Relationships

A difficult conversation.

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Part of Recovery is facing your fears, and figuring out a new way to live.

I watched a movie about being in rehab, rehab for addiction and recovery from abuse have some striking similariaties, I guess abuse eats away at your life the same way addiction does, just one is self inflcited and the other is inflicted on you.

One of the reasons I’ve chosen not to drink for this period of my life is that I have alchoholism on one side of my family, maybe both, and drugs on both, and I don’t want to start making that my go-to during a rough period.

The Holy Spirit is the only coping thing I want to be addicted to, event hough it’s hard. It can feel like taking a pill or a drink would make it so much easier because physical symptoms suck, and make emotional symptoms worse.

I’ve had stress symptoms all this week, which seem to have been triggered by a difficult conversation with my aunt.

See, as part of not letting my dad control our lives anymore, my sisters and I have discussed telling our extended family about what happened.

The trouble is my dad cannot keep his mouth shut about any drama in his life, and he has already told half the family his version of the story. Which no doubt paints him as either the victim, or the person struggling to get over his difficulties (still the victim).

My aunt is the main person who informs everyone in the family what’s going on with anyone else, so all our uncles and grandparents are calling her asking about us…calling us directly would never cross their minds.

I don’t really mind it so much, except that a slanted version of our story is getting spread.

I called my aunt over the weekend, she’s my dad’s sister, grew up with the same crap as he did, and has a handle on many of his flaws.

She said she was wondering about it and would like to hear more, so I told her. I gave her the highlights.

The word that seemed to surprise her most was ABUSE.

She couldn’t seem to grasp that her brother could really have abused us.

I gave her the physical, verbal, and emotional examples. She actually witnessed when my dad punched me, and she said she would have probably done the same if her kid had hit her first. I explained why I did it and his history of barging into my room without knocking, etc, bu it didn’t sway her.

Though I told her that he’d threatened my several times before that point, and had threatened me afterward. When I said that it was over me not doing something he asked/told me to do, she said in her house she’d expect her kid to do chores too.

The crowning injury for me was when she said that she thinks there is no good guy, there is no bad guy, that there were things I could have done differently, things that caused incidents.

??????????

I really hope you are horrified right now, and that this doesn’t sound familiar, if it does, you have my sympathy.

Let me define some things:

After a certain age, I don’t think a kid should be physically forced to do things like chores. There’s other consequences.

Which is moot anyway, because I was a grown adult when my dad threatened that, capable of making my own decisions. It had nothing to do with teaching me to be a good kid, it was about power. That’s all it was.

And if you are threatening your child with violence to get them to do something, you are acting like a tyrant.

I believe you can punish children for disobeying, then it’s a consequence, I do not think violence should be a motivation for the action to begin with.

But it doesn’t matter, since I was not a child. My aunt seems to not understand the obvious difference there.

My mom didn’t threaten to slap me out of temper, that I remember, but my dad did. He flung me out of stuff when I had done nothing wrong save for being there first.

I told my aunt this, I told her how he would tell us things he shouldn’t, like he considered suicide a lot. I told her how he verbally abused me with criticism, blame, and just horrible mocking that no one should ever say to or about their kids.

I told her about the manipulation.

She said some of it seemed like him trying to be a better dad than his father, by playing games with us. Though I said that wasn’t for us, it was for him. If we refused he’d whine about no one wanting to play with him, sometimes he got angry and yelled about it. Blaming us for making him unhappy.

Also, when he was trying to get over his gaming addiction, he’d blame us for not giving him a distraction by playing with him. Like that made it okay to play video games all night long and yell obscenities at the computer while we were trying to sleep.

Sure, our fault.

My aunt did admit some stuff, like how he makes everything about him, how he embarrasses people when they most want him not to, how he exaggerates what others do to him.

She puts it down to him having Aspergers (which I doubt after being in a program that talked about it) and not being able to get a sense of what other people feel.

But I know that is not true, I lived with my dad, he could tell what everyone felt as long as he wasn’t the cause. I’ve heard him explain exactly what people were feeling, and sympathize or use it against them.

He knew I had self worth issues, he knew I struggled with anger over what people do to me, but he would blank completely that he was the cause of that.

He could explain why my aunt was bothered by the behavior of everyone else but him, he’d own up to it if my mom pointed it out, and he’d laugh at it. He laughed at my hurt when I didn’t like his mocking and exposing me. He laughed at everyone’s hurt.

My dad liked punishing people. He liked bullying people who were weaker than him, who would let him. He hated me for getting stronger than that, but as long as he could get a reaction from my mom or sisters over what he said, he’d keep doing it.

He treated everyone like his parent, not his responsibility, and he still does.

My aunt told me he’s talked to her a lot about it, and owned up to some of what he did that she herself pointed out, but she focused on what bothered her the most, not what bothered us.

My dad told her apparently that he always thought we’d put up with him no matter what, that he wouldn’t be made to leave.

So, did he get married and have kids to ensure an audience for his bad behavior? A well of unconditional love? That he could withdraw from his whole life?

I guess so, he always did say he’d move in with me once he got too old to work (that’s not happening.)

Dad could never be accepted by his family, so he made one where he though he’d always have to be accepted. I heard him brag to people that my mom loved him despite all the bad things he did that she didn’t know about before they got married, so she was the best woman in the world.

I heard him yell at her for how disrespectful she was too, if she ever dared to question his treatment of me, or anyone else.

My dad wouldn’t always snap right away, but he’d snap eventually and make a whole thing of it, so you wouldn’t try it again.

