It took me a long while to feel empathy for Billy Hargrove, because that’s how it always is with me. I judge people very harshly before I get to know them and that extends to how I interpret characters in media. Perhaps it’s just a way that I have learned to protect myself. I grew up angry at the world, and the casual cruelty of others fueled my anger. So, Billy immediately put me on edge.
Do you know what broke me, though? What really hurt me and radically changed how I thought about this character?
It was when Billy begged for his mother to come save him and she never came to get him. It was that moment that really did it for me, because from that moment onward Billy didn’t try any more. He was no longer the sweet boy who would do anything to protect his mom from her abuser because her abuser was now his and his alone and no one was going to save him and no one ever did.
And I know exactly what that feels like.
And I am tired of talking about him with caveats. ‘Oh, I relate to his suffering but I don’t excuse him…” No. I’m tired of it, because abuse survivors like myself are regularly trapped in an endless cycle of self destructive shame and guilt for things we said and did when we were surviving and we don’t get anywhere because of it and I don’t think people realize or care that what they say about us matters.
I want to be able to talk about him in a way that instills some empathy in people towards abuse survivors because there are far too many of us who don’t make it out alive. To say people like us don’t deserve to survive, that we can’t get better, or that we’re too far gone to be saved is casual cruelty and you have to take responsibility for that mindset as much as you demand he take responsibility for himself.
You cannot dig our graves and then demand we crawl out of them without any help.













