Author: toseealife

Heart recovering after abuse.

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It’s been a month since my dad moved out.

Things are slowly beginning to feel different.

Yet, it surprised me how little changed at the same time.

My dad has been so far removed from my life for so many years, that I lost no more substantial contact than the toxic words and an occasional family game night that went okay.

I wonder, if I knew anyone who’d go through this already, I’d ask them if they felt the same, or if the abuse was so involved in them that it was an immediate release.

Slowly, feelings of relief have begun to creep in, but only small ones so far. My mind still hasn’t really grasped it.

My friends have been great about it though.

I also, surprisingly, almost feel like I miss him.

I know it is not so unusual for people on the receiving ends of abuse to feel sympathy for the abuser. It’s not, I think, wholly bad. If you can still see how that person has real needs and feelings even if they are cruel, you are less likely to dehumanize them by being cruel in return.

Though, perhaps never standing up to someone is a form of dehumanizing them, because it keeps them on a pedestal of fear.

I tried to pity my dad so that I would not hate him. Hate would turn me into a person I do not want to be.

I’m not willing to pay the price of hatred, the loss of everything I can feel joy and gladness over, and every other relationship.

I find myself thinking a lot about new beginnings. I had begun to wonder if my dad would hold me back for many years yet, out of fear of me breaking free. My dad never, perhaps, knew he was doing this, but his insecurities did it for him.

I also still feel like he’ll get at me somehow to punish me for this, I think that is also common to people like me.

It’s not, however, completely unfounded, he’s the type of person to do it. I wonder if my success ever depends on him again, if he’ll try to sink me on purpose.

These anxieties keep bugging me, though I do not take them especially seriously.

It’s hard to move forward. I must rethink everything about my life, in a sense, and ask how much of it was affected by the toxicity.

That I still enjoy things at all, and am even able to open up to people, I credit God with.

God has ministered to me through people, often people are imperfect about it, they give up too easily, put their own spin on it, or push too hard when you most need them to ease up and let you breath, but even so, that there are some who try is encouraging to me, because I can hope that I will learn to trust them.

I have trust issues. My dad proved himself untrustworthy many, many times. Every time I needed him, pretty much, he failed me. Then, he blamed me for never relying on him.

I ended up with a very weird complex due to this. If I ever do open myself up to someone, I usually feel like they are just bearing it out of a sense of duty. I tend to withdraw, and then push forward in strange ways.

I tend to not put myself forward just when I most want to be noticed, and then to not set enough boundaries when I am asked for help.

In one way, it’s because my idea of giving is that it is limitless, even if as a human I must rest from it sometimes, but it’s also because I see my services as worth so little.

On top of that, I am confident most of the time, and then I have very poignant insecurities on certain things that surprise people.

Overall, I believe the Holy Spirit has healed me enough that my stronger side is the good things, and the insecurities, while they give me trouble, do not rule me. But they influence me more than I thought.

In the absence of my dad’s abuse, I almost seem to be trying to invent it, to recreate the same feeling, since it was my normal…at the same time, I’m fighting it.

I think, I want to defeat it once and for all, and I could not defeat it in him, so I want to pick a fight with someone I can defeat it with, and finally win.

I could prove I was worthy of more by being strong enough to stand up for myself, or I could plead until someone finally took pity on me like I wanted my dad to.

It’s strange to no longer be the victim. I wanted someone to hear my case for so long, and now it happened, it felt so short, and I am no longer a victim.

In a way, I stopped being one in my mind a long time ago, but the marks of it remain on my soul, where only healing can remove them.

I basically sent my dad the message: NO, you cannot do this to me anymore.

Now, all that remains is to receive the deliverance that came, and move on. Build a new life.

Someday, I hope my dad can come back into it, when he’s had a change of heart.

Can I move from fighting for my own survival to fighting for other people?