I grant that our family was different from his, my mom made it so, but it wasn’t necessarily because he was a better parent.

My aunt knows the truth now, but she still encouraged me to think of what I could have done to cause all this, and to try talking to him. That I won’t know if he’s changed or not until I do.

Like I need to talk to him to know that 3 months of self reflection and 8 months of blaming us, are not going to undo 20 years of an abuser’s mentality.

if it could be changed, it would take years. Humility begins with realizing what you did, but you’ll realize a whole lot more once you start that process.

My aunt also told me that she feels we are in the phase of being angry right now, but when we are over it, and have kids of our own, we’ll understand why our dad was that way. We’ll see it was because of his upbringing.

My sister’s response? “I hope not.”

Mine too, I hope I never start justifying myself to my kids because of my past. I hope my husband never gives me leeway to be abusive, even if I sometimes act like a victim because I was one.

I want to adopt, for crying out loud. A lot of orphaned or foster kids were abused, do I want to add my name to that list? Heck no!

What my aunt is doing by saying this was my fault, is saying it’s not abuse. Because you never, ever tell a victim they did something to deserve that. Their abuser might, but you shouldn’t.

Believe me, we deal with that thought enough.

I don’t generally ask myself if I did something to deserve it.

I did about the hitting, but most of the time I knew he was overreacting, and had no right to treat me like garbage.

You know what’s sad?

If I had turned it on for my aunt, if I had cried and told her all my hurt feelings, Maybe I could have gotten more sympathy. My very calm, mature way of discussing it can work against me.

I’ve seen it with other people too, they get put off by me not crumbling, crying, acting like my life sucks.

I get it in a way, if this really happened to you, how can you be calm? It’s horrible, people in movies cry, other girls cry so easily, why don’t you cry? We can do the hug thing and say it’ll all be better.

Two reasons:

  1. When I did cry, people didn’t ease up on me, they doubled down. They told me not to cry, that I wasn’t being attacked, that this was because they loved me… crying was blood in the water to the people in my life.
  2. I did cry, I spent years sobbing alone in my bedroom, at night, trying to get past it. Trying not to be miserable. I was less depressed then than I am now when I can’t cry and let it out because I’ve become so “mature.”

 

I can’t beg for pity anymore, I once did. I got it twisted around and shoved in my face, by the one person who begs for more pity than anyone else I know.

He’s doing it now. He just can’t understand why we won’t talk to him, he’s changed! he realizes he was a jerk now.

Like he realized it scores of times as I grew up, and did nothing.

Any excuse will do for him, I’m sick of listening to them.

But I know why my aunt told me all this and won’t call it abuse.

She’s lived through the same thing with her parents, she’s heard terrible things from them. She broke the most out of the cycle of words and actions, I think she got resented for that the same way I did. No siblings to cheer her on either.

She finally accepted the excuses her parents made, and accepted her place in it. She blames herself for causing some problems because that is easier than seeing it as senseless.

Abuse, cruelty, neglect, they are all senseless. I’ve said this before.

My aunt’s view is too cotton candy for me. It assumes people cannot just deliberately do wrong because they refuse to do right.

That’ just not true. I believe the bible, it says people are wicked. On purpose, and on accident. And all of us will do both. A good person might just be one who does the least on purpose.

But that’s a human standard.

A good person is one who can own up to dong all they did, and doing it knowing it was wrong, even if they didn’t see how wrong it was, they knew it wasn’t right, and then, they try to change. Failing to change, they admit they can’t, and fall back on God. That’s what the Bible calls being righteous.

The sacrificial system in the Bible is an acknowledgment that we will sin, we cannot stop, but God’s grace makes us right with Him, if we confess our sins. We can stop sinning when God gives us that ability.

I have not stopped getting angry, but I have stopped bullying my sisters over it.  I haven’t stopped feeling insecure, but I’ve stopped blaming the wrong people. I’ve stopped demanding my parents fix that for me.

There are days I hate being an abused kid. I hate the stress of it, and how my body breaks down under it after awhile. I hate how people misunderstand, and still think it’s my fault

As if you blame the slave for trying to run away from a cruel master, and say it was their fault when the master whipped them almost to death for it. Sure, they caused it by running, but would they have run if the master was kind?

I loathe many things about this process.

But I don’t hate my aunt. I feel sorry for her. She still thinks it was somehow her fault. She couldn’t tell me that if she didn’t believe it.

I’ll admit to all of you, I find the whole thing depressing and hard to accept.

But I’ll get through it, because I am doing something about it. In the end, the survivor is still the lucky one.

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

 

When you miss your abuser.

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You know what one of the freakiest parts of abuse is?

When you miss it.

No one likes admitting it, but victims of abuse generally experience feelings of fondness and longing for their abuser.

If you’re like me, the scapegoat, then you can also “miss” the feeling of being blamed and dumped on.

Now, miss means two different things in this context.

There’s the actual feeling of “I wish they were here, I’d like to talk to them.”

Then there’s the weirder “I just feel off without some one being a jerk to me at least once a day, or every few days.”

When my dad moved out, it had gotten to the point where I could predict him making a biting remark or losing his temper at me about once a week, maybe more often. There were periods of time it was a daily occurrence.

I was remembering today one startling example of how far this had gone.

I have frequent allergy attacks, sometimes bad enough to resemble a bad cold, and I take medication that makes me sleepy, the symptoms themselves can make me tired also.

