Imagine in your early childhood, you received a minor wound. A tiny little cut on the knee. The cut never got a chance to heal because it was constantly reopened by other people, and the gash grew wider and wider until you could barely stand it. You were constantly bleeding. Your parents not only didn't care, but mocked you for crying about the wound and getting the wound in the first place. They put salt in the wound thinking maybe the wound would go away and you'd finally shut up, but it only got worse.
You are desperate for the wound to go away, by any means, and you FINALLY come across people who have the same wound that you do, and they have a solution- they put a bandaid on the wound. The bandaid is colored white, pink, and blue, and sometimes even comes with cute anime and fandom stickers!
Honestly, at first, you're skeptical, because you can SEE that it's literally just a bandaid, but you're told there's no other treatment for this specific wound. And look, people have been wearing this bandaid for many, many years, look how happy they are!
So, you decide to finally slap the bandaid on it… works, you guess, for a few years. You can forget about the wound, you think nobody else sees the wound, and you're happy, it gives you confidence, you feel shielded from everything that gave you that wound in the first place so now you're finally going out and making friends and having fun. But… the wound is still there. Deep down, you are still bleeding. Finally, one day, you rip the bandaid off, and realize what you REALLY need to heal the wound. So, you start working on it, and talk to others who have healed the wound successfully. You realize that these healed people have been shunned into their own corners by people who are still wearing the bandaids. The bandaid wearers say you're oppressing their right to wear the bandaid. You aren't. You just KNOW that the bandaid doesn't work from EXPERIENCE and you so DESPERATELY want them to see that they could be SO SO SO much more happier if they ripped the bandaid off too and actually healed the wound.
In some cases, you think the bandaid actually makes the wound worse because it's just a way to go longer and longer without actually healing the wound. You can see the wound on other people has starting to fucking rot.
You feel sick to your stomach when people slap the bandaid on children.
But. You can't say any of this out loud. You know that you can't question the bandaid. Nobody will listen to you. They will stomp their feet like stubborn toddlers and call you bigoted, call you horrible names, tell you that you don't know what you're talking about and you never even really were wounded in the first place.
The only other people who see through the bullshit of the bandaid as you do… they aren't against it for the same reasons that you are. They are the evil people who gave you the wound in the first place. You know they are sick evil people who laugh at the suffering and pain of others and will just use your story as a tool for their own gain.
So… you keep it silent.
I may have healed my wound for the most part, but there is still a scar, and when I see someone walking around with a large gaping wound and they are still convinced that their bandaid is working, it stings my scar just a little bit.
I am so tired. I am so tired and I can't even escape it. I see the bandaid being flown everywhere. In my fandoms, I see so many, many wounded people I cannot save. I can't speak out. I can't talk about my own experiences or my concerns. This is a living fucking hell. And I don't know how much longer I can carry this weight. I have no mouth and I must scream.