it hurts less and less every time, and obviously its the time doing the healing, but i dunno. maybe its helping me humanize them rather than turning them into an object of my trauma.

idk what everyone else's take on ep1 is but i cant get over how little say wifey had in every single thing that happened. she wasnt just a victim of this evil predatory pay-to-live company, she was a victim of her own husband.

i guess she was given the choice to take a break from her prescribed suffering, but even then, was it her choice? her husband bought not only the upgrade, but the card too. secretly, against her wishes, against their livelihood, and then hand-fed it to her, only for him to realize he couldn't force their life back to normal-- back to happy. he was just masking her pain.

the only time she truly had a choice the entire episode was when she was finally allowed to die. she stayed alive long enough for him to adjust to a different life. for him to realize it wasn't going to get better. they suffered and mourned their life together, which is devastatingly beautiful to a degree. i just can't imagine doing that to someone i love, with such little research or consideration put behind the decision.

i wasnt longing for his comeuppance by any means, he was also taken advantage of by this company. it was horrific from both perspectives. i just struggled to empathize with him to the same extent for forgoing his wife's autonomy at every turn he could.

ive been avoiding watching baby reindeer bc i know its heavy. i didnt realize how heav.y i just finished ep4 and i have to do something otherwise i might i dunno. throw up?

i didnt know it was this bad. i thought i was ok. i didnt consider that i was so deeply affected but oh my god its like every emotion possible rushed into me all at once. i wanted to hurt myself. i wanted to hurt them. i want so badly to hurt them. i cant believe they live so close to me again i could find them and hurt them worse than they hurt me. ive thought about it before but now i REALLY WANT TO HURT THEM.

I’ve always felt guilty for crying, to the point that when I can’t help but do so, I just can’t emote. I go completely blank. That’s a result of my family belittling me. My aunt and cousins would come up with nicknames and jokes around the fact that I cried. Literally just a regular human reaction. And because this wasn’t a big explosive dramatic event, I didn’t realize how much that affected me until well into adulthood. It’s taken years of my adulthood to break down how my family scarred me.

I’m not telling you this to ask for sympathy, but to give you a little outsider insight on how much the people we grow up around mold our brains. Your family did that to you, and it’s ok to be angry, to mourn a life without their cruelty. The fact that you recognize it is an extremely important step in undoing their damage.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Please know that you are loved and heard. 💝

wauw my first anon.... thank you sm for your kind words :') my family is really really similar, my cousins were basically my siblings except our home lives were completely separate, and the shit they experienced at home was brought back to me and my sister. they were my first bullies. being the youngest i always had this weird expectation to be the "normal" one or the "ok" one. none of us were ever ok tho. so yeah i was always expected to just grin & bear it.

thinkin a lot about when i cut off my dad. i was 12 and my parent's were in the middle of getting divorced. theres a lot of shame that comes along with that.

what fucked me up was that it was entirely directed at my mom, who had just found out she was being cheated on. IM the one who found out and told her. yet everyone on my dad's side didnt even consider mine or my sisters perspectives. they just said "well, it takes two to build a good relationship." they knew him as the baby brother, of course they werent going to vilify him. but the way they treated my mom obviously directly impacted our relationship with them.

and like, i get their criticism to a point. when i think about it, i dont think i would have cut my dad off so early in my life if my mom hadnt used me as a venting outlet from a young age. thats followed me my whole life. someone i love doesnt like a person? person is dead to me. and its not like i want my dad in my life. i genuinely dont think hes a good person. he wasnt a good parent before i cut him off. but if i had a chance to give HIM a chance, would it have made a difference?

i have known many individuals like Kristine and Michael Barnett, and i think people would be surprised at how common situations like Natalia's are. disabled people are regularly taken advantage of, almost entirely due to the systems that have been set in place.

i felt this way even after. the only thing that changed was that i had to prioritize who i let into my life, and i had hoped people would take the side of, yknow, anti-violence. yet many people believed this outright abusive person over me. most didnt even attempt to get my side, they just took the lies and ran. one in particular messaged my best friend, who was the one to pull my roommate off of me, telling him he was delusional for choosing me.

one time they just kinda said to the ceiling "it's hard being the smartest person in the room"

i was the only other person in the room