on the topic of emotional abuse
Sep. 29th, 2009 02:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flamingswordWhile I have issues (and tend to talk about them, often at length), I know that you have issues, too. Just because I don't point them out and say, "ooh, where did you get that shiny warped perspective?! you are so beautifully broken!!" does not mean that I don't see you. I see you; I see us.
If you wonder why I consider you family when we have never met and have no visible thing in common, this is why.
I don't blame my mom for the rare but unkind things she said about me during fights when she was fucked up in the head after Larry died. She wasn't entirely wrong, I didn't have any sense at the time, and while I wasn't stupid I didn't actually care whether I lived or died. I'm not saying it was okay, I'm just saying that I was not blameless those times. I do blame my step-dad for yelling at me not to cry. I don't care whether he was affected by the gas. Larry wasn't that close to him; he hadn't lost much. He gets no passes to have been that much of a doucheface. I am utterly disinterested in forgiving him.
Dad never really said anything mean to me that I remember, but he never said much to me at all. Sometimes that's all it takes to feel unloved, or conditionally loved, or hapahazardly once-in-a-while loved when it's not even anything to do with you. I wonder how fucked up it is that I was comforted that I knew my father's apathy toward me was nothing personal before I knew the word apathy. And I've been reading at the collegiate level since I was eight, so ... good work, Dad.
That's why I know self-hatred. I recognize it in every face, but in some the recognition is a little more personal. You don't have anything to explain to me. An unexpected silence, an odd metaphor, a particular bit of self-deprecating humor sold me your secrets a long time ago. But here we are - still here, still us. We took where we each came from and made something else out of it, parents who resented us, or ignored us, or mocked us, or hated the freaks they didn't know we were. We love our parents better than they deserve, most of us. But we are brothers and sisters here, better than I ever knew to wish for when I needed you all so desperately.
Sometimes I am SO FUCKING GRATEFUL for you, any of you, for the most pointless or complaining or fannish or completelydeleted ableist metaphor post, just because I need you to continue to exist, AND YOU DO. Because I need you, and you THERE YOU ARE. Sometimes I read things like that article, and it reminds me to say so: so this is me, saying so, willing to be vulnerable in front of you, and tell you how I need you, have needed you for most of my life, how lonely I was when I didn't have you there where I knew I wasn't alone in trying to deal with the horrible shit life usually was by trying to make it the other things it could be.
You don't have to make the world perpetually wonderful. You don't have to say things beautiful or deep or wise to make my day less terrible. Really, all you have say is 'hi'. Because as long as I can see you I have faith in humanity, and even if I don't exactly have hope, I have something that says that the world doesn't have to be any better than it is. I have you.
Thank you.
If you wonder why I consider you family when we have never met and have no visible thing in common, this is why.
I don't blame my mom for the rare but unkind things she said about me during fights when she was fucked up in the head after Larry died. She wasn't entirely wrong, I didn't have any sense at the time, and while I wasn't stupid I didn't actually care whether I lived or died. I'm not saying it was okay, I'm just saying that I was not blameless those times. I do blame my step-dad for yelling at me not to cry. I don't care whether he was affected by the gas. Larry wasn't that close to him; he hadn't lost much. He gets no passes to have been that much of a doucheface. I am utterly disinterested in forgiving him.
Dad never really said anything mean to me that I remember, but he never said much to me at all. Sometimes that's all it takes to feel unloved, or conditionally loved, or hapahazardly once-in-a-while loved when it's not even anything to do with you. I wonder how fucked up it is that I was comforted that I knew my father's apathy toward me was nothing personal before I knew the word apathy. And I've been reading at the collegiate level since I was eight, so ... good work, Dad.
That's why I know self-hatred. I recognize it in every face, but in some the recognition is a little more personal. You don't have anything to explain to me. An unexpected silence, an odd metaphor, a particular bit of self-deprecating humor sold me your secrets a long time ago. But here we are - still here, still us. We took where we each came from and made something else out of it, parents who resented us, or ignored us, or mocked us, or hated the freaks they didn't know we were. We love our parents better than they deserve, most of us. But we are brothers and sisters here, better than I ever knew to wish for when I needed you all so desperately.
Sometimes I am SO FUCKING GRATEFUL for you, any of you, for the most pointless or complaining or fannish or completely
You don't have to make the world perpetually wonderful. You don't have to say things beautiful or deep or wise to make my day less terrible. Really, all you have say is 'hi'. Because as long as I can see you I have faith in humanity, and even if I don't exactly have hope, I have something that says that the world doesn't have to be any better than it is. I have you.
Thank you.
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Re: Schweitzer says it for me
Date: 2009-10-11 12:21 pm (UTC)I have a bone to pick with that quote. But I can't put my finger on it, and I still haven't slept. Nap first, sense later.
Interestingly...
Date: 2009-10-12 01:13 am (UTC)