I've got some tea for you, sis.

I see these things being listed usually as interaction criteria. As in “I can say this because I have x experience which is listed in my bio/carrd”

Stop that. People lie on the internet All The Time (especially predators). You listing True Facts in your bio that someone could use to Actually stalk you is not and should not be the price you pay for arguing online. Nobody knows who’s lying or not anyway, and the only people who would care enough to find out are creeps.

You don’t need criteria like that to exist online nor should you have to.

Well the truth is, it doesn’t matter. No matter what traits you do or don’t have, none of it is okay to use against you, to cause you harm, to humiliate or belittle you. So even if some small percent of what they’re lying to you ends up the truth - they were still wrong to try to hurt you with it. You don’t deserve to be hurt simply for being one way or another, and anyone whose instinct is to hurt you for your traits is not a good person, or a good human. If you happened to be weak or sensitive or not ambitious, is there really a reason for anyone to hurt you over it? Does hurting you change your traits? It doesn’t, and they don’t have to be changed, you’re good as you are. Withstanding abuse wont make you stronger or ambitious, it will just make you ashamed and believing something’s wrong with you as you are. That you have to change. But the truth is, you don’t. You’re good as you are. What you need is satisfaction with who you are, sense of pride, of accomplishment, feeling of being good enogh, just as you are. And they are wrong to withhold this from you, it’s your right to know you’re enough, and good as you are.

Not to mention, they usually don’t use actual traits but make shit up to insult you with or over exaggerate to the point of disbelief, like calling you lazy when you’re mentally ill or sick, calling you a failure when you’re still uncovering your potential and they can’t possibly know what you’ll be good at, calling you a waste of space when you’re a human being and it’s impossible for you to be any kind of waste, measuring your worth over how convenient or useful you are to them, like you exist just to be used by them, trying to turn your most human qualities against you and pretend you’re weak or too sensitive simply for caring and feeling and having a human heart.

you don’t fucking realize that abuse never ever fucking stops

as long as the victim is in any contact with abuser, abuser will continue to invalidate, excuse, justify, gaslight, manipulate, lie, and do anything to keep getting away with abuse

so you’re asking the victims to forgive an ongoing abuse

which is an equivalent of walking to a person whose arm is being slowly cut off and telling them, hey, you have to forgive the person cutting your arm off, you’ll feel better.

while ignoring their bleeding wound and the knife sinking deeper into it, and helping the abuser cut it easier.

great. going.

and also, to those who have cut off contact? who the fuck are you to tell them when they’re supposed to feel forgiveness. Who the fuck are you to tell them they’re supposed to forgive at all. What the fuck gives you the nerve to imply forgiveness is good for them while they’re still walking with bleeding wounds on them. If and when they forgive is their. fucking. business.

You know what’s not easy? Having your parent force control of your life via emotional abuse, threats, shame, humiliation, violence. Your parent getting into your own head and  gaslighting your senses until you feel worthless and insane and like a monster, until you don’t dare to feel your own feelings, until you’re ashamed of the pain you feel and can’t see yourself as anything other than a horrible burden and nothing you do can ever change that or make you good enough. You know what’s even harder? Still believing that your parent “meant the best” and not even daring to blame them and still being forced to draw the conclusion that it was after all, all your fault, for existing as you do, for being who you are, for not ever being good enough! And then, on top of all of it, hearing the rest of the world agree with the parent’s view, pressuring you to never blame them, to forgive them, to never hold them responsible, to “be better” and understand them, to not ever try to place blame on anyone but yourself because then you’re the monster.

He threw a brick in our baby dog’s head and laughed about it and blamed the dog as the rest of us tried to comfort the dog who was bleeding profusely, whose head was cut open and needed stitches. He told me he was going to throw the next one to my head. They all still insisted this was normal! That everyone acts like that! 

And now after it’s all over, I know why. They were in on it. They were supportive of his abuse because all of them looked harmless in comparison. Whatever they did to me couldn’t even compare to the amount of damage and terror he was causing me, in this crazy universe where you’re a good person as long as you don’t cut dog’s head open, they could all pretend to be good and kind-hearted people while insulting and bullying me every single day. It’s how my mom could cut my favourite clothes up and feel perfectly good about herself, how my siblings could use me as a personal servant and emotional punching bag and feel justified, if he was called out, next thing all their wrongdoings would be called out too.

If you hurt your child so severely they feel terrified, ashamed, frozen in time, and filled with self hatred over what what they’ve done in a certain moment, you haven’t taught them anything except that if they do something you don’t like, you will hurt them so severely they will want to die. You show them that in front of you, they have no human rights, they have no value, no right to compassion or care, there is only hatred and cruelty if they don’t do as you please. You take away their ability to react to injustice, to fight for themselves, to feel any compassion towards themselves and to feel like they have the right to a voice. Only for the sake of your selfishness, your sadism and convenience. You force them to live their entire life aware that everything they do or think or feel must please you, you take away their sense of instincts and desire. They have to worry in every second, what you think and what you will do to them if they misstep, if they make a mistake, if you’re in a bad mood, if you would find it pleasing to use them as a punching bag instead of being their parent. You are trying to use a human being as a toy and a property. You are teaching them nothing. You’re using them for your own self gratification as if you have any rights to do that, as if you, somehow, are more valuable than a child. 

In the end it all comes down to you, you are at fault for your behaviour, for their behaviour, for how you feel, for how you handle everything they’ve ever done to you. They wouldn’t even be abusing you if you just did what you were told in the first place. They wouldn’t have to hurt you if you had just been a little obedient robot with no free will, needs, desires,  opinions, ability to reject their orders, or humanity. So this is all your fault. Why oh why did you have to be a human being, because that’s your massive sin, being an actual person, which they didn’t feel like acknowledging.

So let’s talk about this, why would someone be so quick to go and cast blame to everything and everyone, the second there’s a problem? Why would someone see you struggle and instead of helping you, and trying to figure what’s wrong, immediately decide why it’s happening, with no further inquiry in the matter, no one allowed to question it. And on top of that, wouldn’t feel bad saying it’s your own fault for struggling, when you’re already in so much pain?

It’s only because they know it’s because of them and they would go any lengths to cover it up. They don’t have a conscience, but they are very alert for any instance in which they could possibly be blamed for something they caused (especially because they caused tons of horrible shit) and their behaviour reduces down to avoiding being called out. And if they do it cruelly enough, if they hurt you enough while they do it, it’s likely you’ll too shocked and pained and even terrified of all the things they’re saying, you wont be able to call them out. When you’re in pain and someone who’s supposed to be your loved one, turns on you and gives you even more pain, you go thru shock. You end up considering if they’re right, if it really is somehow your fault, if your loved one is actually somehow saying it with good intentions. Because it’s too painful to consider that they’re pushing you in further pain only to cover their guilty asses.

Living with parents like this can make you feel terrified of yourself, because you can no longer tell what to do, or how to live to not cause yourself pain. You try to connect how everything is your fault, and it comes down to doubting your every feeling, every memory. You think you must be dramatizing, you must be reacting wrong, you must be too sensitive and overly difficult to deal with, you blame the pain you feel on yourself, rather than on those who caused it. And the parents are happy to cast even more pain on you, every single time you start to doubt them, so doubting them starts feeling dangerous and forbidden, you’re not even allowed to think it.