Well, it was a miserable day,  and I had taken the medicine, my sister was taking an art class at the time, just a few streets away. My dad got home in time to take her, but sat down in front of the TV and told me I should do it instead. I told him I wasn’t feeling well and shouldn’t be driving (I’m sure I sounded stressed at the time, this happened a lot.) My dad went ballistic, saying he wasn’t feeling well either (he seemed fine,) and I had better obey him and do it. I refused, he grounded me in a rage–for refusing to drive on medication to go two miles away when he had a car. His main reason was he wasn’t wearing pants, and he was livid that he had to go put pants on, because that was so hard.

My dad can act like a five year old sometimes.

I wish I could say this ended well, but in the end I felt guilty (for no real reason) and went and picked her up, which did not get me off the hook. I got grounded. I was 19 or 20 when this happened, if you’re thinking there’s a red flag to some kind of power imbalance in that, then you’re right.

That might have been when I told my parents to stop punishing me for stuff, a conversation I never should have had to have at 20, but…

The crazy thing is when I asked my mom about it, she was mad at me for acting that way, calling it unacceptable…when I was clearly not in a good position to be driving.

That kind of thing happened all the time. My dad used everything he could to have power over me, and over anyone else he could feasibly control. He got frustrated with people he couldn’t control.

You might wonder how one could possible miss that?

Well, it’s like my therapist says, it was my normal. I don’t miss it because I liked it, I miss it because it was the centre of my life, even if I didn’t choose it.

The Israelites missed Egypt after they left it, they complained that they could get food and water there, and they wished to return to it, thought hey were brutally treated slaves, who had their own sons taken from them and killed just as a power move to keep them second class citizens so they couldn’t overthrow the Pharaoh.

How do you miss that?

How do I miss someone who actively tried to ruin my life and make it as hard as possible. Who resented it if I or my sisters were ever happy, especially doing anything that he had no part in.

I believe the missing that feels like a regular type of longing is what comes in cases like mine where the abuser could seem like an okay person. When they were happy, they could please and be thoughtful. But so can most of us, it’s a very broken person who can never be nice. They exist, but it’s rare.

My dad took fits of “kindness”, saying nice things, trying to be caring, supportive, etc.  They were not wholly feigned, as C. S. Lewis put it, nor much dearer than dishwater, a single prick of any little word or event would burst his bubble. The rage would be back.

Often my dad would contrive a fight after any positive day or conversation we had, like he was not comfortable without the resentment being present. This was how I cam to see he hated me.

My mom can be the same way, only she is not comfortable till she’s made it so she feels you’re disappointed in her and unhappy with her. Even if it would have been simple to not say or do something to cause that situation. They are quite a pair aren’t they?

My parents are not really happy the way they are, they are just content to be miserable. If that makes sense.

I, who am not, have always been an anomaly to them, someone they cannot really understand.

My dad’s resentment really became demonic after awhile, he seemed to be incapable of wishing anyone else to be happy, even for a moment.

My dad was also always a bully, even from his childhood. He got picked on, but he also picked on other people as much as he could get away with.

He picked on a young man who had the misfortune of working for him, he went so far as to write and produce a soundtrack mocking the poor guy, and got his friends to help him, I’m not sure why they did, other than my dad’s friends have a lot of issues.

The man finally stopped taking his calls after quitting working for him, and my dad bemoans the fact to this day that he doesn’t get to torment him anymore, he never truly realized why it was horrid. I’m glad the guy had the sense to get out.

And of course, me. I got picked on for years. My dad eventually stopped doing it much once I stopped reacting to it or giving any sign I even heard, he found other ways to get a reaction out of me. But really, as I stopped reacting even to direct insults, he just ignored me as much as possible, blowing up whenever he got the chance to take some control back,

It puzzled my dad why I became immune to him. I think the song Titanium describes it best

“You shout it out, but I can’t hear a word you say. I’m talking loud, not saying much.

Criticized, but all your bullets ricochet, you shoot me down but I get up.

I’m bullet proof, nothing to lose, fire away, fire away. Ricochet, you take your aim, fire away, fire away. Shoot me down, but I won’t fall, I am titanium.

Cut me down, but it’s you who have further to fall, ghost town, and haunted love.

Raise your voice, sticks and stones may break my bones, talking loud, not saying much.

Stone hard! Machine Gun! Fired at the ones who run. Stone hard as bulletproof glass!”

This song perfectly describes how verbal abusers treat people. the “fired at the ones who run” signifies how the people who are intimidated get shot at more. 

And, like the song says, if you want to survive, you can end up like titanium. Hard.

I’m not sure there is any way, even with God, to avoid some hardening of yourself when you live with abuse.

The Bible says if you remove the cause of strife, it will cease. People critisize the Bible for it’s insistence on cutting sinful, wicked people out of contact with others, even to the point of death, but the Bible is wiser than we are, God knew long ago how sin works.

Abuse is one of the ugliest forms of domestic sin. Maybe the ugliest. the only things that might be worse are the perversions people do to each other in the name of science, or religion, or some other strange system.

Abuse could be the prototype for every other sin cycle, as it traps not only the abuser but the abused in their private and public sins. Hypocrisy and deception naturally follow abuse, like rain follows clouds.

My dad brought out the worst in all of us, he made us crueler, more spiteful people, because he played off all the worse parts in us to keep in power. Abusers rely on the fact that you have human weaknesses to keep control over you.

Actually, the anime remake Fruits Basket released an episode yesterday that portrayed this perfectly (that anime is genius by the way, using a curse + Beauty and the Beast type story to represent abuse, it works almost too well.) The main abuser manipulated the best boi Kyo by reminding him he was a monster. Till he broke.

