thoughts/my life

Trigger Warning! this blog discusses trauma and abuse in detail. verbal abuse, emotional abuse, abusive parents, sexual abuse, ptsd, depression, anxiety, mental health, recovery

[johannestevans]

Watched a documentary about abuse and advice one guy said to give children was, "Tell them that if someone is hurting them, to tell someone - and don't just tell one person. Tell as many people as possible, and keep telling as many people as possible until the abuse stops." and i really liked that

Bc so many ppl focus on the idea of telling A Trusted Adult, but even a well-meaning individual can fuck up and let abuse fall through the cracks or not know what to do

Whereas if a child tells LOADS of adults AND other kids, there's far less opportunity for an abuser to do damage control

Consistently telling their story and spreading it around disempowers the abuser to control and coerce the flow of information, or to utilise gaps and weaknesses in systems of reporting or welfare to isolate the child

Just really good advice. Not suprised I don't hear it more often.

[draconym]

It's nuts how common it is to not allow children to be angry, even (especially) in households where adults are angry all the time. As a child I knew my own anger was unacceptable--not just expressing it outwardly but feeling it at all. So now as an adult my immediate reaction to my own anger is often to feel guilt instead of like. Noticing when someone is being rude or unfair or my boundaries are being violated or whatever. fucked up.

[innerchildabortionclinic]

also I don't think parents "these days" are uniquely terrible, I just think neglect is showing up in new ways as technology progresses. today's ipad kid would've been wandering around in a ditch alone all day and night before. parents not wanting to have to deal with children is not a new phenomenon.

[rainformation]

formative years? aren’t they all?

[absolutejamer]

show me a permanent self and i will show you a facade or a corpse

[shamebats]

Imo the best type of system for children to grow up in would be one that assumes the birth parents/primary guardians won't do shit and takes care of every aspect of childcare that's essential for their wellbeing and development, collectively.

[shamebats]

But I'm just a guy who only learned how to brush his teeth properly and got glasses as a child because we had both a dentist and a doctor come to school on a regular basis. The dentist would have us all stand in a circle with our little toothbrushes and show us how to brush and correct our technique. The doctors would give us general health assessments and then have the teachers contact our patents and essentially peer pressure them into getting us any health intervention we needed. My parents only reluctantly got me glasses because they knew the teachers would judge them if they kept seeing me sit in the very front row and still squint to see the chalkboard. So I'm biased.

[shamebats]

The only times I ever remember seeing a dentist or doctor as a child was at school. I'm quite healthy physically and I'm very grateful for all the care I got from the various professionals who cared about my well-being and development more than my actual parents did.

We had free healthcare including dental, mind you, my parents just couldn't be bothered. When my brother, as a teenager, asked our mother if she could take him to his orthodontist appointments (which he'd already arranged for on his own) she basically told him she didn't feel like it and he had to take the bus.

If I could improve anything about that system, I'd take it even further and make it so kids could see a doctor and get meds, treatments, therapy, tests, disability aids etc. without having to rely on their parents as well. I shouldn't have had to put up with being bullied and guilt-tripped about the family finances and the time investment needed to take me to the optometrist every time I needed new glasses.

[shamebats]

Some parents would not take care of their children even if they were given all the time and the resources. Mine are a great example of that — my mother stopped working and became a homemaker when I was in kindergarten, my father worked from the garage and was also always home. They had a car and our village even had a bus that would come once or twice an hour that would take you to the next two bigger cities.

Did that, plus the free healthcare, translate into them actually parenting and caring for us properly? It did not. They only ever did any of that reluctantly when not doing it would make them look bad, and most of the time they did a shitty job because they could never resist the urge to boost their egos by means of bullying literal children.

So I have to wonder: what did they actually contribute to our upbringing? Like they didn't teach us shit and mostly they just endangered our mental and physical health — but hey, at least they gave me cPTSD! That took some work too.

[anarchistmemedistro]

see also family abolition, and youth liberation .

[applefae]

A knee-jerk response to neglectful parenting I see a lot is “people should have to get licenses and take rigorous tests to PROVE that they should be ALLOWED to have kids” which is eugenics. That’s just the starting line for eugenics.

