#father abuse mention

[datastate]

like... i can't even say (for kai, at least) that mr. chidouin loves the idea of him rather than him as a child. to chidouin, he took kai and worked past his barriers over the years of obligated service to know kai as a person - something gashu never tried for. that is why kai got so easily attached. he was no longer an ideal in his father figure's head, but simply...himself. mr. chidouin listened to him. really listened, to him. kai did become a part of his family, someone he cared about. kai's traumatic vulnerabilities weren't exploited, it was his love that chidouin nurtured that urged him to betrayal of asunaro. if chidouin purposefully triggered him at every instance, kai would've placed more emphasis on caring about sara (to let her evade chidouin's obvious toxic influence) than the chidouins as a whole. but as it stands, they're all his light, his salvation. he holds them in such high regard because they were the first to be so selfless and who continued to live in spite of this 'weakness' (kindness) ... it was something he grew to want to protect once he realized he was in a position where he could believe this choice mattered. and that was precisely what chidouin aimed for - for that fulfillment on kai's part. a twisted gift for his departure. kai found a reason to live. he was given years to live, even if he only grew to cherish them near the end. and mr. chidouin 'only' asked for kai's participation in turn.

#i am not phrasing things right but it wounds me it really does #the way chidouin reasons his love. the way he gave kai everything kai needed when he felt entirely aimless. #only to dictate the moment he takes it away... #and that end doesn't negate the effort put into the relationship before. to chidouin #it's just a reasonable progression for what needs to be done #and he did as much as he could with a life that was already destined to die under gashu's jurisdiction #ough. i don't know. i don't knkw #parents who genuinely care but are 'ends justify the means' make me so -_-;; #hurts me #jestersvaguely #yttdposting #yttd meta #father abuse mention #character death

[wilwheaton]

if you know this secret handshake some of us use today, i see you and i’m so sorry.

I don't celebrate Father's Day (or any other Hallmark holiday) for reasons that will not surprise you if you know anything about my life.

But I do celebrate all the other children of fuckers and pieces of shit who survived like I did, who broke the cycle of generational trauma like I and my sister did, whose mothers forced them to praise and worship their abuser "because it's father's day" like mine did, who fucking hate the endless reminders to celebrate the dad we never had (in my case, because he chose not to be a dad to me like he chose to be a dad for my brother. I guess being a bully was more satisfying to him).

I see you, friends. I see you, and I know you see me, and I am both grateful and sad. We know this secret handshake we wish we didn't know. We know a very specific kind of loss that only we know, a type of lingering pain that never really goes away entirely, that can only be reduced to part of the background noise, but can crank itself up to 11 without warning.

I just want you all to know that I see you, and I love you. I know how tough it is, how much it hurts.

I want to specifically make meaningful eye contact with all of my fellow survivors who are also dads, who show up for our kids in spite of the pain and loss. It's such a challenge, and it means so much. We broke the cycle and that is massive. I'm so proud of us.

#tw abuse #tw father mention #fathers day #parenting

[duskyashe]

CAMP NANO DAY 6

[chapter 4] [AO3]

(please see tags for trigger warnings)

============<×^-^×>============

It was a little known fact that Bruce Wayne hadn't only fostered his boys. As one of the few above-the-board trained and highly experienced foster parents in Gotham, Bruce had actually fostered dozens of children from all kinds of situations over the years. The only kids the press ever actually found out about were the ones he legally gained custody of, in one way or another, due to stringent privacy policies set in place back when he'd applied to be a foster parent for Dick.

Sometimes Bruce is able to keep in contact with his former foster kids, and he's always happy when that's the case, but other times he loses complete contact with them and can't legally track them down again. It's those children, outside of the ones he's legally able to claim as his own, that he worries about relentlessly. But even among those kids, there's two he worries about the most.

Jasmine Madeline Fenton and her younger brother Daniel Jackson Fenton had come into Bruce's life and home when Dick was thirteen. They weren't the first kids he'd fostered since adopting Dick, but they were the most impactful. Jazz was six, her hair was freshly cut and washed, her clothes neat and a bit on the baggy side, and her backpack still had a tag on it. Danny was three, he, too, had freshly cut and washed hair, his clothes were brand new, and his diaper bag was fully stocked.

Jazz was six and her clothes hung off her frame. She had bags under eyes and didn't know how to brush or wash her own hair. The backpack she had when she walked in his front doors was the very first new thing she'd ever seen that her parents hadn't immediately cannibalized for their experiments.

