what do you mean my username is redundant?

Shout out to people like me who have parents who are loving but are black holes of emotional labor… It took me a long time to realize that it’s okay to have mixed feelings about your parents, about your relationship with them.

Sometimes parents can love you but be somewhat toxic to you and your growth, and that’s a very hard realization to come to if you, like me, grew up extremely close to them.

Sometimes parents can love you genuinely but lack emotional maturity, forcing you to perform disproportionate amounts of emotional labor. Some parents manifest symptoms of their mental illness in ways that are toxic to your mental illness.

Some parents, like mine, try so hard to be good parents but fall back on habits of emotional manipulation because they haven’t processed their own traumas and are modeling behavior they grew up with. That doesn’t make their behavior acceptable, and it’s okay to feel exhausted and hurt when they betray you. You don’t have to forgive every mistake.

I want you to know that it’s okay to protect yourself, to need some space apart from them. The love you have for your parents is still valid, and you are making the right decision.

Placing a safe emotional distance between myself and my parents has been one of the most difficult, heartbreaking processes I’ve ever gone through… it hurts to try to curb the strength of your own natural empathy around people you love. It feels disingenuous to your heart’s natural state.

But I promise you, you are not hard-hearted or ungrateful, and you are not abandoning them. You are making a decision about your own emotional, mental, and spiritual health.

I know what it’s like in that confusing grey area of love mixed with guilt and anxiety, of exhaustion and quasi-manipulation and unreciprocated emotional labor, and I promise you, you are not alone.

this site is literally a cesspool of bad choices, advice, and views. everything from adults using and convincing minors of things because they don’t kow any better to believing that you can never recover from your trauma or mental illness and will go no where in life. it’s honestly one of the most toxic communities i’ve ever seen and i would NEVER recommend someone under fifteen to join.

a lot of people i’ve known who have been on this site since eleven, twelve, or thirteen have said they wish they have never come here because they’ve picked up so many ugly and toxic beliefs and behaviors.

and let’s not forget the fact that no one cares or takes internet safety seriously anymore? i know that schools, advertisements, and media in general has made it out to be a little ridiculous, like it has done with bullying, but it’s still very real and very risky. i see so many minors put so much info out there (including their faces) and tumblr is one of the worst places to do this. there’s so many predators out there looking for people to snatch. there’s so many pedophiles on here, you wouldn’t believe. it’s so scary.