We are at a point in humanity where there is no meaningful reason why we shouldn’t be structuring our societies around wellbeing for all instead of wellbeing for the “deserving”.

Assume some parents will fail. Build social infrastructure that is designed to support failed kids rather than punish would-be parents.

[mournfulroses]

Tove Ditlevsen, from a poem featured in There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die: Selected Poems

[furiousgoldfish]

If your parents wanted to hurt you, that doesn't say anything about who you are. They would hurt anyone who was born in your place. You were just there. You did nothing wrong. Being a child isn't a crime. Nobody should have hurt you over being a kid.

[baraphalloplastyclinic]

I actually do think we should discourage women from becoming housewives. Do not become financially dependent on a man. That's how a lot of women ended up dead over the years. A man gets violent suddenly and you have to choose between homelessness or potentially dying at his hand because you have an enormous gap in your resume and no degrees or certifications or anything that will help you pursue a career that will allow you to be financially independent. He owns your bank account. His name is probably the one on the car. Try and leave and he can report it stolen. Where will you go then?

Don't become a housewife.

[ladyfoxfire]

And if you do become a housewife, take steps to protect yourself. Make sure you’re legally married, for starters; stay-at-home girlfriends have very little legal recourse to claim their partner’s assets in a breakup. Make sure your name is on the house deed/rental agreement, and have your car in your name, even if your spouse is paying for it. Have your spouse transfer money every month into an account solely in your name, so you can buy yourself things without needing permission, but also so you can save up to leave if needed.

If your spouse fights you on any of this, then don’t quit your job. The tradwife to poverty pipeline is real, and so is financial abuse.

[dressedupliketheking]

also, many women/people experience controlling behaviour and domestic violence from their partner for the first time during pregnancy. don’t risk thinking “he’s just stressed, it’ll get better when the baby comes” because it won’t. neither you and your child will ever be safe with that man. get out as early and safely as you can

[strawberry-crocodile]

ultimately the best way to prevent abuse is to organize society in such a way that everyone's needs are met wothout having to rely on a parent or employer or boyfriend or any one individual. obviously wont stop, like, manipulation or so on, but the ability to dangle basic needs over someone's head is one of the most powerful and consistant tools of abuse out there. if someone is able to just leave, and know that they will have access to food and shelter and clean water and education, that will enable so, so mamy victims of abuse to do just that.

[strawberry-crocodile]

really funny how like 10% of the comments are people going "nuh uh" and the remaining 90% are people going "this is literally whats happening to me/my mom/etc Right Now"

[capacity2]

I feel so bad for the annoying women at work. Like I actually feel sick when we’re interacting and I feel the annoyance occurring in my brain like she really doesn’t mean to be this way and she just doesn’t want to feel alone or rejected. you can tell she’s experienced being an outsider everywhere she goes it’s only a matter of time. And it’s not cool chic or edgy but in the ugliest most desperate and dehumanizing way. They always start hopeful. they want to connect and they go searching for someone receptive to her so she can find her people but everyone turns away from her slowly and u hear it in her voice. It’s happening again. she starts hesitating to speak and when she does you hear a shaky child ending every sentence like it’s a question. Testing the waters to know if she’s wrong for even trying. And then I realize I took her smile for granted now that it’s gone.. I have to make it up to her I can’t let something like this continue. Life is so hard for people everywhere, so building a tolerance for being irritated is nothing in comparison especially if the reward is less pain and loneliness in the world I will always be the bestie you have my word

[cyberbaptism]

People who flinch at this or jump to hating on OP have never been completely honest with themselves and it shows. Like, you know this person. You've met this person. The under socialized outcast who everyone thinks is kinda annoying and weird, including you. People think that acknowledging their own annoyance towards someone who's essentially harmless is the same as killing someone and being ontologically bad. Like, as long as you don't shun that person you're good. Actually, that's exactly what OP is fucking talking about. They acknowledge and see that this woman is the way she is and also express sympathy, but because there's no over the top performative moralizing everyone thinks it's mean when it's just a true assessment of the situation. Like, two things can be true at once—yes, this person is annoying and they make me cringe and yes, I'm not gonna be an asshole about it because I know that's not right. I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason everyone got so fired up about this is because they're scared that they might've been the annoying coworker in someone else's story. And guess what you probably were. Yeah. Sit with that. Did you die? Did the discomfort kill you?