Danny was three and hadn't been given a real bath in almost a year. His clothes were all either too small or his sister's hand-me-downs. His diaper hadn't been changed in over six hours.

Bruce had been so sure he was going to be awarded permanent custody of the two. There had obviously been criminal neglect going on in that household at least, it should have been child's play to gain permanent custody of them. His lawyer and the children's case manager had assured them their case was practically airtight.

The kids had only been in his custody for two weeks before the state awarded full parental rights to the Drs Fenton. Jazz had only barely started getting used to eating three times a day again. Danny had just started smiling whenever Dick played peekaboo with him. And the courts sent. Them. Back. A month later and the Fenton's moved without a word, leaving behind not a single trace. It was almost as though they'd vanished.

Dick had been devastated. Alfred was crushed. And Bruce? Bruce experienced the five stages of grief for the second time in his life twice over. For years, he had private investigators searching everywhere he could think of for the siblings, desperately hoping to find even the slimmest glimmer of hope that they were alright, that they were still alive.

Jason coming into the household lessened some of that pain and desperation, especially after Bruce obtained full custody of him, but the tension between Dick and Jason drove the lingering tension between Dick and Bruce to critical levels. Argument after argument, fight after fight, all about the same topic: Why did Jason get adopted when Jazz and Danny were still out here?

Eventually the tension exploded in one of the worst ways possible, and the family was reduced back down to three. The first six months after Jason's funeral, Bruce refused to take on any new children. He even asked the private investigators to only contact him if they definitively found proof of the kids. The pain, the grief, the guilt was just too much for him. He'd failed Jazz and Danny, and he'd failed Jason, too. He couldn't handle failing yet another child.

Then Tim showed up, too tiny and too determined to get his way. The shock of seeing the obvious evidence of yet more criminal neglect from his own neighbors drew Bruce out of his downward spiral just enough to realize he needed help. Tim was right, he had been killing himself with his work, and doing so was the exact opposite of what Jazz, Danny, or Jason would have wanted from him. He notified CPS of a possible situation he was keeping an eye on, as well as the fact that he was pulling himself back together so he'd be able to reapply to be a foster parent, and then sought the help of a therapist sworn to absolute secrecy with the help of multiple NDAs.

A year later, he was reinstated as a foster parent, awarded first temporary, then later full, custody of Tim. He fostered a pair of blonde little girls for a few nights before an aunt was found in Vineland, New Jersey, who got custody instead. About a month after them, he fostered a ten year old boy for a week before his dad regained custody. He even fostered Tim's friend, Stephanie Brown, for two months while her mom went through rehab.

And then Red Hood came to town.

Between trying to track down and figure out who Red Hood was, Bruce also took on twin eight year old boys for about five days, a fifteen year old girl for two and a half weeks, a pair of cousins for ten days, and three siblings for a night. When Red Hood was finally revealed to be a revived Jason, angry at the thought that Bruce had replaced him and missing a few key memories, it had been two years since the last time he'd heard from the private investigators he'd hired eleven years prior. After weeks of careful negotiation and peace talks between Bruce and Jason, the family of four was well on their way to being the family of five they legally were, when Bruce decided it was time to get back in contact with the team he'd left in charge of the investigation looking for the Fentons. They only had a potential sighting of the Fentons at a class reunion in Wisconsin a few months prior, but any sighting was better than what they'd had for most of the eleven years prior, so Bruce asked them to double down and see what came from it.

Two weeks later, there was a knock on the manor door. It was the middle of a torrential downpour, one of the worst thunderstorms Gotham had seen in years, yet there was undeniably someone knocking at the door. Bruce, who'd been passing through the entry hall on a late evening stroll through the manor, was the one to answer the door.

She was in her late teens, her hair was long, wet, and stuck to the side of her face, her clothes in poor repair with splotches of dark red and neon green on them, and her backpack was worn and frayed. He was in his early teens, he, too, had long, wet hair that stuck to his face, his clothes were rags and barely hanging onto him with more of those dark red and neon green splotches, and his duffle bag was stuffed to the gills.

"Mr Wayne?" Jasmine Madeline Fenton asked, voice quivering as the two of them huddled on his doorstep, Daniel Jackson Fenton's eyes drooping to half mast from exhaustion. "We need your help. Our parents are trying to murder us."

============<×^-^×>============

I'm not gonna lie, it took me forever to figure out what I wanted to write today, but once I decided on this, it just wrote itself (⁠^⁠_⁠^⁠メ⁠) I actually got the idea for this fic from a prompt @evandarya had posted in the Batpham server a while back, which I absolutely loved and just had to write, so this ficlet is dedicated to them (not that they're aware of it yet lol)

Once again, I have no idea if I'll ever continue this ficlet, for my muse is fickle and likes to play favorites ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠⊙⁠_⁠ʖ⁠⊙⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ I might get lucky and get sudden inspiration for a sequel for this, or I might not, who knows? Honestly, if anyone wants to add onto this, go right ahead lol that'd be amazing.

#danny phantom #batman #dpxdc #fanfiction #danny fenton #jazz fenton #bruce wayne #dick grayson #jason todd #alfred pennyworth #tim drake #stephanie brown #dp au #batman au #good dad bruce wayne #foster father!Bruce Wayne #trigger warning: mentioned child abuse #trigger warning: mentioned child endangerment #trigger warning: mentioned child neglect #camp nanowrimo 2023 #camp nano 2023 day 6

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

Mother's Day can be a painful reminder, so here's a salute to all the kids and adult children who grew up with absent mothers, angry mothers, negligent mothers, abusive mothers, overly-critical mothers, codependent mothers, overwhelmed and struggling mothers, mothers who ignored your cries for help, mothers who sacrificed your happiness to placate others, mothers who tried to do better but failed, and mothers who didn't try quite hard enough.

And to every child and adult who has a complicated relationship with their mother or caretaker--it's okay to feel conflicted. It's okay to feel hurt and love and resentment and pain and sympathy and longing and guilt bundled up into one big tangled ball. It's okay to struggle to reconcile the bad memories with the good ones that simultaneously exist. It's okay to be angry about the ways your parent failed you, and also aware of their personal struggles, and the way their parents in turn failed them. It's okay to recognize that you were loved but also that you were treated unfairly, unkindly. Contradictions are the natural state of the world. Multiple truths coexist. It's okay to be conflicted.

Parents are humans. Human relationships are complicated, and cannot be summarized by a greeting card. Wherever you are coming from, I hope your future holds healing and love, love, love.

#not a shitpost #serious post #abuse mention #neglect mention #mother's day #If you think im singling out moms just wait until father's day #you think martin luther had shit to say when he nailed 95 theses to a church door? bitch I'll double that

[furiousgoldfish]

There was a time, when as a young adult, I'd be reading self-help books, in order to see if I can do something to make my life livable. Sometimes, these books would go very deep into victim blaming, and making a person believe that they can just 'manifest anything', or 'make things happen', and later I trashed all of that nonsense, but as an inexperienced person, I was all up for magical thinking, and taking advice from people who enjoyed making everything a vague concept that one can control with their mind.

Some of these books indeed, touched on parenting, and their philosophy was that parents who are bad, are simply bad because their parents were bad, which is something they love to use as their favourite excuse (i had it worse). But as a young person, how was I to know this was stupid, I believed this. The book went on to encourage the child, to try and be the parent's replacement parent, and to offer them caretaking and parenting they never had in their youth. Now, if you know how child abuse works, you'd recognize this immediately as the encouragement of parentification, making the child responsible for the parent's well being, being the caretaker instead of being taken care of, taking responsibility for the parent's actions and behaviours when the child has absolutely no control or power over it - basically bad. But, how was I to know, right. So I decided to try and take this advice, and try to see; what are my parents lacking, in the form of having their own parents?

This is where things got funny; I analyzed my parents behaviour, and realized very quickly, that what they lack is moral compass, correction of intensely selfish, irresponsible, ignorant and shallow behaviour, and if these were my children I would simply not tolerate that level of malice. My parents weren't lacking in care, they were lacking in discipline. So at that point, I, who had no income, shelter, social power, access to resources, finances, or anything else, thought I was responsible for disciplining my parents and teaching them how to 'not be evil', if I wanted to change them in normal and good people. (Completely normal and possible thing to do.)

And it's not like I had any guidance in how to offer proper 'discipline', all I knew was violence, which I couldn't do for obvious reasons, and the next thing would be scolding, yelling, guilt-tripping, criticism, making them 'feel bad' for 'doing bad things'. And that's exactly what I had decided to do. Next time my father was acting selfish, malicious, shallow and self-obsessed, I dropped him a 'This is why you don't have any friends.' line.

Now I have no idea why, but this actually got to him. He was shocked for a moment, and then started acting defensive. 'I have friends!' he insisted, and then he started listing all of the coworkers he used for his gain in the last week. 'Those are not real friends.' I decided. That had actually gotten him upset. He started listing all the things he did with those people, which were just random work transactions, and it didn't convince me at all.

