lee

“He leant tensely against the corridor wall and frowned like a man trying to unbend a corkscrew by telekinesis.”

“Stones, then rocks, then boulders which pranced past him like clumsy puppies, only much, much bigger, much, much harder and heavier, and almost infinitely more likely to kill you if they fell on you.”

“He gazed keenly into the distance and looked as if he would quite like the wind to blow his hair back dramatically at that point, but the wind was busy fooling around with some leaves a little way off.”

“It looked only partly like a spaceship with guidance fins, rocket engines and escape hatches and so on, and a great deal like a small upended Italian bistro.”

You don’t notice when you start feeling small and meaningless. Suddenly bringing forth your own troubles is a burden, even saying how they hurt you, you’re only making them feel bad, and making their life worse. So you learn it’s time to suck it up, not take anything personally, extend your understanding and empathy so far that even a damage to you cannot be judged or held as an offense to your person. You clench your teeth and bow your head down, enduring pain so you could keep helping this person, keep them in your life, protect them from their own actions.

Sometimes they go overboard and you can’t handle it anymore, but no matter how you explain it, you cannot reach them. They insist on good intentions, on being oblivious, they change what happened or present their version of the story where they had every excuse, and no choice but to hurt you. You start feeling neglected, ignored and used, increasingly more pained by every time it happens because you know you’d never do it to them, but they seem to play by the different rules.

At this point you’ve invested so much of your care and endurance into this person, walking away feels like giving up, letting all your heart go to waste, feeling stupid you ever expected they would do it back. The little crumbs of attention they sometimes throw at you start feeling like something you can’t do without. You cling to hope you will deserve to be loved back even as you see it slipping thru your hands and breaking your heart.

Thats why emotional abusers are dangerous, and not easy to get away from. None of us are immune to warmth and affection they show us at the start, and hope that it could be like that again is enough to make you endure torture sometimes. Nobody deserves to be treated this way, nobody’s value can be reduced to someone else’s coping tool.

Overgrown apocalyptic space ring: