keyholeslumber:

modestinferno:

circumlocute:

Books that people read romantically but shouldn’t because they’re missing the point:

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

That’s your opinion.

there’s nothing romantic about a pedophile rapist, the senseless murder-suicide of teenagers because families can’t get their shit together or the hypocrisy of the roaring 20s

FINALLY SOMEONE SAYS IT

I’d like to add Wuthering Heights, because that is incredibly fucked up if you read it through a romantic lens.

growing up autistic / growing up gaslit

theoriginalmkp:

I.

this is the first lesson you learn:
you are always wrong.

there is no electric hum buzzing through the air.
there is no stinging bite to the sweetness of the mango.
there is no bitter metallic tang to the water.

there is no cruelty in their laughter, no ambiguity in the instructions, no reason to be upset.
there is no bitter aftertaste to your sweet tea, nothing scratchy about your blanket.

the lamps glow steadily. they do not falter.

II.

this is the second lesson you learn:
you are never right.

you are childish, gullible, overly prone to tears.
you are pedantic, combative, deliberately obtuse.
you are lazy, unreliable, never on time.

you’re always making up excuses, rudely interrupting, stepping on people’s shoes.
you’re always trying to get attention, never thinking about anyone else, selfish through and through.

it’s you that’s the problem. the lamps are fine.

III.

this is the third lesson you learn:
you must always give in.

mother knows best. father knows best.
doctor knows best. teacher knows best.
this is the proper path. do not go astray.

listen to your elders, respect your betters, accept what’s given to you as your due.
bow to the wisdom of experience, the education of the professional, the clarity of an external point of view.

what do you know about lamps, anyway?

jabberwockypie:

triple-witching:

jabberwockypie:

Okay, new rule.

No more doubting myself.

No more doubt. Nope. Not doing it.

I KNOW that the abuse was That Bad. I know this. I have told people I trust who are SENSIBLE about it and gotten a lot of horrified and unimpressed looks when I reflexively try to justify it with “But it didn’t happen that often” or “But I did X first”.

Even two fucking years after I got out of that house.

“She only grabbed my hair and slammed my head against the floor because-”

No. Not doing it. NO. (Also, I was THREE. And five. And seven. And twelve. And it was ongoing. What the hell. WHO DOES THAT?)

“I said I couldn’t breathe and she said if I couldn’t breathe I wouldn’t be talking, and I mean it’s not like I DIED, so -”

No.

No more.

“I was having a temper tantrum, so she-”

No.

I was having a MELTDOWN, because I was a neurodivergent child who was being abused from at least age 2 onward, and I was in an intolerable situation.

I know that the abuse really was That Bad. Period.

No more doubt.

i got out a while back – still do this, trying to stop. my friends are still horrified every time i dredge a New Bad up from the memory hole.

it was that bad. let’s have 2018 be the year we stop prevaricating on behalf of people that hurt us.

“every time I dredge a New Bad up from the memory hole” is a very good and visceral description of what it feels like.

I very much agree! Let’s have 2018 be the year we stop prevaricating on behalf of people that hurt us.

The Memory Hole is a good analogy, but I know sometimes I’ve just casually mentioned something and stopped because the reactions of the people I’m talking to tells me this is Not Normal Childhood. I’m thirty six, and the last major time this happened was three years ago. I casually mentioned how the dynamic between myself and my mother operated when I was a preteen onward till I left home, and the person I was talking to was someone I’d been close friends with since I was thirteen, and she looked shocked. I’d told her all kinds of details of the shit my dad did to me decades ago, so it wasn’t like I was springing on her the fact that I’d been abused. She looked furious and very clearly told me that what went on between me and my mother was flat out abusive and wrong. And that wasn’t some discovered memory, or something I knew was bad that I was disclosing for the first time – that was something I’d never talked about because I never thought there was anything to talk about. My baseline, yet again, was established as way, way wrong – and with the parent no one had ever labelled the abusive one. So I’m dealing with the exhaustion, anger and bitterness I thought I’d left behind in my teenage years, in my thirties, for the OTHER parent. And while I’m yet again living with her.

So my mother just casually dropped that she’s letting my uncle stay with us again for a week in March even though last time I told her he made me feel actively unsafe and in fear of my life. Continuing her pattern of… forever, in me unequivocably laying out why I feel unsafe, followed by her minimising it, trivialising it, and ultimately, forgetting it. She conveniently forgets anything she doesn’t want to think about.