Looking back, it's funny because I was so low on his hierarchy of people whose opinion mattered, he tried to kill me multiple times, he screamed inhumane slurs and insults at me constantly, he considered me less than a person, less than a thing even, but he was still so offended that anyone in the world could think he had no friends. What I had done is made him worried that his facade and public image of being well-connected and liked wasn't strong enough, and convincing me that he was all those things, was how he thought he'd fix it. He didn't even think for a second that maybe he should fix his malicious and exploitative behaviour, it was all about maintaining an image of being something else.

Obviously he didn't have any friends, because he's a narcissist, and narcissists don't make friends, they keep prisoners. I was a constant thorn in his eye because I could see trough his delusions and would regularly call him out on that, which of course then brought on violence to make me terrified of contradicting him. Because that's how they think reality is generated, if they say something is true, and nobody contradicts them, then that must be the new reality.

Anyway, I didn't try to argue with him on friends again, because it got boring and did nothing to fix his inhumane behaviour, and I didn't like interacting with him anyway. But I still find it very funny that a book that was trying to push abused children into caretaking for their parents, pushed me into trying to punish them for abuse, it was almost Matilda-like in fashion. If I had magic powers I would have changed these people (into people too scared to be evil in front of me).

#story #abusive parents #bad self help books #mention of attempted murder #child abuse #magical thinking #parentification #abusive father #trying to discipline parents #only to find out you have zero power over them #and it doesn't work anyway

[kvetchinglyneurotic]

My hot take is that it should have been Rebecca, not Ted, who talked to Jamie about his father in 3x11. Here are my reasons:

1. So much of Rebecca's arc is about recovering from an abusive relationship while her abuser is still, somewhat unavoidably, part of her life. Her experience with Rupert and Jamie's experience with his father aren't identical, but she knows better than anyone else at Richmond how it feels to have someone like that turn up at her place of work, and how stressful their planned encounters are, even when they're just in the same large stadium and don't need to directly interact.

2. As the owner of the club, Rebecca almost certainly knows what happened at Wembley, and she's not only well-placed to make practical arrangements like getting James banned from the match (since none of them knew he wouldn't be there) but also, as of 3x10, has come to terms with with her relationship with Rupert — both the good parts and the many, many bad parts — in a way that enables her to interact with him when necessary without massive emotional distress, while also keeping very firm boundaries in place. Basically, she, unlike Ted, could offer advice based on relevant personal experience.

3. Jamie could finally find out that Ted didn't have him sent back to Man City — while it would be nice for Ted to say it, Rebecca is better placed to give the full story, and she and Jamie have a lot in common when it comes to expressing their hurt in a way that leaves a lot of collateral damage.

4. Explains why they're hugging in the finale.

#ted lasso #jamie tartt #rebecca welton #tl 3.11 #some day i will stop complaining about this writing choice #but today is not that day #could also have had jamie talk to georgie and left it at that #or leaned into the ted/dottie vs jamie/georgie parallel since those situations are actually comparable #both mother/son duos with shared trauma related to their father/(ex-)husband #but jamie and georgie came out of it really close — at least currently — while ted and dottie's relationship is fairly strained #abuse mention #kvetch oc

[mother-of-houseplants-2]

while i'm on my fiona-as-monica-stand-in bullshit:

monica being like "i get it. i know what it's like. i was once where you are right now." IS INSANE TO ME???? MA'AM THAT'S YOUR DAUGHTER???? HELLO??? and then -

fiona's sad little smile as monica says "you have no idea how bad it is" BECAUSE SHE DOES KNOW. SHE KNOWS IT ALL TOO WELL. BUT THEN????

the fact that it's LIP who says "try me" ???? I'M GOING INSANE. FIONA AND LIP AS MONICA AND FRANK PARALLELS/STAND-INS IS KILLING ME. AND IT DOESN'T END THERE????

fiona going "i know how he treated you" because he treats her the same way im !!!!!!!! and THEN!!!!

the fact that she ACKNOWLEDGES that she was forced into this role by his negligence/abuse AND HER ABANDONMENT, the fact that she outright says "i'm not his wife. YOU ARE," the fact that she TELLS MONICA "YOUR LEAVING MADE ME HAVE TO STEP INTO YOUR SHOES. YOU LEFT YOUR CHILDREN AND MADE ME THEIR MOTHER. YOU LEFT YOUR HUSBAND AND MADE ME HIS WIFE."

i'm on the ground.