Thought I never let my heart die entirely over the years, by giving it to God, it could not help but take damage form this. Now I’ve been looking at it, wondering how it’s doing…

Hello my old heart, how have you been? Are you still there inside my chest? I’ve been so worried, you’ve been so still, barely beating at all…

Hello my old heart, it’s been so long, since I’ve given you away. Every day, I add another stone, to the walls I built around you to keep you safe…

Hello my old heart, how have you been? How is it being locked away? Don’t you worry, in there you’re safe, it’s true, you’ll never beat, but you’ll never break.…Cause nothing lasts forever, some things aren’t meant to be, but you’ll never find the answers, until you set your old heart free…

I began the process of taking down the stones around my heart years ago… by which I mean, God began to heal me. Yet, I had an active role in it too, we choose our path.

Still, I knew that there was more, my capacity to give and receive love is far from full. I seem to have shut down a good portion of it, sufficing on a little bit from time to time.

Like how my dad would occasionally be amiable, never really loving, but not hostile.

I went through a phase years ago of feeling I could be loved all the time, and loved deeply. I’m not sure what happened. I think as people failed me more and I got distracted by adulthood, I stopped tending to my needs as much.

It’s really hard to come out of that. My mind still thinks it’s true, but my heart has a much harder time committing to it.

So, I want my old heart to come back alive again.

Until next time–Natasha.

Getting out of an Abusive Situation.

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This is going to be difficult.  I wouldn’t write about it, except I think my experience might benefit other people.

If you’ve followed me for a while you might remember me mentioning having problems with my dad before.

Since I keep myself anonymous I feel I can share this without disgracing him to anyone who would recognize it.

The problems between my dad and I were not just misunderstandings, the situation was actually an abusive one.

I wasn’t physically abused more than once or twice, and not severely. I’ve been hit one time, flung out of chairs and rooms a  couple times, threatened  several times with violence; but I’ve never been beat on, thank goodness.

I was verbally abused more, but even that was not as often as I hear about in other cases. I wan’t yelled insults at very often.

The kind of abuse I was subjected to all the time was Emotional.

My dad is a very manipulative person, he uses guilt to control people. he is able to play the victim to perfection, and to lie, to feign being penitent in order to get you to ease up on him and let things go back to normal.

I don’t need to give a lot of specific examples and drag that out. But if you’ve been manipulated by love before you know the ways it works.

You know how you are always trying to please someone who is determined to be offended and the victim no matter what you do.

How the person will refuse to forgive you for mistakes that were minor, and then not apologize for things they did that were appalling.

The worst of it is the justifying. After threatening or doing something to me, my dad would say he was just so desperate, he had no other way to handle it, because I just made it so difficult for him.

A lot of horse hockey if you ask me. But I fell for it so many times, and so did the rest of my family.

I also got the blame heaped on me for everything that went wrong. I know now that my dad neglected my needs on top of abusing my emotional attachment to him.

Some might  be quick to say that people my age make themselves victims over anything now, and that we assign terms to every little thing.

I doubt anyone would say so to me, but because it does happen, I want to clarify that I am not about being the victim.

It took over 9 years of this pattern being open, + the previous 11 of it only being in the background, for me to recognize it was abuse. I thought it could never happen in my family.

Also, I call it abuse because of the impact. Had my dad’s sins only damaged him and made him look foolish, they would be ordinary selfishness and lack of self control. Bad, but not threats to anyone but him.

It was because this cycle sucked the life out of my family, destroyed a lot of my self worth for many years, and gave my siblings major guilt problems and my mom a miserable marriage that I call it abuse.

Abuse in the literal sense, misusing something in a terrible way. Love can be abused also. That is what The Four Loves and Till We Have Faces are about.

I’ve had my needs trampled on and my efforts spit in the face of many times.

I may go into it more some other time. But for now I want to focus on something different.

It’s over.

Not completely. There is plenty to work through. My dad is still a royal mess and he has not yet repented.

but things are never going back to the same cycle.

Because we did something about it.

My family came together, even my grandmother, and agreed my dad should move out.

A thing that is likely obvious to all of you reading this, but when you are in the cycle, that solution seems impossible.

My dad had all of us cowed for so long, and I was the least under his thumb, but because of that I got written off a lot. It was amazing to finally start to get my voice back as I and my siblings explained that we would move out of the house if our dad did not, but that he clearly should, because our mom needed to be free too.

And, after feeling it would never happen, it did.

