“Cause We Said No Strings Attached And I Still Got Tied Up In That”

I think the most surreal thing I’ve ever experienced is my abuser actually becoming pretty normal. It’s the weirdest thing.

On one hand, you’re happy that they won’t hurt people. You’re happy that they’ve learnt to manage their emotions. You’re happy that some of the fear of seeing them is lifted off your shoulders. But at the same time, you are so angry. You are traumatized already. It’s just more proof they they can move on while you’re stuck here. The have DESTROYED you, and now you don’t even have someone to be mad at. Or at least you’ll always feel a little guilty that you resent them. They might not yell at you, or call you fat, stupid, worthless, manipulate you, threaten you… but everyday they’re hurting you. And they always will be.

But they get to be recover. They get to be forgiven -And they genuinely have changed… maybe they’re even sorry for how they treated you. But they can form normal relationships. They can cope. They can move on.

But it’s so much harder for you.

Abusive parents will sometimes straight up accuse you of abusing them. Suddenly, you not being ‘nice enough’ is abuse, or you yelling back at them, or calling them out, or refusing to see and talk to them, or being angry and upset at the shit they do to you.  Your every reaction or feeling that they don’t like can be called abuse, they will shamelessly play at your guilt and convince you that you, in fact, have the power to abuse them, and are doing so every second you’re not doing and feeling exactly as you’re told.

This is nonsense, because between parent and a child, parent holds all the power. Parent decided weather the kid eats and sleeps that night, they decide what the child can own and what resources they can have, parent decides where the child lives and in what conditions, weather the child is loved or exposed to pain and abuse constantly, they can take away anything from the kid and often give themselves rights to order the kid around, just what power does the kid have? To mildly annoy the parent. While risking being abused and yelled at. Some kids might risk publicly embarrassing parents but even that only in situations where they wouldn’t be tortured for it back at home. Children don’t have absolutely anything except their ability to react, to feel pain, to be angry at injustice, to listen to instincts when they suggest that the parent is harmful and not to be trusted.

Refusing to talk to your parent is not abuse. Wanting to keep distance, yelling at them for disrespecting and hurting you, is not abuse. Calling them out, not liking or loving them, refusing to do as you’re told, having your own feelings and reactions that parents don’t like, is not abuse. It’s being a human being, and naturally struggling with the fact that your family member, who is responsible for you, who can decide everything in your life, doesn’t love or care for you. It’s devastating and if you deal with that by yelling and wanting them out of your sight, you have the right to that much. You have the right to more.

You’d only be able to abuse your parent in a situation where you own their place, all of their stuff, have control over their finances, can kick them out on the street or control their living situation, and you’re physically stronger than them and don’t care how much you hurt them. The exact opposite of that is true, for the vast majority of children, and even adults. Only abusive parents ever accuse their children of abusing them. Any normal, decent parent would never try to pass such utter nonsense to make you feel as if you’re doing to them what they’re doing to you, to make you feel guilty and confused and more easily controlled by them. You’re guilty of nothing.

“You are not hard to love. It is so easy to love you. When I look at you, all I can feel is love.”

— Who ever made you think loving you was hard?

A note to my body

I am sorry.

I have cut you, hit you, and burnt you. I have shoved more food into you than you can handle, jammed my fingers down your throat, and starved you for days until all you can see is stars.

I’ve consumed too much alcohol, too many substances, and exercised you into the ground.

But what I am the most sorry for is that I can’t seem to stop… no matter how much I want to be better for you, I don’t know how to stop this self destruction.

And for that, I am truly sorry

“You’re the one I want to go on late night drives with while holding hands and singing along to the radio, to drive to the middle of no where and look up at the stars while in each other’s arms, the one to kiss at red lights, the one to hold tightly in my arms, the one to go to coffeehouses with while having tired eyes, the one to be mine while I am yours.”