Abuse makes you feel you are the monster, my dad set me up to feel that way from birth. All your faults are blown out of proportion, all your virtues are ignored unless they want something from you. You are told no one will love you but them. Or they are doing this because they love you.

God himself must want to gag when an abuser claims to love their victim (hey, it’s in Revelation if you don’t believe God has those emotions).

But because they lied to you, you think you are stuck with them. You really won’t be loved by anyone else.

My dad and his friends used to go off on me for not having people skills, no one ever bothered to teach them to me. That’s the point, abusers don’t want you to get better.

When I obviously had, when I made friends, my dad criticized them for being twits. He criticized my church fro not being like his. He criticized anyone I liked. I should associate with anyone he didn’t approve of, you see.

My dad is no one to miss, but because he could play the part, my mind can easily rick itself into thinking otherwise.

I want to give some advice to anyone reading this who might be recognizing this tenancy in yourself, maybe you even have an ex like this.

The Bible says to forgive, and we must forgive, if we ever want to be free, but it does not say to always forget. In fact, sometimes we need to remember when people sinned.

If you are a victim of abuse of any form, you have a difficult journey, but it is doable.

You must let go of your resentment, but you must remind yourself regularly that you were right to get out of that situation, that you deserved better, and you should get to be happy.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game. The player is at fault, but they probably have no more power to leave the game than you did, until you were rescued form it (even if you left yourself, something happened to open your eyes, we don’t just suddenly become wiser).

Sad as it is, my dad cannot control himself, not because he cannot make different choices, but because he cannot change his own heart. He refuses to be helped, and so he cannot help it.

I wonder sometimes if someone who is abuse might read my posts and wonder about themselves. But they would never change unless a work had already begun in their heart, proof will never change an abuser.

I may someday get told I was stupid to call it abuse, if I ever talk to my Uncle or my dad’s friends gain, no doubt they will protest. But I no longer care if they think I’m over reacting.

Another thing about the Monster complex.

My dad used to feel like a monster growing up, and the truth it, he was one. He still is, but that does not mean he is also not God’s child.

Sadly, sometimes a person is just barely saved. But they do trust God, they just should not be around anyone else they can control.

The Victim feels like a monster too. When you suffer a lot, you can feel like you must deserve it, it’s one of the way we struggle to make sense of the insensible, but Cruelty is always senseless.

Cruelty is madness, that is why it is so horrifying. We can live with anything we feel happened for a reason, but when reason is gone, so is our courage.

That is why one of the paths to healing is through letting God redeem your suffering, bringing about a good out of it. Giving it a reason. But people confuse God giving it a purpose with God having a reason for it to happen in the first place.

God, being outside of time, can have a purpose in something He knows was going to happen, but didn’t want to happen.

It is more like how a mom can see her child get shoved off a junglegym and rush to catch them. They didn’t want it to happen, but they have a response ready.

Why do we have medics on standby at sports events? We know accidents happen. Why do we have laws for punishing crime, we know crime happens, but anyone who says the law causes crime is out of their mind and should be ignored.

God has a plan in place for what will happen.

The Bible says “my life and times are in Your hands.”

We should feel relieved that when suffering happens, God already had a plan to make it work for us for good, even if He didn’t want it to happen.

God is our Insurance Policy. He fixes the damage when other stuff happens to us. When you rely on God, you admit that you cannot protect yourself.

When my dad hit me I could not understand why God allowed it, but a year later, I thought I had an idea, that God allowed it to push my mom and sisters to agree enough was enough. I didn’t really get hurt (outside) and it took the blinders off.

Was it good? No. But it helped keep more stuff like that from happening. Much like a vaccine can only exist because a disease does, but if you survive the disease, you can help more people with the vaccine from getting it at all. It would be better not to need it, but humans don’t get a life free of trouble.

Anyway, this ended up running long.

Missing my dad is kind of an illusion, but if I don’t buy it, it’s not a delusion. A delusion would be to let yourself be fooled.

And the road out is to remember the truth, and then know that God does have a plan for helping you, if you embrace it.

Until next time–Natasha.

 

 

To Good Men.

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I was watching a Reddit video the other day, it was asking men if they had ever experienced sexism. There was a lot of surprising stories.

I know men experience sexism, you just have to hang out with any average group of under-30-year-old women for long enough, you’ll hear it.

To be fair, I’ve heard male sexism from my own father, so I am not unaware it is in fact real.

Some of the comments were a little hard on women, and some described something I wouldn’t really call sexism, like expecting the man to pay for food, that’s chivalry, just like a woman should be respectful and not say certain things.

I am not saying that because I’m afraid of men and have some weird idea about submission (more on that later), but because I don’t think women get a free pass to say whatever they want about men just because men are supposedly sexist pigs (as always, the irony is that is a sexism statement.)

By and large, however, I agreed with the men. Some were not hired because company managers preferred to hire women, or were told to hire women for “diversity.” Often if the manager was a woman, she didn’t like men, but there was even a man who didn’t like hiring men… yeah, only hired young women… you can guess from there.

Well, not really sexist so much as gross in that last case.

Men don’t get preferred for child custody, even when they are clearly the more responsible parent. I even have a personal example of that, one of my cousins married a real psycho woman, who ended up in prison, that was how he finally got custody, if I’m not mistaken, and she had two kids. When I knew her she wasn’t as insane, but she was not a good mom. I could see that (and I was a teenager).