The whole thing went down in under 2 weeks, actually. It’s now been a little more than a week since he got the last of the major stuff from the house.

Someday maybe I’ll be able to understand how to explain what changed, things happened so fast.

All I can think clearly about is that I knew that something had to break, that I could not stand years and years more of this. I knew that I did not want to see my family live like that.

I knew also that I was strong. Years of isolation made me draw close to God and become very independent. I am already more out of the cycle than the rest of my family is. I knew that even if I stayed trapped in this for more time, I wouldn’t be crushed.

But I knew no such thing of my mom and siblings.

And it made me mad how the lies that my dad told got swallowed by everyone.

Doing this meant burning some bridges. I may have permanently lost any chance of being liked by some of his friends and cut ties with my former church entirely.

Whether my dad will ever forgive me, I do not know. I did nothing wrong, but I do not think he will see it that way for quite a while.

I do not feel as upset about it as I did. There was a sense of guilt for the first few days.

I knew it was the right thing to do, but no one wants to have to do that to their own father. Plus the week he’d put me through was hellish.

I am also sad that it had to come to this. I know I had no choice, we had tried counseling, prayer, communication, and every other thing we could think of. Nothing worked.

What about God?

I wonder too, if you will wonder, how I as a Christian, feel about being abused and having to take action about it. God did not stop it. And God did not stop my dad, who claims to be a christian and hear from him.

That might be better explained in another post, but in brief: I know a lot about my dad’s walk with God, and I know that God did talk to him through people, and to him directly. I know I asked God for help. I know God tried to reach my dad. My dad is a sieve, he recognizes the hand of God briefly, but it passes through him and he forgets it and goes back to the same old ways.

Also he hates me, and never really wanted to change toward me, but wanted me to  suffer. And this goes back to problems that started before I was even born.

I have no doubt that God wanted to make this better. I spoke to God about this decision, and He was not silent, as people often say He is during trouble. (I don’t doubt that they are being truthful, it just did not happen to me this time.)

God made it clear to me that He had given it to us to change this. He did not say why, but that he wanted it to be through us. I’m sure He has His own reasons.

From my human perspective, I can see the value in us learning how to help ourselves, while still praying and relying on God’s guidance throughout the process. We used the gifts of Common Sense and discretion that he gave us. I never felt abandoned by God at any point during this whole ordeal.

I hope that answers the basic question.

Christians are not perfect. But I would never say that excuses abusers. That is not a problem you can just say you’ll work on, it must be cut out like a tumor. Gross, yes, but so is abuse.

Some Practical Advice about Ending Abuse:

Action needs to be taken.

Never, ever, expect an abuser to be the first to change. It may happen in rare cases, but if you are not seeing it now, do not wait for it. Do something.

Don’t act alone: We went to multiple people for help, I kept at least two people updated about what changed day by day in case something went wrong, and so I could have clear headed people confirming my decisions.

I set up meetings, asked questions, and planned my actions so that my dad could not stop them.

Be Informed: I made sure we were legally in the clear.

No two situations are exactly the same, so if you know of someone in this situation or you are in it, you’ll have to figure out the best plan. But I’m imploring you, do not do nothing.

Be Cautious: Also, I never confronted my dad personally about it, once it got really bad. My mom did, but she was safer from being physically lashed out at, though she got lots of verbal backlash for her efforts.

I recommend not confronting an abuser alone ever, or with anyone they can attack without serious consequences.

But, do something.

That’s what I’ve learned. Whatever you do, inaction is what kills you faster than any amount of mistakes along the way will.

I regret little of what I’ve done over the years, and more of what I could not do because of age or lack of understanding.

I’m happy God has led me into freedom, even if it took a long time, it was the perfect timing in the realm of what was possible.

I am learning not to complain about how deliverance comes, so long as it comes.

And that is all for now, though you can be sure I’ll be processing this and having more to say about it, until next time–Natasha.

 

Love is War.

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103 followers! You guys are awesome!

Sorry it’s been so long, but I had the craziest week you can imagine. I’m not sure I’ll go all into it until it’s over, but it’s quite a story.

Keeping up with my quest to finish MLP, and to watch new animes was the most fun part of a very difficult week.

I checked out Fruits Basket, Konosuba, and there’s more to go.

Konosuba is really stupid, by the way, not recommending that one.

But one my sister and I finished was called Kaguya-Sama: Love is War.

Love is War was really good. It reminded me a bit of a book I read called Love And War.

Of course the latter is a reference to that saying “All is fair in love and war.”

I think as a kid that saying always bothered me, like that should justify everything. But as an adult, I do not think that saying means that love and war can never have moments where you need to be fair, or that there are no principles to either.

On the contrary, the saying means that both love and war create circumstances where what is normally fair just won’t work. It would be suicide in war to give up one’s advantage, and it would be foolish in love to always demand fairness.

But some of you might also agree with the statement Love is war.

On the anime the opening premise is that love is a war between the lovers. That relationships are ruled by one person. And that the two people both want to be the head of the relationship.

Rather than assume it should be the man, as is traditional, the show demonstrates how the woman can still dominate even if the man has to do the asking and take the outward leadership role. We all know married couples, or unmarried ones, where the woman clearly is in charge.

I mean, ladies, we let men think they’re in charge, right? But…

I’ll get back to that in a second.

However, the show also allows that the man may end up leading in actuality also. It is a battle of wills.

Our two lovers start out bullheaded and proud. I found it somewhat funny, but they were both kind of scary to watch, and their friends even thought so. Two highly intelligent, prideful people, duking it out over love is easily a nightmare.

But then the writer of this anime began to demonstrate an unprecedented amount of wisdom. This plot would have been so easy to make cliche, the set up was there, and people would have loved it regardless. Nothing like two feuding lovers to make people watch episode after episode of something.

Instead, the anime went a different direction. Both characters began to grow. We get to see them learn to appreciate their other friends, both of them having been rather lonely beforehand, especially the girl, Kaguya.

Interestingly, Kaguya is the name of a character in Japanese mythology who was divinely sent to a childless couple, and when she grew up had many would be lovers, all of whom she drove away with impossible tasks. One, an emperor, she remained friends with, and he actually cared for her as a person.

At the end of the story Kaguya is revealed to be from the moon, and she ditched earth to go back to it, forgetting all her ties to the people there. Making the emperor sad.

The significance on this anime is not that Kaguya is like the myth, but that the people in her life seem to be trying to force her to be. She’s actually quite affectionate and caring in her own way, but she has a family and servants who try to keep her isolated and cold. Her only real friend at her home is a rather questionable influence in my mind.

Kaguya’s pride, we learn towards the end of the season, is really a mask for massive insecurity. She won’t admit it, but she desperately wants love, but feels she cannot be upfront about it, because it is beneath her. In reality, she is really just afraid to put herself out there because no one else seems to give a rip how she feels. Certainly not her cold and distant father.

Shinogane, the male lead, actually comes to admit that the reason he won’t confess how he feels is because he’s afraid. It’s a little easier for him to admit this because he has a family and understands emotions a little better.

Even once he realizes he is afraid, he still has trouble overcoming it. Well, he’s only human.

But here’s where it got really profound.

In the last few episodes, a situation arises where Kaguya feels like what she wants is impossible. Like she can never escape her life of loneliness. She tries to put on a brave face, and focus on the future, but ends up finally breaking down and shedding some long-reserved tears over it.

After all, it is rather unfair to her.

But then, just when she’s given up (and to me it was interesting that her words here were first to pray to God, and then to despair and think “Right…there is no God”) Shinogane finds her.

The show ends with her finally chasing him to try to thank him, which means she finally humbled herself to show gratitude.

It was interesting to see the pattern throughout the show was that Kaguya’s scheming never got her what she wanted. But every time she or Shinogane put aside their wants to help other people, they got what they wanted too.

It made a strong case for these two belonging together, but needing to mature into it. They are closer by the end of the season to being ready.

And, what I concluded was that you could take the show’s hook a very different way.

Love is war. But it is not war between two lovers. It is war against the odds. Against the problems we face. Against all the obstacles to hinder love from happening.

As I mentioned earlier, women and men’s power struggle can often be complex. Women like to say we let men think they are in charge.

