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Latest Posts by lucaland - Page 2
Recognizing abusive friendship is really hard once you get invested. I’ve been in so many and I still never recognize it when it starts. Abusers looking for targets will aim at someone who’s generally not very-well accepted in their community, struggles with isolation and desire to be acknowledged, is lonely or desperate for friends, because it’s easy to make someone believe they got something they desperately want to have.
They will share your interests and opinions, immediately have tons in common with you, make fun, engaging, supportive coversations, tell you stories that make them look good and sweet, make you feel safe and like you have a real chance in having a best friend in them. They will also want to test your compassion by revealing some vulnerabilties and painful events, to see if you will rush to comfort them and try to make them feel better. Once they know enough about you to use your weak spots against you, and to always be able to play the victim and make you feel sorry for them when they hurt you, it’s a game of time - either you will eventually realize this person has no empathy for you and is willing to put you thru horrible shit and feel nothing about it, or they will take the last piece of your energy and patience they can and then abandon you brutally, when you need them the most. They will of course, frame it as your fault, because how could you expect them to be your friend.
I’ll try to list some of the things I’ve noticed repeat in abusive friendships:
1. Lack of boundaries. This person will find one way or another to have problem with your boundaries, they might act like your boundaries are hurting them, or criticize you for “not trusting them” or “not caring for them enough” if you want to keep some things private. They will also make you feel like taking distance and space from them is hurting them, and act as if it’s an act of aggression or betrayal, and you were supposed to be there for them at all times.
2. Very fast progression. They will want to have won you over in shortest amount of time possible, so they could start getting what they want. They could start acting very affectionate, as if you’re already close for a long time, reveal too intimate, too vulnerable details about themselves, and get you to do the same, talk as if they already know all about you, or plan things as if it’s already settled that you’ll be friends for a long time. They will convince you that they’re a perfect person for you right away, and you’re the perfect person for them.
3. Feelings of obligation. You feel as if you’re the only one who can help this person, only one who they trust to never abandon them. You feel as if you lead this person on to rely on you, to count on your friendship, and you cannot bring yourself to take this away from them. You are the only one who knows how hard they’re struggling, how badly they need your help and friendship, and it feels like they’re always in some kind of a crisis and desperately in need of you. Even when they hurt you, you feel obligated to care about their situation more than yourself, and put your own feelings in the back to focus on what they’re going thru.
4. Fear of being the bad friend. You’ve heard so much about how others have hurt this person, and you grow scared that you’ll become one of those bad people. After comforting this person about their bad experiences, it would feel really bad to cause them another one, and make you look like a hypocrite. It gets so bad that you have to watch out what to say, how to put boundaries, and how to call them out on anything, out of fear that you will hurt them, they seem too fragile and too easily hurt to ever be able to handle even an implication that they’re doing you wrong. In the end, you let them get away with anything, convincing yourself they would never be doing it on purpose, and finding yourself unable to let them know out of fear that it would hurt them. If you do tell them, you end up having to listen about how bad they felt about having to hear it.
5. You can’t live up to their standards. This person has expectations of you, and if you fail them even a little, there’s consequences, and you might find yourself at the receiving end of criticism, verbal abuse, insults, humiliation and blame. There’s a narrow frame of who you’re allowed to be and how you’re supposed to act and feel, and you’re not allowed to exist outside these criteria, and you can tell that your friend will either hurt or abandon you completely if you grow and branch out beyond what’s acceptable for them. You end up fretting their backlash at any risky action you take, and end up hiding your opinions and general state of mind just to stay safe. You might end up changing for them, subtly, and feeling constant anxiety that they will abandon you if you don’t act as required. (Just to be clear, standards of “no racism, no homophobia, no sexism, no trashing minorities, no supporting dictatorships, and being against rape, fascism and genocide” are good standards. All of you should be having those standards. Bad standards are about how you look, what you weigh, what grades you have, how much you earn, how much abuse can you take without breaking, how much shit can you tolerate, which ones of your interests are good, what you’re allowed to feel and talk about - nobody should be inflicting those on you. None of that is for your own good.)
6. There are repeating periods of good and bad times. Even abusive friendships can have periods where everything seems just fine, calm, your friend is in a good mood, so you are allowed to be in a good mood as well, you get to have fun and you start to forget there ever was a time when this friendship made you feel awful. These periods are essential for keeping up the friendship, because any person would get away from a friend who made them feel horrible at all times, and abusers know this, and make sure you get nice and relaxed before they decide it’s safe to lash out at you, or throw another crisis at you. Friendships are not supposed to have intense ups and downs, they’re supposed to be your refuge, your safe place where you can count on things remaining stable.