#fiona gallagher #fiona gallagher’s childhood #fiona and her kids #fuck frank all my homies hate frank #fuck monica gallagher all my homies hate monica gallagher #fiona and monica #being terrible parallels of one another #the implications of this scene are driving me crazy #what do you MEAN you know what your daughter is going through with her father because it's just like what you went through with your husban #why would you SAY this #frank and monica i'm coming for your blood #tw abuse mention #sort of #parentification #shameless meta #normal things that normal people say to their kids

[prophetictense]

do not speak to me like that

letters to his father, franz kafka ; ted lasso, s2e8, dir. matt lipsey written by jamie lee ; father, the front bottoms ; seven, taylor swift ; the family jewel, marina ; cut, catherine lacey

#hope i didnt accidentally steal anyone's post with this! #jamie tartt #on fathers #web weaving #parallels #stills #ted lasso #franz kafka #the front bottoms #taylor swift #marina #abuse mention #(dont know if the last tag applies but better safe than sorry) #catherine lacey #not my best post but one i still care about #logs #tswift is for miri

[lazaruspiss]

Eventually I wanna read whatever willis todd appearances there are bc that one post from a while back is still so wild to me. Willis doesnt seem to ever come up as an antagonistic force in jasons life bc he just wasnt /around/. Not to say you cant be mad at a parent for being absentee, but with jason, specifically willis had very little influence in his story overall. He isnt there and i think that might be the point.

#and i mentioned this back then too but #as a story its much more interesting to see willis as a victim of the prison system rather than a straight forward abusive father #but yeah. i havent read like. any comics with willis in them so dont source me on him lol

[literallyjusttoa]

Finals are coming up and I haven’t been able to do ANYTHING so I thought I’d make a quick angst post to let y’all know I’m not dead.

Real quick TW// for discussion of abusive relationships.

I think about Apollo and Zeus a lot. Because it wasn’t always bad. There were moments of calm, moments of camaraderie. And I know those were the moments Apollo clung too, when he felt alone and unloved. He became obsessed with those moments, those small happy times. He convinced himself that if he was just a bit more demure, a bit more obedient, his father would go back to telling him little jokes or smiling at his songs. And the worst part was that this was true. Every inch Apollo gave up to his father earned him praise, every piece of himself he tore apart was met with joyous approval. Zeus only ever wanted a son he could keep on a leash, so Apollo spent his life tightening the collar.

And Apollo put all his time trying to make up for the fact that he was Apollo. He talked to much and loved too loud and cried too often and sang too truthfully. And he made these strengths his weaknesses, to bend himself into the shape his father preferred. It became his life’s work, making a mockery of himself. And when it stormed he would weep for his children, who he desperately tried to teach to be better than him, without knowing what better truly meant. And he wept for his brothers and sisters, for the lives they had to lead in a city of false pride. And he wept for his father, who could never love him. And he wept for himself, because he could never stop loving his father. Because it wasn’t always bad, and that was all Apollo had to cling to.

Sometimes, the man who destroyed Apollo’s life was a good person. That’s what made the hurt even harder to bear.

#my obsession with Apollos daddy issues does NOT say anything about me shut up I’m perfectly stable #tw: abuse mention #trials of apollo #toa apollo #lester papadopoulos #pjo zeus #sunny speaks #also to be clear Zeus is NOT a good person #Apollo just really wants to think his father is a good man bc no one wants their parent to be the scum of the earth

[datastate]

just... as much as i hate to say it, i don’t think kai would ever be able to kill his father. and it’s only after he resolved himself against asunaro that he would have the ability to even raise a hand against him, but even then only if he was really pushed to it - and there is a lot he will endure until he hits that point.

#he's a shitty father but it's still. It's Complicated. #jestersvaguely #father abuse mention

[sunnydreadfu11]

Just thinking about how Gicheul wears a cross on his neck and even has a crucifix on his bedroom wall but refused to set foot inside the church as if he doesn’t believe he’s good enough to be in such a place. And how Junmo avoided visiting his mother-in-law for essentially the same reason. She was the only one in Euijeong’s family who was kind to him and saw only good in him even when he didn’t think he deserved it.