So, needless to say, I believe these stories. The most horrifying ones is where fathers get the police called on them for being with their own kids at a playground, just being responsible. And get comments that they are just “giving mommy a break.” Even when they are the one who spends more time taking care of the kids.

Men just do not get enough credit, yeah, I said it.

I don’t care if women want to work the same jobs as men, I want to be able to do things like that, but it’s not like it’s some kind of special achievement to be woman and work a job that men usually do, not now that it’s common. Even before, isn’t it just a necessity to work?

Look at it this way, do you think men deserve kudos for being actors, dancers, painters, chefs, and teachers? Things now seen as more natural for women (most of my drama group participants were girls, no matter what group it was.) Their work might deserve credit, but do they get credit just for being men in a field dominated by women, or at least gay men, according to the stereotype.

Some people might, but most won’t think men deserve credit because of their gender.

I don’t see how it’s any different for a woman. I want to be proud of what I do because it’s worth doing, not because it’s something not a lot of women do, and that’s rare now.

I felt like dedicating this post to all the men out there who are doing a good job with their families, who are trying to work hard, and value quality over a meaningless diversity.

I’d like to give a shout out to the fathers I know at my church who are involved in their kid’s lives and take care of them. Who adopted kids when they couldn’t have any, and chose one girl no one else wanted who didn’t even speak English.

To the pastors who go out of their way to take care of people in the congregation and outside it. Who aren’t too good to work in food distribution alongside us laymen.

To the men who volunteer in children’s ministry and play music and teach classes and assist us ladies in our class.

To the male preschool teacher I know.

To the guy who mows our lawn sometimes without us asking for it (I’ve actually seen this in more than one neighborhood.)

To my grandpa who paid for my braces.

I do not take you all for granted.

Funny, because as a woman with a bad dad, I am supposed to hate men. I grew up being picked on by my dad, but I never hated boys, I thought they were fun, I still do.

Guys can be more forgiving of my loud, opinionated personality type than girls can. Just the way it is. Which defies the stereotype of men not liking women to have a mind of their own.

I’ve had issues with a lot of men in my life, but they were all of a certain type, generally kind of sexist, or at leas prideful. There’s always been men I got along with fine, from childhood up, and I don’t see any reason to put all of them in the same box any more than I’d put all women in that box.

Geez, it’s like you can’t even like men anymore, in public. Women who support male politicians get torn to shreds by other women. Women who think feminism is completely out of control.

Hey, I got flack for supporting the bible at church, and what it said about men and women.

A note on that for anyone who might wonder if I really believe women should submit to men.

  1. I think it’s talking about wives and husbands, in the greek those words are the same as man and woman.
  2. I think, like modesty, submission is going to look different depending on your culture. In the USA, women can be very independent, and men ought to understand the kind of person they are marrying, as well as the demands of our society; a woman can’t usually rely on a man in Western Culture because it’s set up so that everyone has to work and make decisions on a daily basis without consulting their spouse on every occasion. I think in a culture where women were mostly solely dependent on men, the men had more of a right to make decisions about stuff they knew more about, but the Bible doesn’t teach that women have to agree with men, or do anything they think is wrong, or that they cannot correct men on something if they are wrong, just that they need to do it with grace, as with anyone else, and with patience.

Furthermore, I think the submission question misses two things, one, if any man is demanding submission, he already had an attitude problem, unless the woman is acting totally childish about something and anyone would have to stop her.

The other thing is that we are also told to submit to one another, meaning we need to put other people’s preferences first most of the time. A good marriage will mean both people want to do that, and we get the classic give and take that we all go gaga for in fiction.

But in the event that doesn’t happen, at least one person needs to be doing it, the one who claims to know God. A lot of times, that’s the woman.

If I was to add a third, I think that submission does not mean a wife cannot disagree, and argue with her husband. I’ve heard the submission card thrown around as a way to silence opposition period. It really means that when no one can agree, someone has to decide. And a husband can certainly just yield to his wife if he wants to, and many do, a lot. It’s kind of unfair now how often men are expected to cave in to whatever their girlfriends want, and many women feel no such need for their boyfriends.

I’ve seen it work both ways, can we just agree that selfishness in just bad in general, and that in both genders.

Well, time to wrap this up.

So, I like men. I don’t like all of them, all the time, but I like the kind of people they can be, and sometimes they are better at certain qualities I admire than the girls I know.  I am actually glad to know better men than my father, because it gives me something else to use as a standard.

It could be easy to start suspecting all men are secretly jerks at home, but you really just need to listen to their wives and kids closely enough, and you’ll know.

Anyway, big thank you to all the good guys out there, and the women who appreciate them, and until next time–Natasha.

 

 

 

Out-growing.

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

What a time to be in a national crisis.

My History Professor taught us about the Rwanda Holocaust today, just to lighten the mood (okay, okay, so it was already in the curriculum, not her fault.)

She had some personal experience, having worked in Rwanda for awhile.

Needless to say, it was an upsetting Class lecture. I’d already read the famous “Left to Tell” book, but have yet to work up the courage to watch Hotel Rwanda.

I was feeling good before class, but it left me kind of depressed.

It’s rough to be going through the Therapy/Recover experience at the same time as a National Crisis, and now a national scandal with rioting and protests.

It never rains but it pours is such a true saying.

When someone is in recovery, it can help to be able to focus on the world outside of yourself. To be involved in things bigger than you.

And it does help me to volunteer at my church’es food bank.