However, one might ask what the difference is between letting men lead and letting them think we do. Leaders are the face of the group that follows them, but they represent what the whole group wants. If they are good leaders.

A man in leadership has to represent what his wife or family wants in the same way. It would be fair to say women guide men in how to guide them.

And if the positions were or are reversed, the same would apply to women. If we are not thinking of what our man wants, we don’t deserve to lead either.

Unfortunately, women actually can have more of a tenancy to lead men for their own gain, in certain situations, than men do. It depends on the person.

I’ve listened to jokes from men about being “trained” by their wives. It always bothered me.

Leadership is not simply training, it is guidance.

The Bible says, speaking of marriage, as well as the church, that we are to submit to one another.

What that means is that each of us is in our way a follower, and each of us is also a leader.

In relationships, a follower may have more control overall, because they can cause the leader to rethink what they decide to do.

In the most ideal of relationships, you would hardly be able to tell which it was. Two people of good judgment, character, and humility can lead each other by turns without making it super obvious.

Though the Bible gives headship to the man, it allows for plenty of times when a woman has to take the initiative.

I don’t really need to discuss gender roles here. I think that any time we try to narrow those down to specific things, we end up making idiots of ourselves. You cannot sum up every situation in one rule.

I think the real thing to focus on is fighting each other’s battles, helping each other, trying to make each other happy or better; not to fight each other over who does what.

I mean this to apply to the practical things of course, in moral issues, there clearly does have to be a standard.

Anyway, check out the anime, and until next time–Natasha.

 

The Element of Wisdom–2

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My sister suggested I do a follow-up post about Wisdom in stories, and after looking it over, I do think there is more to say:

I used Pyrrha Nikos as an example of a wise character, and one who caused wiser writing decisions.  ( see post here –https://drybonestruth.wordpress.com/2019/07/05/the-element-of-wisdom)

But the question I didn’t really answer was What does Wise storytelling actually look like?

We know what it doesn’t look like.

Often, I think writers sometimes make wise decisions that are misunderstood by fans. Mostly by the nitpicking ones.

I’ve seen analysts actually complain that a story had too much of a message, and that it should blur the lines between right and wrong.

In fact, some fans are defending the new Star Wars movies on just such grounds, that they made it more grey.

It might be best to make a distinction then between worldly wisdom and godly wisdom.

Worldly Wisdom: It is wisdom that consists of knowing how to work the system, how to get what you want, how to climb and succeed in this society. How to not be duped by scammers. Worldly Wisdom can look like caution and common sense, but the one thing it can almost never look is Unselfish. Even when it says it is helping you, you are really helping it.

“Here we go again, give it one more try, don’t believe the system’s on your side”–Switchfoot, Rise Above It.

Worldly Wisdom can be good in small amounts (running a successful business is no sin,) but it must be tempered with other virtues, or it makes you into a selfish, arrogant, cynic.

Godly Wisdom: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 8:10) this wisdom is based on knowing right from wrong. It focuses on the meaning of things.

“Do you ponder the manner of things? In the dark?”–Glitter and Gold.

Proverbs is the book of the Bible that talks the most about Wisdom, and it always connects it to being able to do what is right, and to happiness.

Interesting then, that Solomon, the wisest man in the old testament, also wrote Ecclesiastes. The most pessimistic book in the Bible. In it, he admits that he turned his heart from God, and found that every other thing was, in the end, empty.

He would have been better off living a simple, hardworking life, he thinks. Like the Happy Peasant, but even this, he says, is vanity.

Eccl 12:1, 8-11, 13-14 “Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth,
Before the difficult days come… Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher, “All is vanity.”

And moreover, because the Preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yes, he pondered and sought out and set in order many proverbs. 10 The Preacher sought to find acceptable words; and what was written was upright—words of truth. 11 The words of the wise are like goads, and the words of scholars are like well-driven nails, given by one Shepherd.

 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:

Fear God and keep His commandments,
For this is man’s all.  For God will bring every work into judgment,
Including every secret thing,
Whether good or evil.”

Solomon wrote proverbs and they were good, he says, but they are like goads to drive us forward and like nails that hold things in place.

