"It's like a hole in my life, an eight-year hole. That's what I find interesting in people's lives, the holes, the gaps, sometimes dramatic, but sometimes not dramatic at all. There are catalepsies, or a kind of sleepwalking through a number of years, in most lives. Maybe it's in these holes that movement takes place."
—Gilles Deleuze, On Philosophy
“but is it still abuse if the abuser doesn’t seem to realize he’s doing it?”
YES IT IS. Abuse is defined by the pain and trauma victims go thru, your suffering and fear don’t go down one bit because “abuser may not be aware of what they’re doing”, actually, it goes up! Being tortured by someone who doesn’t care enough to even freaking realize they’re damaging you is much more dehumanizing and emotionally taxing than at least knowing the abuser’s intention clearly and that they’re achieving exactly what they want to achieve. Being lost about abuser’s intentions adds on to the trauma!
It doesn’t matter if they meant to do it or not (in most cases they absolutely meant it or didn’t actually give a shit if they’re hurting you or not as long as they get what they want). Staying safe from this person is important. Stopping the abuse and preventing any future abuse is important. Healing is important. Label the abuser with whatever you need that helps you to heal. Forget abuser’s side of the story and focus on yours. What they agree or disagree, what they’re aware or aren’t aware isn’t nearly as important as stopping that person from harming you, and preventing them from hurting you ever again.
Abusive parents just love entering our rooms uninvited and then yelling “WHY IS THAT ON THE FLOOR”, thus creating the illusion that it’s perfectly fine and acceptable to intrude in another person’s space and then find any excuse to yell and berate them. Parents will act as if this is because you should be neat, but no, they’re not yelling at us because they want us to be neat, they’re yelling because they want to yell, and (1) object on the floor is excuse enough. Random lash-outs don’t help us be more organized. Random yelling doesn’t inspire us to be neat.
What it does is makes sure that we cannot relax in our own space, that we cannot feel at ease and justified sitting in our own room, or lying on our own bed, without expecting someone to burst in with intention to lash out at us. Our need to be able to relax and rest in our own space is higher priority than us being neat, and to force us to fret over every single object in our room when we should be tending to our own needs, resting our minds and feeling safe, is cruel and harmful.
We should be able to rest and relax, even if we’re in a mess. Our own piece of mind and the needs of our body are more important than maintaining the perfect order. Humans are messy sometimes, it can mean we’re stressed, upset, sick, busy with something else, chasing a dream, chasing little bit of happiness, overwhelmed, function better in mess, desire some creative disorder, or thousand other things, and none of these things is a reason to lash out or berate us. Mess isn’t a crime, it’s not a sin, it doesn’t cause mental illness, it could sooner be a symptom of one. To lash out at a kid for not keeping order is nothing but evil. Let children keep their space as they like. If you want them to know how to be neat then teach them how to organize Without Ever Yelling, and without taking their own little functional space that can be just how they like and prefer, away from them. Does the price of your child’s neatness have to be their mental health? Is it worth forcing a kid to keep perfect order, to take their ability to be calm and safe in their own room? The answer is no. Have some goddamn limit to how far you would sink to lash out at your children.
"damn I'm crying over an insect" "why am I having such strong feelings over how the sky looks" "it's weird how happy this small thing made me feel" THAT'S BECAUSE YOU LIVE HERE!!!! you live on this earth. everything all the time is an experience, no matter how common or mundane. this world is unique. so are its small moments. it is good to enjoy a tiny thing. you love the world even at its smallest scale.
In another universe, we were allowed to be children. We could shut our eyes without fear of shadows lurking beyond the door frame, or screams lighting up the quiet of the night. You wouldn’t have to comb my hair or walk me to school and I wouldn’t have to shove the tear stained pillow over my ears to drown out the voices. We wouldn’t have to cling to the other whilst he drummed against the door with a bat, splintering the wood with every beat.
In another universe, our brains would be wired differently and we would believe in a world better than this. Our childhood would be a vivid dream bursting with rose tinted fragments instead of a blurred nightmare stuffed deep within the wrinkles of our grey matter.
In another universe, you might have stayed longer and I wouldn’t have been left alone in the wasteland. You wouldn’t settle and I wouldn’t grind myself to the bone in order to escape. I wouldn’t run away at every chance I got and you would like yourself.
In another universe, I might not know you as you are now. You’d be different and so would I. Perhaps we would know each other less and perhaps we would be all the worse for it.