This is abuse, just as much as the sexual abuse I endured when I was a kid. This is abuse, just as much as the jealousy and emotional isolation enforced by my first serious partner.

This is abuse, this is abuse, this is abuse, and I have no way of getting away from it.

ruffboijuliaburnsides:

taibhsearachd:

naamahdarling:

i-ran-over-the-easter-bunny:

bjornwilde:

Or you should lose weight and we’ll run tests again.

I get that doctors can be assholes sometimes, but y’all making fun of people from a stance where you know jack shit about medicine compared to them

Like did a doctor say this to your face? Say that you were faking? Or were you assuming because you misinterpreted something you don’t understand?

If a doctor asks “are you SURE about xyz” it’s not because they think you’re faking, it’s because many times a patient will hold back information without realizing it and, as you ask the question again, they may remember something that they didn’t the first time.

Like idk about the specific events around the OP, and in no way am I saying that there aren’t manipulative and abusive doctors out there, but people tend to misunderstand things that they don’t know very well.

Yeah, patients do frequently get told that it’s psychological, psychosomatic, due to stress*, etc. Like, that is a really common experience people with chronic illness have, or people with “weird” illnesses like chronic fatigue, Lyme, EDS, etc.

And alas, people with weird mystery illnesses or chronic illnesses *do* often know more about their illnesses than the average GP. GPs are trained to identify and diagnose horses. They aren’t prepared for unicorns, and some think they don’t even exist.

It’s not even manipulation or abuse, it’s just being lazy, or not having the right training and not wanting to GET the right training. An ignorant doctor can do just as much damage as a malicious one.

* “Due to stress” is VALID, stress can make you very very sick, but when a doctor wants to just leave it there instead of treating it, well, that’s shitty.

I put this in tags before, but fuck it. Never mind being accused of faking it, I have had a doctor straight-up tell me, about my cardiac and neurological symptoms that have made it impossible for me to work or leave the house alone, “Huh. That’s weird. Unfortunately, we can’t do anything about that…”

No tests were run. No blood tests, no drug tests, no scans, not even a tilt-table test or the knock-off “sit down for a few minutes and then stand up while we take your blood pressure and heartrate” version of a tilt-table test that would have very quickly indicated that something is very wrong. They didn’t even suggest a referral to a specialist, the bare minimum you could do if you don’t know what the fuck you’re looking at. I’ve been suffering from a chronic, disabling condition since I was seventeen, and only now, twelve years later, have I begun to find someone who will listen and acknowledge that yeah, that’s actually a thing you’re dealing with and a problem.

Yeah, some doctors are good at their jobs. Some doctors give a shit. Some of them literally don’t listen to anything you say, and wave you off like your life-ruining symptoms are nothing, and just want you out of their office as soon as possible. All the medical training in the world doesn’t help when the person with that training fails at empathy, at listening to the people in front of them and hearing what they’re saying and acknowledging that this is a fucking human who is suffering and fixing that is literally their entire job.

“You’re probably not actually sick” or “that’s weird but I can’t fix it” is never an acceptable response, and fuck you for suggesting that chronically ill people don’t understand they’re being dismissed when almost all of us have dealt with it for literal years before we even begin to understand what’s wrong with us.

#look my stepmom is a doctor #i have a very dear friend who is in med school and I’m sure she’ll be great #but oh my god I hate doctors at large #and I have developed this hatred over years of being ignored and abused #‘maybe you misunderstood what they were saying…’ #BITE ME

I am lucky enough that my chronic illnesses are really easy to diagnose and understand for GPs: psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. Also depression, but thankfully when you go in saying “I have depression, I have tried these prescriptions, please try me on this other prescription” most GPs will kind of go “eh, okay.” I have visible signs of psoriasis, and arthritis is pretty easy to get doctors to pay attention to, even when you’re only 25 years old.

On the other hand, we have my wife, @taibhsearachd, who explained her position above. She’s had some SERIOUS BULLSHIT going on since she was 17 years old, I have been personally privy to it, and I have accompanied her to 99% of her doctor’s appointments, and despite BOTH our best efforts at getting doctors to listen – seriously, ME FROM THE OUTSIDE explaining shit that I could VISIBLY OBSERVE – we still got shit like, and I reiterate that this is literally what we were told, “Huh, that’s weird, too bad we can’t do anything about it”. Without ANYTHING BEING TESTED AT ALL.