Wisdom, one might conclude, is about limitation. Knowing how to control yourself, how to stay away form evil, having a compass.

There is something about doing right that I find very few people outside of Christianity seem to understand. There are traces of it in the idea that it is better to give than to receive, which people still embrace, but not much place else.

People in the bible speak of doing good like it is their greatest pleasure, David says he delights himself in God’s commandments.

People tend to assume this means being a prude, a stickler for rules, maybe even OCD about them.

But this is not about panicking if rules are broken. Rule lovers can be more stressed out than rule breakers, we all know that.

This is about literal joy in doing what is good. In knowing what is good.

I pity people who do not know what that joy feels like. It is no coincidence that this pluralistic society is also a depressed one.

Depression has always followed moral depravity, because people miss that Goodness itself is the greatest joy, and that is why good people are so reluctant to step out of it.

Think of your favorite show, and if it has a character that the fandom world calls “pure”, that character is almost always a happier, cheerful one.

Proverbs 8:35 says “For whoever finds me [wisdom] finds life, and obtains favor from the Lord.”

Proverbs also repeatedly says that wise children will make their parents rejoice.

“Happy in the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gains understanding.” (Prov 3:13 emphasis mine.)

A hallmark of a wise character, or writer, is that they will bring gladness to the story they are in.
Pyrrha certainly did this, watching her made me feel uplifted about my own life.
A wise writer delights their readers with the rightness of their decisions. “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.” (Prov 25:11)
Happy events come because of wise characters, or they speak comfort or inspiration to other characters that gives them strength to go on.
Wisdom is life: Wise characters are usually the ones who make the choices that lead to saving people.
It can even be saving their heart, as MHA says, it can be talking them off the ledge, talking them our of doing something evil.
Showing mercy where mercy was needed.
Wisdom also brings about justice: You know the characters who can lay a verbal smack down on someone who is acting up, can decide how to stop a problem, and can dole out a fair punishment, if they have to.
Wisdom is knowing how to handle people, but godly wisdom is knowing how to do this in a way that will promote their well being.
In writing, an author has to be unselfish. It can be easy to use our characters to make your readers happy, with zero regard for how much it actually helps the characters or the story.
Analysts complain about a lack of continuity in shows and movie series mostly because it services the author more than the characters to be inconsistent. I can think of a few times where ignoring the past and doing something different helped a story  *cough X–Men *cough. But usually it doesn’t.

 

There is also pandering, which is a huge problem with popular shows. Especially in anime.

Fans can push for wise decisions, but a lot of the time they are only thinking about what they want, and not what is best for the story.

It may seem silly to say fictional characters deserve some consideration, but I’ve never noticed any discrepancy with how writers treat fictional and real people.

Charles Dickens was known to not treat real people very well, and his characters he treated even worse.

People who work at loving other people tend to write stories than incorporate that theme. Hannah Hurnard is one example. So is C. S. Lewis.

And my values of helping people be the best person they can be are certainly reflected in all forms of my writing, including this blog.

So when I say writers need to be unselfish with their characters and story, I mean it quite seriously.

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All this is wisdom.

Until next time–Natasha

About my book series:

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Well, my book series has been out for about a month, at least the first part of it, and I thought I should actually tell you all what it’s about.

So, the funny thing about this series, called When It STARTED (which is a joke that the series eventually explains), is that it came from a game me and my sister played with out Barbie’s.

One day we just decided to combine all our favorite things, superheros, fantasy, mystery, sci-fi, and smart alec but good hearted protagonists (see all of the above) into one story.

Throw in a little more spoiler related stuff, and you’ve got one unique story.

The story follows to founding of a team of superheroes, not coming together to protect the earth long term, but because one of them needs help cracking a particular case. She gathers them all and splits them into teams for a test run, and they gather information.

Pretty soon they start to realize this is a lot bigger of story than they thought, and what they were investigating is really a cover for an even bigger mystery.

I can’t get more into it because, spoilers.

I’m planning on combining it all into one volume once I finish it, but for now I’m releasing it one episodes at a time, like a Manga, but without pictures, because sadly, I’m no artist.

The whole thing is on Amazon Kindle, under Natasha Queen. A paperback is not yet available, (give me time.)

