one of the things about having an unstable parent is that it can so easily ruin your future. you want to get out, but getting out takes having agency. it takes the resume and the grades and the stellar community service history.
but you have to choose your battles. you know if you sign up for an after-school activity, it'll be okay for a while, so long as the activity is parent-approved and god-fearing. over time, like all things, it will become an argument (i can't keep carting your ass to these things) or a weapon (talk to me like that again, see if you get to go to practice). sometimes, if you love the thing, it's worth it. but you also know better than to love something: that's how they get you. if you ever actually want something, it will always be the center of their attention. they will never stop threatening you with it. telling you of course i'm a good parent, i came to all of those stupid events.
you learn to balance yourself perfectly. you can either have a social life or you can have hobbies. both of these things will be under constant scrutiny. you spend too much time with her, you should be at home with family is equally paired with you're acting like this because you're addicted to what's on that goddamn screen. you cannot ever actually win, so everything falls within a barter system that you calculate before entering: do you want to learn how to drive? if so, you'll need to give up asking for a new laptop, even though yours died. maybe you can work on a computer at the library. of course, that would mean you'd be allowed to go to the library, which would mean something else has to bleed. nothing ever actually comes free.
and that bitter, horrible irony: you could be literally following their orders and it still isn't pretty. they tell you to get a job; they hate that your job keeps you late and gives you access to actual money. they tell you to do better in school; they say no child of mine needs a tutor. they want you to stop being so morose, don't you know there are people who are really suffering - but they revile the idea you might actually need therapy.
you didn't survive that fall the way other people would. you've seen other people scramble and get their way out, however they could. maybe you were made too-soft: the answer didn't come to you easily. it wasn't quick. it was brutal and nasty. some people even asked you why didn't you just work hard and escape during school? and you felt your head spinning. why didn't you? (they control your financial aid. they control your loan status. they love having that kind of thing). maybe in another life you got diagnosed sooner and got the meds you needed to actually focus and got attention from the right teachers who helped you clear hurdles to get up out of here - but for now? here?
the effort of trying. the effort of not-dying. that kind of effort was absolutely agonizing.
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I've witnessed first hand how fucking awful an overly controlling and manipulatuve mother can be.
It destroys your mental health. It makes you question your own worth and intelligence. It makes you unsure of who or what to believe. It makes you terrified of others perceiving you in anything but a positive light. And that's just mentally.
When people say Riddle's backstory was "tame" I want to strangle them because no, no it fucking wasn't. Just because she (supposedly) isn't beating him doesn't mean he has a "less bad" or "less tragic" childhood.
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Once Tears of the Kingdom comes out I will be hurtling back into the Linked universe fandom at terminal velocity
Took a step back while Rain world hit me over the head with sad robots
And when Silksong comes out I will be struck down once again by Hollow Knight
It’s a busy few months and dear god I just hope it happens AFTER finals this time I CANT KEEP DOING THIS
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It is so incredible to be able to leave a situation, center and ground myself, and start recovering my energy, mental focus, and peace within minutes to an hour. What other people said or did wasn’t about me, I behaved well myself, I let things roll off as much as possible during the situation, and as soon as it was over I started doing nervous system first aid. What a difference living this way makes. Life is so much more peaceful when you actually protect boundaries, keep perspective, and care for yourself while properly in tune with your needs.
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people online will be like “haha i will make 9/11 jokes because the american reaction to the event had many levels of irrationality” but will not confront the massive amounts of internalised islamophobia that arose from american propaganda justifying the ‘war on terror’ and the iran and iraq wars which was then compounded by a culturally christian society that portrays Islam to be inhumane and oppressive resulting in them now hearing that a muslim group is targeting a fanfic website for ‘degeneracy’ and ‘being usa based’ and then believing it without a second thought
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Sometimes I wish people hadn't asked me why I was "torturing [myself] with those boring books" so frequently when I was younger. I was trying to get on my feet with reading more difficult texts by picking up the "classic" books that those same people espoused as the height of literature. It was extremely confusing to be a child surrounded by grandiose ideas of what books were worth reading and then, at the same time, be constantly confronted by the reality of how the average person perceived those same books. Nobody knew what to do with me, and it was isolating.
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