7. You are getting stressed, insecure, upset and sad. Friendships should not make you feel this way. Of course, there’s always a possibility in long term friendships that something happens that gets you upset once or twice, but a new friendship, short friendship or any friendship should never be able to cause you repeated stress, pain, insecurity and drama. If a friend is cause of all these feelings, it is very likely they don’t have compassion for you, and don’t actually care what kind of effect they’re having on your life - which means they’re not your friend. Actual friend would care deeply about what they’re causing you, and would go far to avoid making you stressed, upset and sad - after all, don’t you make sure you’re not making their life filled with stress and anxiety?
8. Your instincts are telling you something is wrong. You might be getting surges of anger or feel trapped and repressed, you might notice you’re not able to express how you feel, and always have to play down your reactions and responses, you don’t feel free to take your time for yourself as you’d want to, you always feel guilty or like you failed your friend, and you know this is not how a friendship should make you feel. Still, you feel a lot of affection and care for this person so you can’t just walk away from them, even if things do feel wrong, and you want to give it another chance or wait to see if it gets better, so you bear with it and try to ignore your instincts, at least for a while, because the alternative has became scary for you.
9. You’re scared to leave. Even when you realize this friendship is adding stress and pain onto your life, and that it’s became toxic for you, leaving it becomes a big, almost impossible task. You’re worried about how your friend will cope, how will they react if you tell them, if there will be backlash, if they’ll be in the middle of crisis and you’ll add onto that stress, if they will start insulting you and telling you that you’re just as bad as anyone else in their life, if they’ll badmouth you to other people, and worst of all, you’re worried if you would deserve all that by leaving the friendship. And no, you wouldn’t. You don’t have to nurture anyone who hurts you, and you’re allowed to walk away from anything that harms your life.
If you thought of someone while reading this, I hope you will know that you have the right to be upset with this person, regardless of weather it would hurt or upset them. You have the right to consider that maybe this person isn’t the ideal friend for you, and that you don’t owe them your friendship no matter how obligated they make you feel.
I need to mention that you don’t have to prove or know that someone is abusive in order to cut them out of your life. There are bad friendships that aren’t abusive, sometimes two people just don’t mix well and if supporting one person is harming another, that’s not working out well, and shouldn’t continue. You have the right to demand only good friendships, only positive ones, that bring warmth and care to both you and your friend. You don’t have to struggle thru bad ones, you don’t owe anyone to make their life better at your own expense. Needing different type of friend is reason enough. There are friendships that are good for both people, and that’s the only type you should strive for.
if I’m so “useless” then why do you keep using me?
if I’m so “worthless” then why do you order me around?
if I’m so “incapable” why do you care so much about decreasing my confidence?
If I’m such a “burden” then why do you care so much for keeping me dependant on you and making sure I can’t leave and be on my own?
If I’m so “stupid” then why do keep talking to me? Why not find someone else?
if I’m so “ungrateful” then why do you want me around? You shouldn’t want to give your time and energy to ungrateful people now, should you?
If I’m such a “monster” then why do you not try to get away from me? Why would you bother keeping me against your will, aren’t you scared?
If I’m such a “horrible demon” then why are you not running away from me? Why are you talking to me as if you couldn’t be less worried about what happens to you next?
If I’m such a “selfish creature” then why do you give me anything at all? It’s almost like you need to hold something against me, if I’m selfish why should I care if I’m called that?
It’s almost like your manipulative logic doesn’t hold up to tiniest bit of scrutiny. So why are you lying so much? Saying one thing and then doing as if the opposite is true doesn’t show you in good light. It turns out I’ve been plenty useful, plenty valuable, capable, bearing you as a burden even, smart enough to see thru you, grateful enough to tolerate your bullshit even though you never gave me a good reason to, harmless to you to the point where you could take your shit out on me unbothered and unafraid, selfless enough to put away my very own well being for the sake of your needs, so why do you think now, after all, I would forgive you lying to me? Don’t expect forgiveness from me.
Abusive parents love to pretend that whatever is going on at home is not “real life”, and you, would have no chance of surviving in “real life”. In fact, you know nothing about “real life” at all, you are an dumb, uninformed slob of ignorance and know nothing about living at all. According to them, you have been living in some kind of “bubble” where no real life events have been happening, and all of your experiences and opinions have nothing to do with reality. They even have the nerve to tell you to “start living in the real life.”