But all my other activities have been cut off. I can not leave my house for days on end. Even to go in the backyard.

I have lived my life around indoor activities my whole life.

I never thought it was strange that my mom wouldn’t take us to the park, or to events to hang out with other kids, except at church.

I never thought it was weird that the only other time I left the house was for “educational field trips” which I would never know anyone else at.

We had some play dates when I was little, but after awhile it died out. My mom doesn’t maintain friendships for very long, I notice.

So, I learned to be a bookworm, a writer, a backyard play person.  My sibling and I invented a very detailed imaginary world for our toys.

I’ve heard of other kids doing this, but interestingly, they were also ones without many friends. It’s like we have to fill the void of needing interaction somehow, and we’ll invent people if we don’t know them.

The trouble is, if you become content to just stay in that imaginary land, you will begin to think it’s better, and learn to dislike people for not being as easy to manage as your fantasies.

As a bookworm, I read plenty of books centered around characters with rich imagination. I loved the Anne of Green Gables series.

Yet with age I’ve realized how unhelpful it is to live in a world of fantasies… not that fancies are bad. I think they are good. Any healthy adult ought to be able to have fancies that are childlike.

But when you substitute that for reality, it means you don’t want to accept your reality.

Sometimes its okay to cope that way, often we have no other way, and fancies are preferable to the destructive habits many of us develop.

But someday you have to grow up. Because you have to decide what you will be. Who you will be. Your fiction will never dot hat for you, you have to do it in the real world.

The best fiction prepares you for that, while escapist fiction is hampering it.

And escapist fiction isn’t generally fairy tales, the worse fiction is the ugly, engorged stuff that feeds all the worst things in us. Porn, smut, superficial romance, mindless comedy, all that is far worse for you than an innocent kids story will be.

The reason kids blur fantasy and reality is because they know that one affects the other, its adult who tell ourselves our fantasy and reality are separate lives.

(Kids are the more biblical by the way, Jesus taught that your imagination is still part of who you are, and even where you sin the most.)

Anyway, for me it was sad to let go of fantasies. I cry every time I read the end of Winnie the Pooh, or watch Hook. It’s bittersweet.

Yet, like many adults, I can’t get away from the feeling that I traded fancies for something less good. Like my real life is underwhelming and uninspiring. Boring. Meaningless save for snatches of importance.

Yet, if I were asked to define what I think a meaningful life is, I wouldn’t say an exciting one.

I would list off a life filled with genuine love, doing what you were meant to do, impacting people on a personal level, and above all, knowing God well, as the top qualifications.

And my life isn’t so bad.

I have this blog, with over 140 followers now. It’s doing better than ever.

A growing YouTube channel based off doing something else I love.

I write my own stuff hours every day, and I love it.

I like school and I get to go almost for free.

Not having a job or boyfriend are annoyances, but not defining ones.

And I have my faith, which is worth more than all the rest.

I also have friends I can talk to more often then I’ve ever been able to before.

So, why do I not feel happy?

There’s this quote from “Through the Looking Glass” that sums up most of adult life, I think.

“Here it takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place.”

There are times when it takes all you’ve got to just sit still, to just rest where you are at.

As Switchfoot put it in their recent song “Give me the Strength to Let Go.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujo984rLHRA)

It takes strength to let go.

You see, even as a kid, I was a dreamer. I was never content with fancies. I couldn’t wait to be an adult so I could get out and do what I wanted. Make a real difference.

I wanted to travel, to teach, to take care of orphans.

I am one of those people who just wants to heal everyone’s pain. Who wants to have enough love and patience to help them all. To have the provisions to give.

I have been like this as long as I can remember. I can date first realizing it to reading “A Little Princess” and “Heidi.” But it was in a lot of books I read growing up.

My parents didn’t teach me this really, they taught me the principle of giving, but we didn’t go out and do stuff like that, like this other homeschooled Christian family I know. We stayed at home in our own little bubble.

And I got used to it. I feel secure in it. But I was at war with it, because I was always dying to get out.

From birth I was bolder than my other family, and I can attest to it with a lot of stories. But I can’t explain it, no one taught me to be that way, I just was.

I always took the Bible seriously, I guess, you have to watch people like that.

My point?

Well, maybe I’m not alone in this. Maybe some of you have always felt too big for the space you live in.

I can be scared to go outside, but that fear was learned, it wasn’t innate. I hate it even as I feel it.

Maybe you do too.

This whole crisis has got people scared stiff, but a lot of us feel boxed in. We hate it. We hate the fear, some of us because we feel it trying to get a hold of us, and we don’t want it to.

AFter God began healing me, I often had the sensation of being chased by some dark monster I had escaped from, trying to get me back into its clutches.

Freedom comes in two steps. First there’s the initial freedom of release, and new perspectives and new opportunities, and then there’s the Freedom of Security, no longer feeling you will get drawn back in.

Even people who get out of prison experience those two phases, so it’s a quite literal phenomenon as well as a spiritual one.

I still get that sensation sometimes. It took years for me to stop feeling that way about living in fear, and now I have to fight feeling that way about being emotionally abused.

That’s why I think it takes all that running to stay still. It takes all your strength to hold on to the progress you’ve made.

Talking to God about it, I don’t really get any clue as to when this process will be over (both for the world, and for myself).

All I get is the idea that I have to let go of trying to fix my future, and fix everything around me.

I don’t think my dream as a kid to heal and help people was bad, it was just seldom realized. Still isn’t as often as I wish.

When it is, I feel the most right with myself.

