#abuse 00

and i get it’s a reasonable request, i get it. believe me. more than anything, it irritates me to no end bc my trauma keeps me from actually doing stuff i should be doing as an adult

but she seems to have forgotten the fact that i was constantly staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning at 8 years old, starving, doing the dishes bc her physically abusive boyfriend seemed to have mistaken “chores” for “exhaustive manual labor or i won’t feed you”, as she made absolutely no attempts to control him or keep him from working us to the bone. i was always sticking my hands in dirty dishwater and getting covered with food scum, cutting my fingers on knives when i wasn’t careful enough. i got drunkenly screamed at or smacked around every time the dishes weren’t clean enough to match his standards. we were fed online-bought hot sauce by him and his drinking buddies one night bc we forgot to do dishes, and they almost had to take my five-year-old brother (now 15) to the hospital because he couldn’t breathe

so i know i should be over it, i know. i know i should be able to handle it by now. i think it’s silly my brain draws an allegory from a simple “do the dishes, then” to shit that happened 10 years ago, but every time i touch something that reminds me of what happened back then, it’s like putting my hand on the burner of a stove

it’s not just that, either. a lot of things happened in that house and anything that reminds me of what i had to do or go through instinctively makes me draw away, makes me feel afraid

and i’m just a little frustrated, i guess