[capacity2]

The hysterics was giving 2015 tumblr fr. We’ve all been that hoe nobody likes before

[havingrevelations-deactivated20]

shaking six year old me by the shoulders YOU WERE RIGHT. YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT LOVE AND ABOUT FAIRNESS AND ABOUT SHARING IS CARING. YOU WERE RIGHT. THE ADULTS DON’T KNOW ANY MORE ABOUT TRUTH THAN YOU DO. KEEP BELIEVING IN THE FAIRIES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GARDEN. NOTHING IS “JUST THE WAY IT IS”. I AM SORRY THEY EVER CONVINCED YOU TO FEEL SHAME. YOU ARE REAL AND A PART OF THIS WORLD. YOU WERE RIGHT.

[neuronary]

"the only difference between a cult and a religion is the scale"

NO. NO IT ISN'T. THIS IS WHAT THE CULTS WANT YOU TO THINK IT IS NOT TRUE. THERE ARE RELIGIONS THAT ARE NOT CULTS AND CULTS THAT ARE NOT RELIGIOUS AND YOU MUST LEARN THE DIFFERENCE

[blackwoolncrown]

This is how a lot of people end up in cults that are not religious — thinking that “cults” are small weird “religious” groups.

[lolthsword]

how do i speak up

[furiousgoldfish]

"We didn't know any better!"

you knew to hide it from the neighbours

you knew to threaten me not to say anything

you knew to train me to 'act normal' in front of company

you knew to pretend our relationships was different in front of guests/relatives

you knew to tell me to stop screaming so 'people won't think you're killing me'

you knew to put injuries where they would be hidden by clothing

you knew to forbid me to wear short clothing outside

you knew to convince me that god and entire population would be on your side yet to hide it from all of them

you knew whenever any of it was happening to you that it was bad

you knew to tell me it's my fault you're doing this to me

you knew to sabotage development of any knowledge or survival skills that would help me leave

you knew you kept me in conditions any alive person would want to escape

you knew if I escaped it would reflect poorly on you

you knew to convince me I was unlovable and would die without you, so I wouldn't look for support elsewhere

you knew to make sure I never had enough money to leave

you knew to crush every crumb of confidence to make sure I felt hopeless

you knew to convince me I didn't deserve anything better and was meant to live only as long as I'm useful to you

you knew to convince me my memories were wrong

you knew to persuade me I'm crazy for remembering what you did

you knew to punish me for showing trauma symptoms

you knew to manipulate other people to convince me you were right.

You knew better. You knew exactly what you were doing. Every step of the way. You did what you intended to do, and then some to keep it hushed up. These are not actions of a confused person. This is calculated. And now you're counting on my compassion and suspension of disbelief to take you didn't know. And if I do believe you? You get to do it all over again.

[furiousgoldfish]

abusive parents: we just don't know any better 🥺

science, education and their own kids: you can learn! Here's what you're doing wrong, here's what damage it does, here are some resources to study from, here's devastating consequences of abuse on children's lives

abusive parents: Fuck Off we Said we Don't Know Any Better!!!!

[furiousgoldfish]

abusive parents if they weren't lying: I'm doing this for your own bad

[furiousgoldfish]

literally. we all have the same set of parents

[furiousgoldfish]

Abusive parents teach you that the only way to show someone you love them is through absolute obedience and servitude. And if you make a mistake, or say no, or annoy or displease them in any way, they can retalliate in hatred and violence and that is your fault, and it's still love. Control is love, abuse is love, crushing your boundaries and neglecting your needs is sold as love.

I spent so long thinking this is just what it takes to be loved; a life of servitude, guilt and pain. Sending a child into the world believing this sets them up for domestic abuse for their whole life.

And the only reason they claim all this is to get away with abuse, to convince you they have the right to do this to you, for your own good, and you're just too stupid to see it's love. That isn't love. Love doesn't leave you deprived of attention, care, understanding, compassion, acknowledgement and support. Love doesn't make you wish you were dead from how worthless and hopeless you're made to feel. It doesn't make you feel like something is deeply wrong with you and you can't be loved or appreciated as you are. That's what hatred and isolation does.