Anyone else terrified that they are toxic and manipulative and just can’t see it? Or is that just me?
A lot of people who’ve been abused think this. It’s very common for abusers to try to convince their victims that they, in some small part, deserve the abuse.
And a common way of doing that is to frame the defensive tactics of the victim as bad, manipulative things.
This includes people who are too worried of coming across as controlling or manipulative to express their needs. It took me a long time to be able to tell my boyfriend that his music was causing me physical pain because my abusers targeted my disability as justification for their behavior (saying I’m “too needy” and “need to accept that [they] have done so much for [me], the things [they] do are just part of life.”)
This includes people who are too scared to admit when they are hungry, thirsty, tired, stressed, or otherwise running on fumes, because their abusers may have made them believe that asking for (or just helping themselves to) food or sleep or space is somehow wrong or detestable.
This includes people who will still flinch, even when they’ve long “escaped” their abusers. Because it is reflexive. It is expected. It is ingrained as normal and when they do small things that may have become doable, like feeding themselves without being told to or having prepared food for others, and someone calls attention to their actions, their heart will race and they may stammer or find themselves a little panicked. Getting a snack in your shared home with your best friend in the world who helped you evacuate your abusive ex’s home can go over fine until said friend humorously, harmlessly comments “What, you didn’t get me any fruit snacks?”
The long lasting effects of abuse have funny ways of showing themselves.
As my Rainbow Fish post pushes towards 16K notes, the thing that always breaks my heart is the tag-cloud stories and sometimes replies.
Some of them are clearly from childhoods that would have been abusive no matter what – the person’s giftedness happened to be one of the tools, one of the things about them that abusive parents or teachers or peers turned into a club to hit them with – and those are fucking tragic and I’m so sorry. And it’s not your fault: when all a parent can say they like about you is “you had so much potential” it is not your fault, that is them being horrible. Every fucking child is lovable, likeable. For a parent to say that says there’s something wrong with them, not you.
And then the other ones that break my heart so bad are the ones where … the parent meant well. Or the teacher. Or whoever. Or where it was kids being horrible little shits but the actual problem was (and always is) the adults who didn’t intervene because seven year olds are always little shits, they’re seven, they literally did not come with kind generous ethical behaviour installed. We have to teach them that. We have to teach them what’s good and what’s bad and that means you don’t sit there and enable them harassing their classmate because a) it is hideously horrible for the poor target and you have a responsibility to protect them but also b) you are doing the bully NO DAMN FAVOURS.
But also: do not tell your eight year old it’s up to them to save the world. Especially don’t tell your fucking hypersensitive hyper-intellectual eight year old it’s up to them. Do not tell a child who’s just been hit by the overwhelming weight of the chaotic difficulty that is decency and humanity in the world that it’s their job, their responsibility, to “use their talents” to fix things.
They’re eight fucking years old. Their job is to learn how to be kind and learn how to tie their own shoes, to learn how to regulate their emotions and behaviours, to let their brains expand, to learn how to think, to do all the things eight year olds need to do in a safe space so they can be best prepared to join the huge overwhelming effort of making the world better, with the rest of us, when they’re grown up.
Nobody can save the world by themselves. It’s possible we’re not even up to it en masse and there’s seven billion of us and counting and it’ll probably still take another hundred years or so before we get our shit together enough that we can save ourselves. One eight year old sure as fuck can’t, and the best that any one of us can really hope to do is figure out how not to make it worse.
Which is a much harder proposition when you’re exhausted, anxious and miserable from the three mental health disorders that you developed because when you were eight and your ability to cognitively grasp the vastness of human suffering massively exceeded your emotional ability to process and deal with it AND your critical thinking skills to take that apart and grasp the impossibility of it, someone loaded you down like Atlas.
Do not tell your eight year old that they owe their soul to the world. Or that they’re letting people down by not “living up to potential”. Your eight year old as a human owes other people basic decency and human consideration, and their best “potential” is a life wherein they have found themselves a space to be content and sturdy and solid in the world so that they can best act out that decency and human consideration.
That is the only “potential” anyone needs to worry about.