#these two are halves of a whole #it’s killing me it kills me #not to mention they both come from households with abusive fathers #and they’re both caught between trying not to be what everyone thinks they are #and falling short of their own standards #the worst of evil #jung gicheul #park junmo/seungho #yu euijeong #kdrama

[obeetlebeetle]

-

-

-

#andyhap leeoa masterpost i guess. hi btw sorry it's just for me again #also the oa's disillusionment at the failure of her father and his role being usurped and corrupted by hap. literalized in andy this time! #oh and also prairie's foiled attempt at escaping from her parents control/medical abuse #which andy also subsumes! in his behavior towards zoomer #not even mentioning the very clear pattylee parallels but it reminds me of august in hap's bathtub. the bluebeard of it all #the oa #a murder at the end of the world

[stargirlfeyre]

If Nesta was never abusive to Feyre then why does she hear Nesta’s voice in her head whenever she thinks something bad about her? A trauma response that Emerie also has because of the years she spent being degraded? Hate to break it to you but a trauma response like that does not simply come from “being mean” or “sibling fights”.

#feyre archeron #nesta archeron #pro feyre #high lady feyre #and before a dumbass gets in my mentions I’m not comparing nesta and emerie’s father #I’m simply stating how both emerie and feyre have the same trauma response because both of them were verbally abused #feyre would not have the same trauma response that emerie does if what nesta said to her wasn’t severe and damaging to her mentally #feyre darling

[yardsards]

I guess to follow up that I know as a fandom we agree that Odalia favors the twins but I kinda just realize, we haven’t seen her intact with them that much either. Does she favor them really? Or does she neglect them while abusing amity the most? And what do they think of her?

i think the facts that she favors them AND the fact that she just neglects them more while abusing amity more are both true

(i think around early s1 that was one of the sources of their rivalry with amity. amity resented them for being odalia's favorite, they resented amity because she got more attention from both parents)

i think it's best represented by that one scene in coth where she's scolding amity like "you've even got the twins to act out!" (whereas we know well that the twins do not need prompting to "act out" and that their plans for causing chaos were way more extreme than amity's). the mix of blaming amity but also clearly not knowing anything about her oldest children.

i think she may even have moments of expressing affection to them but it's things that just feel hollow. praises that feel more like she's praising herself, expensive gifts that don't suit their tastes at all, etc.

most of what we hear them say about her in canon is just "don't tell mom!" i think they mostly see her as the threat she is. but at the same time their feelings towards her are probably complicated, the way most people's feelings towards their shitty parents are at that age.

i think when they were young, they might have gravitated more towards her than alador, because they were her favorites but not his. but as they grew up they realized that both of their parents were pretty equally neglectful to them.

my headcanon is that soon post-divorce, they're equally wary of both alador and odalia, because both parents neglected them pretty equally throughout their childhood. but as time progresses, alador improves and apologizes while odalia stays stuck in her old ways and refuses to acknowledge her mistakes, so they slowly end up not talking to her anymore. like it's more of a gradual thing than the way amity cut her off. (i had begun exploring this idea in a post-canon fic that i never ended up finishing)

#eliot posts #toh #the owl house #odalia blight #emira blight #edric blight #i am projecting a wee bit onto them bc my family dynamic was like #i was my parents' favourite but my sister got more attention especially from my mother #(and my mother would POINT OUT that she was giving my sister more attention to like. make me jealous??? and my father was very obvious- #about favouring me. idk as some weird way to form a rivalry between us or something???) #so i'm kind of drawing from personal experience when i make the conjecture #that being the favourite and being neglected more (but directly abused less) can go hand in hand sometimes #tho yea being the favorite and being neglected more can Seem like v contradictory things of you aren't raised in that kind of situation lol #abuse mention

[dailykafka]

There is only one episode from those early years that I remember directly, perhaps you remember it too. I was whining persistently for water one night, certainly not because I was thirsty, but in all probability partly to be annoying, partly to amuse myself. After a number of fierce threats had failed, you lifted me out of my bed, carried me out onto the pavlatche and left me awhile all alone, standing outside the locked door in my nightshirt. I do not mean to say that this was wrong of you, perhaps at that time there really was no other way of having a peaceful night, but I mention it as a characteristic example of the way you brought me up and the effect it had on me. This incident almost certainly made me obedient for a time, but it damaged me on the inside. I was by nature unable to reconcile the simple act (as it seemed to me) of casually asking for water with the utter horror of being carried outside. Years later it still tormented me that this giant man, my father, the ultimate authority, could enter my room at any time and, almost unprovoked, carry me from my bed out onto the pavlatche, and that I meant so little to him.

— Franz Kafka, letter to his father

#mention of child abuse #cw child abuse #franz kafka #letter to his father #letters #page 22 #quotes