And like, even for shit that should be easier to deal with, like “i’ve been diagnosed with clinical depression and my antidepressants don’t work anymore and I need a new one”, I’ve LITERALLY WITNESSED a goddamn doctor dismiss her request for a prescription with the statement “You’re too pretty to be depressed”

Some doctors are good. But unfortunately MANY OF THEM are fucking shit at their jobs. They, like the girl in the cubicle behind me plans on doing, became doctors for the money or prestige, or just don’t give a shit about things they’re not interested in, or WHAT THE FUCK EVER, and they are BAD AT THEIR JOBS and they ACTIVELY AVOID HELPING PEOPLE WHO DESPERATELY NEED THEIR HELP.

And that is a goddamn FACT.

Your daily reminder that dismissal of women’s reported symptoms in health situations straight up kills them.

Also, your regular reminder that if a marginalised person who has experienced discrimination says, “You’re hurting me”, your response should never be, “No, I’m not.” It should be, “Oh shit, I should listen to your words and not do that again.” Otherwise, you’re deliberately making the choice to perpetuate the harm against a vulnerable person, and that makes you an abuser. If your response is, “maybe you imagined it/misinterpreted the situation/exaggerated it”, you’re gaslighting them, and are an abuser. If you use the vulnerable person’s physical health/mental health/disability/race/class/religion/gender/sexuality as an excuse for how they’re treated differently, then you’re an abuser and a bigot and possibly a eugenicist. And if you use your status to do this to people on a regular basis because you think that status makes you better than them, then you’re a classist tool abusing those without the status to fight back.

@i-ran-over-the-easter-bunny should read what I just wrote and read what they wrote again and have a good hard think about why they’re so eager to jump in and defend people in a position of power over vulnerable sick people. Why they’re so willing to dismiss the testimony of victims of systemic violence and abuse (neglect IS violence), and accept that medical professionals THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW are morally and professionally pure and never inclined to ignore, dismiss or gaslight the people in their care because it’s easier than actually doing their damn job. People with complex and/or undiagnosed health conditions often have to become experts in their own health because doctors often don’t have enough specialised knowledge to treat them without making the choice to educate themselves further, which many are just not bothered to do. It’s just so much easier to write ‘anxiety’ or ‘obesity’ or ‘drug seeking’ on a file and forget about them.

For an example, the average dignosic window between symptoms reported and diagnosis for Ehlers Danlos Syndrome is ten years. It took my partner thirty years and probably over twenty health professionals to get a diagnosis, and only then because we did our homework and asked for referrals for a specialist who could diagnose that specific condition. Even now, with a diagnosis, we are running into doctor after doctor who are convinced it’s another specialist’s problem, including a cardiologist who acknowledged, only when pushed for clarification, that she had an electrical problem with her heart, potentially serious, but that he ‘wasn’t going to do anything about it’. In those words. Tell me who’s faking it, who knows jack shit, who misunderstood something about a cardiologist who can’t be bothered to treat a potentially serious heart condition, when it’s LITERALLY HIS JOB.

jabberwockypie:

thebibliosphere:

cedarrunn:

angstriddentrashhuman:

misangremellama:

panda-pear:

misangremellama:

Reminder for parents that though you may be struggling, it is never appropriate to use your child as your therapist/counselor. It’s unhealthy for the both of you.

Can I ask why? I’m genuinely curious

There’s a few reasons as to why its wrong.

For one, a kid is not equipped to handle a parent’s problems. I’m not saying to never express your feelings or say that you’re having a problem to a child. That can be healthy. But to use them to just dump on is too much. Children just aren’t equipped to deal with the heaviness of adult problems, especially if they’re already going through things themselves.

Two, the inherent power imbalance makes it really uncomfortable. Your child isn’t your friend, they’re your child. Even if they can offer advice, this sort of thing can become like a role reversal. They also would have a hard time separating themselves from it when it becomes too much. A lot of parents feel entitled to their childrens’ time and space, so the children can become overburdened with no reprieve and no way to express that this isn’t their job.

There’s probably more and better ways to explain this, but that’s my two cents on this.

