a mind with spend more time worrying about me, and care more about me, than you show yourself to be capable of.
We, as a whole, are never going to recover from the way the world treated the first and the second before the rest of us knew we existed. And the people they were supposed to be able to turn to, for either help or just a place to rest, became the worst of it. Whenever she finds herself stuck, she either bangs her head against the wall until the blood mixes with the tears, or simply does nothing, and accepts that she will be berated for failing, and informed that not asking for help she knew she wouldn't get makes it all her fault
You may have noticed, in particularly stressful conversations, that our voice cannot find stability. This is her or I taking over because she gets belittled for every single attempt to find stability against the tide, and you unmoor her before anyone else is able to help
The number of things we can remember from our childhood sits in the low double digits. All but a precious few of these can be traced forwards to issues we still have. The majority involve asking for help, and being shut down. You may not remember that, or perhaps you don't realise what they meant, but I internalised the message that I couldn't talk about anything I was responsible for unless I wanted you to assume I didn't care.
In our third year of high school, I tried to talk to you about issues I was facing that several others had called out as being symptoms of burnout. In words that echo through my head to this day, you told us "You can't possibly be burnt out! You're too young for that, you must just be tired." That, then and there, was when we realised that you hadn't just failed to keep your promises, but you'd either never intended to, or had never been able to.
You claimed not to care about results, and to instead only care about effort. The only times you said anything even vaguely positive about me was when I spent no effort and got the best results. The times we put everything in and still did even just average, you saw us somewhere other than the top and assumed I was lying when we said we were doing our best. When effort and results managed to coincide, you made jokes about my father's results.
The reason it took her so long to realise I was still here is because the only reason I survived long enough for her to exist was by entirely shutting down my ability to feel. Anything. The only reason I recovered from that is because of the people she managed to find without me.
The only times we got help were too late to do anything, and even then only ever answered a fragment of the cause of the problem, never any assistance with the actual problem. I wanted to rip the flesh off my bones, you started a year-long process to help me deal with why that was my response to stress. The exams that brought it on passed by with us unable to answer more than half of each question.
Even if you see this, we know nothing will change.
It has been proven time and again that you care more about my echoes than us as we are now.
You said we were gifted, but never what that would mean for us.
We were thrown in the deepest part of the pool, with just as many resources as those who were allowed to stand
Everyone was given sticks and told to build a house, she was berated for not building a mansion
We spent the first fifteen years of our life merely rote learning anything and everything because that was the only thing we were rewarded for. We have spent every day since wondering why no one ever said we were supposed to be learning how to learn. We stumbled at a barrier everyone less "Talented" had already been taught how to cross, and given no more guidance than "What happened? You used to be so clever!"
When we tried to live up to your expectations, it nearly killed us.
When we tried to simply survive, you nearly killed us.
Between the disabilities, and the expectations of others, I never had a real childhood.
Between both that and the response we received for not living up to those expectations, I didn't get space to grow up, either
So we find ourself trapped, struggling to find our first breaths in a world that's choking on fumes, and yet you wonder why we don't come to you for help.
You have shown that we aren't getting any.
Turning this into the new pinned
There are several of us, this blog belongs to a kitten, @brier-not-briar, @unholy-fleshsteel-amalgam, @minds-have-stones, and @ilex-dreams are all also in this system
