#unlearning

growing up with a parent like that—someone who sets the standard for everything, who decides what’s right and wrong so absolutely—you don’t really get the space to figure yourself out. you just learn how to meet expectations. or at least how to try. and when you fall short, it doesn’t feel like you made a mistake, it feels like you are the mistake.

arthur was basically taught that love is conditional. that approval comes from being strong, being controlled, being “right.” there’s no room for doubt, or softness, or questioning anything. so of course he grows up rigid, defensive, sometimes harsh—because that’s what was modeled for him.

and i get that. like, when you’re used to being judged or corrected all the time, you start doing it to yourself. you second guess everything. you overcompensate. you either shut down or get defensive because it feels like you’re always one step away from being told you’re not good enough.

and then there’s the part where you still want their approval anyway. even when you know they’re wrong, even when they’ve hurt you, there’s still that instinct to prove yourself to them. to make them proud. and it’s frustrating because it keeps you tied to them in a way you don’t always want to be.

arthur carries that constantly. you can see how much of what he does is shaped by trying to live up to his father, even when he starts to realize his father’s worldview is flawed. and that kind of shift—when you realize the person who raised you isn’t always right, or maybe even caused harm—that messes with your sense of everything. because if they were wrong about that, what else were they wrong about? what does that make you, when you were raised on it?

i think that’s why he struggles so much with change. not because he’s incapable of it, but because changing means admitting that the foundation you were built on isn’t solid.

and i relate to that a lot. the unlearning. the guilt that comes with it. the feeling that you’re betraying something, even if that something hurt you. the way it takes time to separate who you actually are from who you were told to be.

arthur’s growth feels real to me because it’s not instant. he messes up. he clings to old beliefs. he has to be shown things more than once. but he does change, slowly, and it comes from questioning what he was taught and choosing something different, even when it’s hard.