This has been your intermittent Feelings-Dump by Feather about Kids and that post and how she just wants to go back in time, find all of you when you were six, tell you you’re good enough, and take you to play in the playground. Or read a book. Or get ice-cream. Or whatever.
the funniest fuckin part of the whole hobbit film trilogy is when they get to erebor and bilbo’s like “hey what’s that a picture of” and they’re like “what you came to steal. the arkenstone” and he’s like “…which is?” and they have to be like “it’s a gem lad” like that boy followed these dwarves 750 miles on foot chased by orcs and didn’t even know what he was supposed to do when he got there. have you ever wanted to be dicked down by a richard armitage character so hard you walked 750 miles on the off chance that stealing something would get you into his pants without even knowing what you were supposed to steal. and he didn’t even get dicked down in the end. a real tragedy
As a library worker, there’s something I want to say to you.
You do not have to apologize for the books you choose to read.
At all. To anyone. You owe nobody any explanations; you need no excuse or “good reason” to be reading the book.
You do not have to be ashamed for wanting to read “bad” books. You wanna read Twilight? We got Twilight. Need a banal, cookie-cutter-plot mystery or thriller?Those are always fun. Our regulars check them out by the towering stack. Ask Betty for recommendations; she’s read them all. 50 Shades of Oh Fucking No? We’ve got it, we even got it in large print. Have fun. Check out the rest of our porn too. Oh, and the sex manuals are a MUST if you want to “experiment” yourself. Don’t be afraid to ask; they’re here for a reason.
Want to read a book written by a huge asshole everyone hates and agree was a monster? Yeah, we have those. No, we don’t think you’re an asshole for wanting to know what was actually written in there, or judging things for yourself.
You are not too old for Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Babysitter’s Club, or Captain Underpants. You are not too young for Sherlock Holmes. There’s nothing wrong with a boy reading The Princess Academy or Sweet Valley High. There’s nothing wrong with a girl being into The Hardy Boys or Artemis Fowl instead.
You do not have to pull the shame face and offer me an excuse when you check out your books. I don’t care if I got so angry at that book I threw it against a wall when I read it: you have the right to read it, and enjoy it if it’s enjoyable for you. THAT’S WHY THE LIBRARY HAS IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. If we only stocked pure, unproblematic literature everyone approved of, by authors of unquestionable virtue, we wouldn’t have any books at all. Or music. Or movies. It would be utterly fucking boring. And it certainly wouldn’t be a library.
scream it louder for the people in the back
A-freaking-men!
Yes! I’m so happy I saw this post! As a librarian I never want our patrons to feel uncomfortable if they check out books that are considered controversial by society. As far as I’m concerned, society can suck it. Read whatever damn books you want to read!
As someone who sometimes goes to the library to read trashy romance novels: hell yeah!
Look at this shit. The incel crisis is becoming an epidemic.
But I mean just look at the physiognomy on this fucking guy.
Also I’m praying this guy doesn’t commit some sort of mass violence. He has a “Trump confederate flag” in his fb header.
Bro, the whole time i was reading this I was thinking this was some joke or a commentary on how creepy men can be, but no, this nigga was dead ass. This shit scary lmao and I hope the nigga he bit don’t got rabies, look at this nigga teeth 🤢🤮
Shit like this is horrifying
Think about what that girl gotta go thru now. She either has to get a restraining order or switch jobs all because of some donkey toothed mouth breather and his obsessive crush
People are saying that this is fake—satirical? Something from 4chan?—but it’s not funny because shit like this does happen to so many women. Men do this exact same thing to women, every day, feel they’re in the right, and are supported in it.
☝☝☝☝☝
If your first reaction to seeing a real life person you find attractive and who happens to work locally is to go home and bascially cyberstalk the hell out of them, over doing something wild and crazy like, say, seeing if they might be interested in a casual conversation (and politely accepting their answer to that, even if it’s “Piss off”), then please consider a new career as an offshore hermit with no internet access.
Roe v. Wade — the landmark Supreme Court case establishing access to abortion as a constitutional right — has been settled law for over 40 years, yet remains under constant attack. With President Donald Trump in office, we face potentially the greatest threat to reproductive rights in more than a generation. The Center for Reproductive Rights updated our 2007 report, What If Roe Fell?, in order to answer the question on everyone’s mind on the 45th anniversary of Roe: what will happen if Roe were toppled in your state, the day after?
Death By Catchphrase 