But usefulness is not the basis of self worth. IT’s good to ahve a purpose, necessary even, but one has to be first and foremost God’s child.

Letting go is hard, it takes more work not to work, not to try to run ahead of God.

And we still have to do our tasks at hand that He has given us, we just can’t try to do the next thing, before we’re even sure what it is.

I still feel trapped and hemmed in, same as when I was a kid. I can’t even say how long that will be my circumstances.

I don’t know. None of us do.

I keep waiting to go from feeling frustrated about it to being at peace with it.

It’s easy to think, “Well, all this hasn’t changed, so nothing ever will. I will always be this way.”

That isn’t realistic, however. Even if I wanted to stay the same, I couldn’t.

This all bothers me most at times like this when I’m stuck at home, and can’t do a thing about it. And everyone is sharing that feeling now.

Whether you’re like me, and this feels like a repeat of your whole life, or you are entirely new to being a homebody unwillingly, we’re all in the same boat.

No predicting when it will end.

But, the thing that helps me most I think, is to thing that this time must be preparing me for something.

The thing is, people tell me a lot that I have a lot of Wisdom.

The only way that I got to be that way was being alone so much, and asking God to help me with that. I had to learn it all the solitary way, with books and movies as inspiration.

People who’ve always been around lots of others aren’t necessarily wiser, hardly ever in my experience. Other people pull at you, they mold you, and it can often be in bad ways.

I had to develop a very strong core personality. And while I don’t like all the alone time, I am glad for being able to know much more what I really believe in.

So, try to think of it like that. Whatever else this crisis is, it is time to try to learn something new, to build up strength in isolation.

Something all humans have to learn sooner or later if we intend to mature.

Anyway, that’s all for now, until next time–Natasha.

Emptying Out.

/ toseealife / 3 Comments

You know, recovery can be really sucky.

I experience a lot of mood changes, small things make me want to cry, small things make me want to laugh, more feelings than I’ve ever experienced before in my life go through me in a day, or a few days, after something triggers me.

It doesn’t help that abuse was also tied up with a lot of spiritual things in my life. I don’t envy anyone else who’s experienced it more than me, but even on a small level, it’s doubly disturbing to have human cruelty mixed up with spiritual problems. not that it’s ever not tied together, deep down, even when it’s hidden.

Between times like that, I can feel normal, level, happy. Like my old self.

Now, I don’t know who my actual self is. The one who doesn’t get emotional easy, or the one who gets emotional over everything, or both. Probably both.

I always wondered if my calmness could also be a bad thing, like why don’t I get moved easily? Why do emotional displays annoy me more often than get to me. (Which can still be true.)

Generally, I can empathize more with anyone I feel is trying to improve, but still getting tripped up over their feelings. While people who wallow in it annoy me.

For others, it’s the opposite. they don’t like people who try to stay positive and progress, they like the more “realistic” Everything sucks attitude. Emo anime characters come to mind.

Anyway, I’m not about the self-pity party, but I have to take how I feel seriously at the same time, treat myself with kindness.

A lot of days I end up saying to myself “It’s okay to feel bad, but it’s not okay to let that rule you. You can feel sad, and not be depressed.”

I have to come to terms with the fact that I’m sort of a trailblazer in my family when it comes to focusing on the good stuff, but not ignoring my own needs.

I have a father whose whole side of the family is obsessed with their own feelings, and that is all important to them. If they aren’t happy, no one can be. Everyone else is to blame.

And I have a mother who’s side of the family is about never talking about your pain or anger, and always soldiering on. Even if it means losing connection and communication with your family members. They go silent, and you freeze to death.

Where does that put me?

Well, the good thing about two opposites as parents is you end up seeing the pros and cons of both and if you try, you can find a different way.

Not ignoring my feelings can be a problem though because it is very hard not to dwell on thoughts and feelings that are negative for me. It was never modeled for me as a kid, and neither was positive self talk.

Here’s where I find myself. Two feelings are at war in me almost all the time, almost every day. One is negative, sadness, anger, anxiety, etc. The other is positive, joy, gladness, hope, triumph over the battles, love even.

Love is odd too, it runs very high sometimes. I think it’s a way to take my mind off myself.

I’ve been told to watch that Inner Critic, that it’s a big part of being stuck in an abusive cycle.

But I don’t have a very strong Inner Critic, I haven’t for a while.

When I get down, the thing that goes through my mind is more:

“God loves me.” “I love you.” “I love this person.” “I will not be ruled by my emotions.”

Sometimes another voice starts up “How do you know you’ll ever get better?” “Maybe this is the rest of your life.” “Maybe you are crazy.”

I guess if I am, everyone is. Crazy people aren’t the ones who hear stuff in their minds, they’re the ones who are dumb enough to believe it when it tells them bad things.

Going mad can be a choice. Giving your ind over to darkness is a choice. If at some point it ceases to be a choice, it’s because you gave in too much.

Yet anyone who can become a Christina at least can become sound in their mind again, according to Romans (5 I think).

Humans have survived great suffering, even torture, with their minds intact because they would not give in to it.

The process of Recovery can feel like an emptying of everything. For better or worse, something that was always in your life is now gone. Probably for good.

When you are emptying out, certain temptations become hard to resists (The Screwtape Letters covers this well).

Sexual temptation is big for many people. For me its more the temptation to dwell on romance. It could easily turn into pitying myself because I don’t have it, but I try to just enjoy watching it, seeing any kind of healthy love.