Because I was the oldest child when my parents marriage was collapsing both of them used me to vent about the other, forcing me to justify their negative feelings about a person that I loved by virtue of their place in my life. At 10 years old I was attempting to negotiate the workings of an adult relationship that had never worked and validate their emotions without being harmful to the other. All the while I was deteriorating into an even more depressed and anxious reclusive child, losing friends and and missing out on normal experiences. I felt like I was responsible for the survival of their relationship, above my own well-being I had to figure out how to save them from divorce, from splitting the family up. I never felt like I had the right to tell them I couldn’t handle it. So I shoved everything down and became weirdly mature, too aware of the fact that I was an adult even if I didn’t want to be. Now I have severe anxiety, depression, and PTSD and I can’t even keep a job. I’m 28. Don’t do this to your kids. Please.

This is one form of whats known as parentification.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2017/03/23/your-child-is-not-your-confidant/

My father, having zero support from my mother, would seek me out during his depressive bouts and tell me about how much he wanted to die, over and over. Sometimes I even cleaned and bandaged the wounds. He told me he couldn’t talk to anyone else and I was his entire lifeline. I was nine.

In a similar vein my mother blames me all the time for not leaving my father when she wanted to. She would vent to me about how awful a man he was, how much she hated him and wanted to leave him. And then tell me it was my fault she didn’t because of what I had said. I was twelve. The fuck did I know about life other than it was awful and I was having to hide shit from social work and feeling like it was my fault.

I’m 30 now and they still do this to me. They still try to find ways to other themselves from their failure to protect me and my brother from themselves and make it my responsibility, then try to sugar coat it with “but you were such a good child” or “you’re such a great listener” or “you were so much older than your years”, like yea, cause someone fucking had to be.

Please, do not do this to your children. Please. Get help from an appropriate source, for your sake and theirs. I cannot stress how damaging this shit was to my psyche.

It’s also sometimes called Covert Incest or Emotional Incest.

My ex-mom started telling me about all of her emotional bullshit around the time her marriage to my stepfather was falling apart. I was 10 ½. (This was after a period of about two years of being utterly emotionally ABSENT because she was depressed. So on the one hand, being a child, it was kind of “Oh, hey! Mom’s paying attention to me again! Wait, no, this is actually terrible, what the fuck.”)

She put herself on this pedestal of being Amazing for not “dragging lots of men through her children’s lives”, meanwhile I was 11 and was a PARENT to my infant brother, doing a frankly-insane number of household chores, and having to be reassuring AND the family scapegoat, while being – shockingly – depressed and anxious all the time.

“I’m just venting, I don’t want you to FIX IT.” When you’re 12 or 13 and depressed-as-fuck yourself and your only PARENT has talked about being suicidal? You want to FIX IT. (If only because said parent has also told you horror stories about why foster care would be worse.)

Even later on, as an older teen and later an adult, when I saw a clear solution to a household problem or a budgeting concern, it went to “Well no, you’re just a kid”. Like “… Yes, but you’ve been talking to me about adult shit for YEARS and I’m actually right”. (Same thing with parenting my brother, really. I read PARENTING BOOKS and shit, but it’d be “You are not Sam’s parent.” Okay, but who has actually been here to witness more of his life?)

Yeah, guess who has Complex PTSD and severed contact with her biological family. Guess who – upon having a bad flashback – still defaults to trying to act as something between a secretary (to anyone older) and a parent (to any child-type-people around)? With a side of “Must shield kids if they are in trouble and deflect blame onto myself”? (Though I’ve been better about that one.)

Because even if life was falling apart, even if I was exhausted, some things had to keep being taken care of because nobody else was going to fucking do it.

I mean those aren’t the ONLY reasons, but it’s a reasonable sized chunk of it, and it ended up acting as a catalyst for a lot of the other stuff.

After I disclosed my father’s sexual abuse of me, my mother used me in this way until I left home, aged 22. Among other things, she unburdened herself at length about her attempts to ‘save’ her marriage, including her sex life with my paederast father, through my whole teen years. She would do this often while driving, so there was no way for me to escape. I still dissociate regularly in her presence, and I seriously think she might have done more damage to my psyche than incest between the ages of four and twelve did. She forgets anything she doesn’t want to think about, so talking frankly with my brother in recent years has given me very much needed collaboration and validation that things I recalled actually happened, because her revisionist memory gaslit me hugely and made me constantly doubt myself. And she thinks she was a great parent, because she thinks my brothers and I are nice people. She’s proud of her work.

neveryoumindhowthetrainislost:

taranoire:

princessfailureee:

clarknokent:

strawberryhorrorshow:

Being abused made me such a “good kid.”