You have been living nothing but real life. You had a real life experience of surviving in abusive environment. You have lived a reality of existing next to an abuser. There is nothing unreal or fake about your experiences, your abusive home is no bubble, it’s a real, definite hell that you went thru. There’s no question of you surviving in real life, you literally were surviving the worst of it already. You proved you are capable of surviving the worst of the worst, being in presence of a predator who was capable of brainwashing and manipulating you to keep you scared and unbelieving in your own senses and experiences.
Every single thing you lived thru was real life. You took on real life from the second you were born. Your circumstances were hard and cruel, you got all advantages taken away from you, replaced with sabotage and hatred, and you’re still alive now. There isn’t a harsher reality than what you already went thru. Your experiences count in the real world. What happened to you affects the real world. Your parents have done nothing but lie to you. You were living in the real world entire time.
There’s this really specific experience in growing up with abusive parents, because they act so emotionally immature at all times. And when you’re a kid, it just feels normal, right? You’re emotionally immature, they’re immature, you’re on the same level, you don’t know any better, you think that’s how humans are.
But then later, you actually develop some empathy, awareness of other people’s feelings and their inner worlds and thoughts and situations, and you outgrow your parent’s maturity. And at that point you’re just so used to tolerating their shit you don’t even think twice, you’re the adult now, you let them have their way, you forgive and forget, clean their messes, take care of their feelings and make it all okay for them.
But then at one point, you realize you have adults acting like literal spoiled children, when you’ve outgrown this a while ago, and you ask yourself, when they gonna grow? When they gonna develop some self awareness? And then you go and assume they just never had a mature presence in their life so they had no way to learn (which isn’t true because then how did you learn it?), and you go and try to teach them by showing them a good example. You become extra nice, patient, explain things to them, cater to their inner worlds, try to explain to them that there’s people other than them on this world, who have feelings and hearts and deep inner world and this is significant and needs to be respected. But all they ever respond with is “yes I am those people now cater to me”.
It is impossible to teach abusive parents by showing them a good example. They will insist you do it over and over again, and then exploit your kindness to the max. Literally the kinder you get, the worse they get. They soon expect you to run after their every need, to jump at their every whim, and in return they insult you for a good measure, call you worthless and lazy, then they go to sleep without a care in the world.
Do not do this. They’re not growing up because they benefit so strongly from acting like a kid. Once all of their immaturity privileges and tolerations are suspended, and they’re forced to act like a proper human being in order to keep gettinng what they want, suddenly they’ll know exactly how to do it.
Your parents are not immature, they’re abusive. They’re not childish, they’re manipulative. They’re not silly, they’re self obsessed, selfish and forceful. You gave them enough benefit of the doubt, you do not have to wait all your life for them to grow up. Their due for that was long time ago and they have no business expecting you to be their parent.
“Resisting your abusers is not abuse. Talking back to your abusers is not abuse. Screaming and fighting back to save yourself is not abuse. Trying to escape from them is not abuse. Calling them out is not abuse. Hurting them is not abuse.”
— only if you had tremendous amount of power over them, it could be called abuse, but in that case, they would never dare to abuse you in the first place because their life would depend on you, and not the reverse. You do not have the power to trap or abuse them, and if they pretend otherwise, they’re lying. (via furiousgoldfish)
“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.
Even if they say “they didn’t mean it”, they’re still responsible for what they did.
Even if they say “they don’t remember it”, they’re still responsible for what they did.
Even if they say “you’re delusional, I would never do that, you made it up”, they’re still responsible for what they did, and for trying to gaslight and invalidate your memories.
Even if they say “I didn’t do it, and even if I did, I would be right to do it”, they’re still guilty for what they did.
Even if they have excuses, they’re still responsible for what they did.
Even if they act like it would have been crazy to expect from them to act any different way, they’re still responsible for what they did to you.
Even if they come at you with an entire agenda of how you should perceive what they did so it actually “benefits you”, even if they insist they did it for your own good, they’re still responsible for what they did to you, and for lying about it.
Even if they cry about how much it pains them to be accused of hurting you, they’re still responsible for what they did to you.
Even if they cry about how much they love you and how they did it all out of love and never meant to hurt you, it’s still their responsibility for what they did to you.
Even if they act like what they did shouldn’t have hurt you and you’re the one responsible for taking damage, for being sensitive to being abused, it’s still their responsibility for what they did to you.
Even if they blame you for what they did to you, they’re still responsible for what they did.
Even if they insist someone else did it to them too, even if they insist they had it worse than you, even if they say it’s a cultural thing, they’re still responsible for what they did to you.