I have to say, they are not paying me to promote them, but Amazon Kindle is really cool. Sure, it’s not the best for marketing unless you pay for it, but it’s a free service (if you have an account already) and it let’s you do everything yourself.

For a series that I didn’t think traditionally publishing would work for, it was perfect.

If you’d like to check it out, it’s only a dollar per episode, and feel free to write a review if you do. Good or bad. I need feedback.

I’ll leave a link below.

You know I’m very honest with my followers, so I’ll admit, this story is a bit unusually written. I tried something new. I’m curious to see how people will like it.

It’s also clean because, of course, I’m not going to but PG-13 rated stuff into a story. I want kids to be able to read it too.

It is a lot of fun, and coming up with superpowers that are a little less popular was interesting for me an my sister, as was putting in mermaids, aliens, and regular people and just going for it.

The story kind of breaks the rules of separating science fiction material from fantasy, but that sub genre’s more popular now than it used to be, so hey, I think it works.

Anyway, here’s the link to the first three parts if you’d like to check it out, and thank you all for your support. It’s taken awhile to grow this blog, but it’s actually turned into something pretty cool for me to be part of.–Natasha

 

 

Fluttershy is a difficult character.

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Let me preface this by saying I love Fluttershy, she’s my favorite character.

It’s because of that I say she’s difficult.

I don’t mean difficult is a bad thing, I actually think it’s a good thing. It’s like when people say women are difficult to understand, but it’s good to not be easy to figure out all the time, we shouldn’t always get answers handed to us.

I have to say that Fluttershy from MLP (My Little Pony) is character that is a good example of a show trying to do the hard thing.

You can have a character with a really good flaw and growth arc, and people will love it, and you may never get criticized for it (though I doubt it) but ultimately, we know it’s unrealistic. Who gets over it that quickly?

I think of MHA (My Hero Academia) and the character of Todoroki, he gets a major arc in season 2, but in season 3 we find out he has not completely gotten over what his issues were. He relapses briefly into resentment and hate before snapping out of it, he realizes he has a ways to go still.

No one hates him for this because we recognize it makes sense.

I think of a different character on that show whose arc is similar to Fluttershy’s, Momo Yaoyerozo’s, she has a confidence issue that she confronts in season 2, she doesn’t seem to have that problem again later.

You could say she just completely got over it and moved on, and that the arc was contrived to begin with, and some people do say that.

But Momo’s confidence came initially from never failing, never really doing badly, even when she didn’t do the best, she was always close. Then she fails big time and begins to wonder if she only succeed before because she never was out of her comfort zone. When she regains her confidence, she realizes she can still try and do well even if she makes mistakes. Her confidence over the next season has a more refined feel to it.

It’s not the same as Fluttershy’s story because the reasons for a lack of confidence were different.

And I want to talk about Fluttershy because, though I am far more like Momo now, and sometimes like Todoroki, I used to be Fluttershy.

Watching MLP, I took a quick liking to Fluttershy, I have an affinity for sweet but sassy characters, who doesn’t?

But as I watched more episodes I began to understand why people found her annoying. She repeats her mistakes a lot. She is often irrationally afraid of things. Scared of her own shadow. It seems ridiculous.

What I think is funny is that I’m sure 50% of the people who criticize her for this are bigger cowards than her. I overall don’t think people are especially brave. They rarely do things that make them really uncomfortable, and not often with the grace Fluttershy can at least attempt to have.

It’s been said that courage is not a lack of fear, and just because you are not afraid of that many things doesn’t make you braver than someone who is afraid of everything. Fear is crippling condition to have, and Fear of One thing is just as likely to ruin your life as fear of many things, you just aren’t as likely to notice it.

I am now, at 20, the type of chick who likes hardcore music, fight scenes, and starting controversial conversations. I’m loud, not afraid of being on a stage, and able to stand up for myself.

But I remember that I was once pretty much Fluttershy.

My mom used to get frustrated with how anxious I was all the time, much like Rainbow Dash does. She’s try to talk me out of being afraid to go to social events. I was homeschooled, being around people was something I wasn’t forced to do a lot, but that had nothing to do with being shy, I know plenty of homeschoolers who are not shy. It’s just a personality trait.

