this!!!! i agree with every single sentence so much it hurts. admitting the fact that mickey had it much worse does not, in any way, negate ian’s love for mickey. it doesn’t mean that ian is a bad person. ian did love mickey and he did have good intentions towards him always, but that does not change the fact that he just didn’t understand. he didn’t grow up with an abusive father like t***y (yes, frank occasionally hurt ian too but literally ian’s entire family stood up for him and protected him whenever that happened. mickey’s brothers and mandy couldn’t do that) (jimmysteve sent frank off to canada after he hurt ian. mickey had literally no one to protect him at all. ever), he didn’t have to experience blatant homophobia growing up like mickey did. ian grew up in a family, had to come out to a family, that either didn’t give two shits (frank and monica) about who ian preferred sexually or loved and accepted him (ian’s siblings). it’s like so completely separate from what mickey had to live with, the two situations aren’t even in the same realm.
ian loved him then, undoubtedly, but he wasn’t very empathetic towards mickey and that’s okay to admit. he didn’t understand what mickey was going through and didn’t really try to and did push him when it wasn’t right (especially the whole forcing him to come out thing in s4). the way i see it, the gallaghers are very self-involved people: it’s hard for them to see past their own needs/wants to pay attention to someone whose last name isn’t gallagher. (i guess i’ll have to make a post about this soon because i have a lot to say on the topic) and i also think that ian must have finally gained some perspective on what mickey went through when the whole gay jesus thing happened. it must’ve made him realise that mickey’s situation and mickey’s fear wasn’t some anomaly but it was a very real thing that a lot of people go through. i feel like if ian and mickey had met later in life when ian had matured a little, he’d have been more sympathetic towards mickey’s situation and handled it better.
back to mickey, even if you are straight, it’s very easy to sympathise/empathise with him if you have literally any experience (i hope you don’t) with an abusive parent situation. it’s fucking terrifying to live in a situation like that, period. that fear is embedded into you since the moment you are old enough to comprehend emotions and you live with it 24/7 because your parent is right there and you can’t do anything about it. like living in that kinda situation, it’s impossible to let go of that fear of your parent. it, or some echo of it, still lives with you even after you’ve separated yourself from your parent. (even frank gallagher, notorious for not giving a fuck about anything or anyone, cowers infront of his mother till her dying day because she was abusive) there’s that fear, and then there’s that hate for your parent, and then, the worst of them all, that need to earn some kind of validation from them. you hate yourself for that, but it’s still there: you still want your parent(s) to love you and be proud of you; you still want to impress them somehow so that they’ll love and care for you for once and not hurt you. (like frank involving himself in his mother’s plan or whatever to try to appease her somehow (i don’t remember the details)) there’s a whole combination of complicated, negative emotions that live within you and it’s horrible, to say the absolute least.
so mickey has to live with all that, plus the fact that his father hates such a fundamental part of him. of course he’s going to try and repress that part of him if he can. of course he’ll try to avoid any and all complications and the possibly of gaining any more unwanted feelings. feelings that’ll do nothing but harm him. of course he’ll try to avoid the possibility of his father finding another, huge, reason to hurt him. of course he’ll try to avoid being hurt by people other than his father. because, even if he ignores the terrifying presence of his father, who he is is someone a large number of people hate and wouldn’t hesitate to seriously hurt. and i’m not even going to go into what happened to mickey after his father found out. so like, the question is: how else is a human being supposed to react in the situation that mickey is in, other than the way he did?
and the fact that he loved ian so much through all of that shit? fucking awe-inspiring.
it’s the easiest thing to understand what mickey has been through, and how he reacted, if you put in the minimal amount of effort.
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