Even if it was long ago, and they act like you’re wrong for remembering such old wrong doing, it’s still something they did, and they’re still responsible for doing it.
They can lie and deny and accuse and blame and invalidate and gaslight. It doesn’t absolve them of responsibility for what they did. It doesn’t absolve them from guilt.
Nothing can absolve abusers from responsibility for their own actions. Nothing.
thinking about how when you experience a lot of shame in your formative years (indirectly, directly, as abuse or just as an extant part of your environment) it becomes really difficult to be perceived by other people in general. the mere concept of someone watching me do anything, whether it's a totally normal activity or something unfamiliar of embarrassing, whether I'm working in an excel spreadsheet or being horny on main, it just makes my skin crawl and my brain turn to static because I cannot convince myself that it's okay to be seen and experienced. because to exist is to be ashamed and embarrassed of myself, whether I'm failing at something or not, because my instinctive reaction to anyone commenting on ANYTHING I'm doing is to crawl into a hole and die. it's such a bizarre and dehumanizing feeling to just not be able to exist without constantly thinking about how you are being Perceived. ceaseless watcher give me a god damn break.
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.
victims of abuse will be like, this person has now made me cry myself to sleep about 30 times, i have flashbacks of things they’ve done and said to me, they know how to hit me right in my worst insecurity and guilt so i feel horrible for days and months, their comments make me feel worthless and like i shouldn’t even be alive, and being around them makes me feel small and meaningless and sometimes suicidal but maybe that’s just me, maybe they’re not abusive? i have to give them benefit of the doubt, what if i’m not justified to kick them out of my life?
Your parents are lying to you. You do have what it takes to survive. They're not intrinsical to your existence, but to the sabotage of it. Without them nothing could stop you from figuring it out. All you need is already inside you. They do not get to decide what you're capable of.
Abusive parents force you to hide things you would otherwise never have to worry about hiding, because you learn that they can flip out about anything, make a scene from anything, misunderstand one detail and go insane over it. So you don’t tell them about anything you can avoid, and you try to deal with things yourself as much as humanely possible, which takes the burden of taking care of you from them, and onto your shoulders.
This is dangerous as well because you don’t tell them about a friend who did something horrible to you, you don’t tell them about a sociopath who tried to groom or touch you, you don’t tell them about horrifying heartbreak you feel when someone abandons you, you don’t tell them when your world is falling apart because you know that at best, they’ll be uninterested, at worst, they will tell you it was your fault and you deserved it.
Living in secrecy becomes normal and when you develop trauma symptoms it once again feels like it’s your fault because you never said anything, you never told them how much they were hurting you, you didn’t speak up and open up about your problems. But how in the world would you? You know if you had, all that you would get is insults, blame, threats, guilt and shame thrown in your face, how could you possibly take that on top of having trauma symptoms? You can’t, it’s not worth risking. Suffering in silence becomes your only survival option, and you watch your heart break a little more every day that nobody cares that you’re breaking apart.
genuinely one of my favourite details about Bram Stokers Dracula that isn't really transferred to the pop culture is that vampires have irridescent eyes, they appear brown at a glance, however when light is reflected on them they seem to go red!
Sometimes you guys will say things like "writing is like dragging your vagina through a WWII trench full of rusty nails and wires" and it makes me think we are doing different things.
trick me once shame on you. shame on you. shame on you shame on you i hate you. i ltierally trusted you.
I can change! / digital collage
[all images sourced from wikipedia commons]
note: i will be posting my collage to a new account: flowerhoundart!
every couple of months i put my life together and take it apart and put it back together because. well. what else
Nosferatu is so blatant and unsubtle in its depiction of a vampire attack as being analogous to sexual assault, and there will still be people saying ‘you guys are intellectually lazy and Weird for saying so’. alright well he attacks his victim in the night, in bed or summoned from their beds against their will, and they wake up bloody with their clothes torn off, feeling violated. Nosferatu climbs on top of Thomas in bed and assaults him. even later, when they know they’re dealing with a monster or demon, he tries to tell Ellen and can’t, because it’s ‘too foul’. and people claiming Ellen summoned Orlok ‘accidentally on purpose’ is borderline offensive to be honest. she was a child - praying - and she said ‘God, an angel, a spirit, please, anything, comfort me’ - she obviously wasn’t thinking to the dark end of what ‘anything’ could encompass, and the film definitely isn’t about her taking ‘responsibility’ for a problem she ‘created’. in what world is Eternal Evil this girl’s fault in the first place.