I am not shy now. Few people guess I ever was.

I used to be one of those people who think their food or drink got poisoned mysteriously after being left alone for two minutes. I was afraid of mirrors sometimes. I was a hypochondriac. Ironically, I was not a socially anxious person about actually conversations if I had them, that came after years of being told I offended people by accident. But I was shy of starting any conversations.

I’ve always been opinionated, and that never changed. But it didn’t help much. I don’t think shyness makes you less opinionated, since you are less likely to be challenged on opinions no one knows you have.

Like all anxious people, I’d imagine a bunch of ways things could go wrong.

Saying it, it feels so surreal. This is so far from how I spend the majority of my time now, that I’ve almost forgotten I did it.

I think, actually, that that is why Fluttershy gets so much hate. She reminds people like me, who got out of that mindset, what it was like to be in it.

And people do not like to be reminded of it. Remembering being a coward is not fun.

Actually, I do not think Fluttershy is a coward, but it can feel like that to the person. Fear involves torment, even remembering a fear can make you start thinking like that again. Like triggering traumatic events.

I can say, looking back, I was fearful but I’m not sure I was a coward. I gave in to fear a lot, but sometimes I didn’t. A coward is someone who never ever pushes past it, and it is about more than being afraid, a coward lacks loyalty to something more important than fear.

Fluttershy has that.

A coward is selfish. Fluttershy is not selfish, just timid, but timid can be helped because timid can still find something more important than fear.

The cowardice is being afraid to care. Fluttershy has never been afraid to care, and that is her best quality to my mind, she is braver than most of the other characters. It takes major guts to care about Discord. She doesn’t bat an eyelash at that.

There is one more thing though, and that is how easy it is to judge Fluttershy. Even I sometimes want to. But there are so many people like her, should I judge them?

Sometimes I want to. I work with kids, and that kind of shyness is something I see a lot. I wish they didn’t have it because I remember how much I missed enjoying being I wallowed in fears.

But here’s the thing: I’m reminded that God does not despise people who have fears.

God does not like cowardice. But if you are genuinely afraid and wishing you weren’t, God does not despise that. In fact, through out the Bible, Fear is the vice God is shown to be the most compassionate and least harsh toward. Sometimes He gets fed up when people repeatedly disobey Him out of fear, but He’ll be more patient with that than with other flaws.

God knows it is hard to not be afraid, the truth is, not all fears are valid, but fear itself is certainly understandable. The world is dangerous. Without God, we all would be right to be terrified.

But with God, we don’t need to be.

As 1 John says, God is love, and perfect love casts out fear.

God is the only reason I do not live in fear anymore.

But I, who have been set free, still need to be compassionate to those who haven’t been. If I come down on them, I am only doing what I hated people doing to me when I was faird. Fear involves torment because it also involves guilt. Believe me, if you know an anxious person, they feel guilty constantly for their hesitancy.

Actually, those of us who were afraid once can be the hardest on people who still are. Because we got over it.

It’s pure stupidity, to be honest. We think “Oh, I kicked it. I snapped out of it. I pulled myself up by my bootstraps.”

Yeah, it’s idiotic. I’m pretty sure anyone who claims they got out of their fear alone is a liar.

No, we were helped. We shown compassion. Someone helped us stand when we couldn’t get up ourselves.

The reason to be bold is obvious once you have become bold, but never beforehand.

i still get scared, mind you. And I have to remind myself not to be like this. I have the power to now. But it took years and years of small steps.

Fluttershy eventually realizes it’s baby steps to boldness. And she has loving support.

Sometimes when I panicked as a younger Christian, it just helped to have someone tell me it was okay to be scared. That is was legitimate. But that it was false.

Looking back, I want to tell myself that there are always things to be afraid of, but fear doesn’t make them go away, and there is too much to enjoy to waste time worrying.

But I can only say that now because God made that a part of who I am. I didn’t start from that place.

So, Fluttershy is a difficult character because she is an honest one. Fear comes back over and over, but those who overcome it again and again with become Bold.

 

Until next time–Natasha.