I was

Always polite

Never acted without permission

Never spoke out of turn

Always did what I was told

And it’s shitty that I was considered mature and praised for those things, and all of those characteristics have translated into me being an immature, “bad adult.”

Now I

Have difficulty making a keeping friends

Can’t act without permission/am dependent on others for direction

Am terrible at communicating

Have no agency/personal compass

It’s a really difficult thing for people who were abused as children to grapple with.

What made us good children make us bad adults.

This is Important

THIS IS MY LIFE WOW

Conversely, while 90% of the time we’re kind and polite and accommodating, we get super fucking angry and have major outbursts when we feel threatened
Which is not a good look either

Additionally: not knowing how to stand up for yourself or how to talk about difficult things because the default is to shut down and take it. Because standing up or showing emotion when doing so is seen as having an attitude.

jabberwockypie:

aniseandspearmint:

deadcatwithaflamethrower:

jabberwockypie:

darlinghogwarts:

“listen… harry’s in trouble, and we could tell mum and dad, but I reckon we should just steal the flying car and go kidnap him in his muggle neighborhood, even though I’m 12 and you’re both 14 and this is a crime and the three of us cant drive”

“excellent”

This is bullshit.

Nobody in Harry’s life – no ADULT – ever did anything about the abuse he suffered at the hands of the Dursleys. Nobody did anything when they were told he was being starved, that there were bars on the windows, that they. Albus Fucking Dumbledore didn’t do anything about it.

Nobody in canon, or JKR herself in interviews or on Pottermore, even uses the word “abuse”. It’s all about how “the Durlseys treated him badly”. Nobody says abuse.

What Ron, Fred, and George did was nothing short of heroic. That they needed to do it is an indictment of every adult in Harry’s life, magical and non-magical alike.

@deadcatwithaflamethrower Need some back-up here because I’m hitting that point of “I want to set something on fire.”

I thought you did a pretty good job, actually. Even when adults are told about the conditions Harry was found in (literally IMPRISONED: remember, folks, the Dursleys were not going to let him go back to Hogwarts in book 2) nobody does anything. Nobody acts on the fact that a family literally imprisoned a child.

Someone I used to follow on LJ/DW was literally imprisoned by their parent. Nobody ever did anything. No one would believe them when they told other adults. No one wanted to believe it.

This shit happens and adults do nothing because it might interfere with their worldview that everything is just fuckin’ peachy…or someone in *power* that they respect/fear has told them not to interfere for the good of some cause/reason or another. That is one of the most terrifyingly realistic aspects of JKR’s books, but it’s glossed over by everyone who doesn’t believe that could ever possibly happen in real life.

And hey: there is more than one way to imprison someone.

(Aside from the fact that my mother locked the door and literally stood in front of it in an attempt to keep me from leaving the house once. Afterwards she pretended it had never happened.)

JK is actually on record (a radio interview, I think, but don’t quote me) as saying she doesn’t think the way Harry was treated by the Dursley’s was abuse.

That was the moment I lost all respect for her.

I do not care that she donated millions to charity, I care that she clearly thinks starvation and swinging a frying pan at a child’s head is an okay thing to do. That it’s okay to put bars on a child’s window to keep them in, and bolts the door shut.

@jabberwockypie Now I feel like setting something on fire too. *passes the chocolate and marshmallows*

Just … *SCREAMING* So. Much. Screaming and FIRE.

See, when I learn things like this, I also become somewhat Concerned about the person’s children. (Jude Watson has a daughter and considering the Jedi Apprentice stuff, I’m ALSO worried there.)

Do I think JKR would lock her kids in their rooms with bars on the window? Probably not, but if you’re not willing to admit that withholding food and is abuse, if you’re not willing to address emotional abuse and gaslighting AT ALL, trying to make a child hate themselves (like with what the Dursleys do with magic). I’m extremely concerned about what you think appropriate parenting looks like.

Frankly I also think it’s extremely irresponsible when your intended audience consists of children and teenagers. At some point somebody needs to say “This thing that happened to this character was wrong”. Because children who are being abused? we don’t KNOW. Or we don’t necessarily process it that way. It’s “not that bad” or it’s “It’s not like they’re beating me.” and every time it gets worse (the time my mother gave me a black eye), you move the goalposts of Not That Bad “It’s not like it’s ALL THE TIME”.