—

they don’t tell you what anxious impulsivity looks like. 

when people imagine anxiety, they always imagine risk averse behavior. you overthink, you’re deliberate, your thinking is catastrophic, and you’re always thinking through seventeen possible scenarios in which things can go wrong. 

but sometimes you’re so anxious and things feel so horrible that you do things without thinking because you want the bad feelings to stop. you say something stupid in a group chat, so you immediately leave all of your servers and block your friends so that you don’t have to see the aftermath. you’re unsure about your relationship, so you break up with your partner out of nowhere or you wake up one morning and just decide to ghost them so you don’t have to deal with it anymore. you’re uncomfortable at a party with people you don’t know, so you run outside and take the train home at 3am without realizing how dangerous that is because you just need to leave. 

your anxiety can get so bad that, in an attempt to feel safe and secure, you can’t predict what you’ll do next. 

stop believing that you ran out of time to shape yourself into who you want to be! stop believing that its ruined! stop believing you don’t have potential! you are not a fixed being! you have endless opportunities to grow.

“It’s like when you read a novel and you’re so captivated by it that you don’t even realize you’re approaching the end of it until there are no more pages to turn. You’re left with this dreadful emptiness and aren’t quite sure what to do with yourself because while the book is finished, the story is living on inside of you.”

— This is what breaking up feels like - Jess Amelia 

final exams w mental illness be like

anxiety: if ur not doing work for every second of every day ur failing in school and at life in general

depression: stay in bed for 36 hours because there is no point in living anyways

Anger has an important role in human beings, protection, feeling of being valuable and worthy of protection and justice. If your anger isn’t repressed and pushed back, and someone treats you like shit, your anger immediately jumps up to protect you against bullshit. If everyone around you is treated better than you for no apparent reason (nothing you did to deserve it), your anger again jumps up and demands better for you. If someone hurts you really badly, your anger is here to let them know that nobody can get away with hurting you like that, because you matter enough to be protected from harm.

 Anger can be destructive when used wrong, like controlling someone (who is not currently presenting a threat to you), taking shit out on someone who didn’t deserve it, forcing dominance over someone who can’t fight back, and as a way of avoiding being subjected to the truth/called out for abuse. That’s mostly how abusers use it,  and why a lot of victims see it as nothing but toxic, horrible, dangerous and scary thing, and recognizing anger within themselves can give them feeling of dread and like they’re becoming abusive themselves.

Anger in victims presents a problem for abusers, and a lot of victims experience helplessness and inability to be angry or feel anger, even the thought of it makes them feel dreadful and guilty, that’s because abusers make sure in one way or another, that all of victim’s anger will be punished, until they learn they’re not allowed to be angry. This causes anger to build up, now it’s not only  one time injustice and harm has been done, it’s thousands, tens  of thousands time. This is how rage generates within a person, and any further ridicule, provocation or attack from abusers end up with them feeling infuriated, because it’s been too much for a long, long time. 

Anger being built up can eat a person from inside, and it can manifest in self harm, dissociation, numbness/blankness, depression, anxiety. Directing that anger at other people who aren’t the cause of it, doesn’t help much, even in short term it will not give out any resolution. If you haven’t been able to process and feel anger normally for years, it will feel impossible and incredibly frustrating for your body if you start feeling it, and you’ll want it to stop at any price. But, after a while, a person can go back to normal processing of anger, even though, if there’s been a lot of it, it will still mean strong, extreme bursts of rage. 

People who’ve been dealing with pent up anger have already proved to have immense self control, immense survival instincts and aren’t likely to end up  hurting others the way they’ve been hurt, what’s most important is for that anger to be directed back at the cause of it - abusers. It’s vital to develop hatred of those who would dare to harm you while you were vulnerable and unprotected,  this, is exactly what hatred is for. Only expressing anger at abusers, at their actions, their personality, their weaknesses and toxic, abusive choices will erase guilt, anxiety and get you closer to healing.