I guess I internalize healthy depictions of romance and parent-child relationships because I know I have a void of examples in my life, and I need to fill it.

I notice I’m not the only one. There’s a YouTuber I watch who loves good parents in fiction and sweet, touching moments because they know they didn’t have that, and they want to learn to be a better kind of parent.

You don’t have to have seen a good marriage growing up to see a better dynamic on TV or in a book, and know it’s the real deal. The classic Pride and Prejudice evens mentions Elizabeth’s ideals of marriage are not based on her own parents. Jane Austen got it.

I also am a more open shipper, I don’t have a “ship type” like edgy boy and upbeat girl (though I enjoy those, often.) I try to glean a lot of different examples from all kinds of couples, I don’t know what my marriage will look like yet, you can learn a lot form fiction.

I find as I feel empty, it’s best to focus on good things.Wholesome things.

You give out what you put in. I’m drawn to shows about overcoming emotional problems, neglect, and abuse.

In fact, just to really expose myself, here’s a list of the stuff I’ve been watching since my dad moved out:

Fruits Basket (in the process, actually)

Naruto (ugh)

MHA (aww)

RWBY (err!)

Fairy Tail

Lovely Complex (great show)

Say I Love You

Instant Family (movie)

Married at First Sight

She-Ra

Dragon Prince

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Miraculous Ladybug

Fruits Basket again

There’s more, believe me, but just on that list, anyone notice how many of those shows deal with the topic of abuse and emotional growth? Pretty much all of them.

I have a type.

The thing is, going into most of these shows, I had no idea they would be like that, it just happened.

This happens in my life a lot, I’ll start learning about something important, and suddenly everything I watch and read will be about that, not because I typed in in some search engine, it’ll just turn out that way.

I think it’s a Divine Gift. A way for a girl to grow who never had a lot of good mentors in her life to help her.

And it is possible to be shaped by books, movies, and shows, anyone who says different is lying.

Music too. I mean I started listening to Skillet in just the past year, and a lot of their songs are about that stuff. And the Oh Hellos.

Focusing on all this is a way to not feel so alone in my experiences, and as I can’t exactly join a support group right now, that’s good.

There’s more to the process of moving on, but I think I’ve said enough for one post.

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

 

She-Ra Season 5 tanked the characters.

/ toseealife / 1 Comment

I have not really admitted to being a She-Ra fan on this blog, and the truth is, I’m really not a fan. I got vaguely interested in the show because a reaction channel I like talked about it, I mostly just watched it to laugh at it, but then I got interested in the depiction of abusive relationships–for obvious reasons.

So, I watched up to season 4 and then when season 5 came out last week, I watched it too, interested to see how they’d wrap things up…

SPOILER ALERT (duh)

download

If you care

 

Now, to be honest, my emotional investment was low in everyone except Entrapta and Hordak, and that part was pretty good, so I enjoyed some of the season.

I was never the biggest Catra fan, but l had moments of enjoying her arc also.

But in my opinion, about halfway through is where they dropped the ball, and they dropped it off a cliff.

I’m aware a lot of you readers probably haven’t even heard of this show, as I have international followers, and followers who probably have better stuff to do than binge Netflix kids shows.

Why should you care?

Well, in what it becoming the typical Netflix American fashion, this show tackles both LGBTQ issues (if by tackles you mean subtly promotes the lifestyle in a cotton candy way that you’ll never see with a real gay couple, at least, I’ve not seen any act that way) and abuse. I can’t really explain why it’s so popular to tackle abuse on kids shows now, but I’m not against it if it’s done right, since I certainly wish I’d seen more about it before so that I knew what I was experience was at least not right.

I don’t think they need to call it “abuse” because kids should not be taught to throw that word around until they can understand the difference between abuse and discipline or acts of anger from an equal.

And just to be clear about why I’m going to criticize the show, this is how I qualify behavior as abuse:

  1. Power. Power is the absolutely crucial element of any abuse. Power over the other person, not power to enforce what’s right. Verbal or emotional abuse is just as much about power as physical abuse is, and can be more effective and harder to trace.
  2.  Confusion. Discipline is given for a clear reason, or should be. Abuse can be about one thing one day and the opposite thing the next day. The victim is constantly confused about why they are in trouble.
  3. Justification. Abusers justify what they do with crap reasons that put the blame on everyone else. they don’t just have outbursts of temper, they say those were appropriate reactions. Without the other two elements, justification isn’t abuse because all of us do it, but when someone does it with that kind of malice, it’s become abuse.

Another element that doesn’t have to be it, but usually is is that the two people are not equals, one is a parent, boss, or tyrant figure, and the other is their subordinate or dependent. It can happen between equals in a different sense, where one tries to usurp the other and become the top dog, no matter what the cost.

So, if you watch She-Ra you can probably guess the rest of my thoughts from here on out.

She-Ra depicts it’s MC Adora as the victim of abuse from Shadow Weaver, one of the main villains. then Adora’s “friend” Catra overthrows Shadow Weaver and starts posturing and acting like her…and trying to kill Adora.

I’ve had many a rant about Sasuke and Sakura getting together after all the crap that no one ever calls them out for (except the fans).

But this show managed to trump the bad idea of that ship.

So, after a redemption arc more rushed than necessary, Catra and Adora get together…

*Deep breathAngryComputerGuy-1024x581-799x445

Okay, here’s the deal.

You spend 4 FREAKING SEASONS portraying the stages of leaving an abusive relationship, gaining Independence, discovering who you were meant to be, and learning to communicate with healthier friends. You do a decent job with all that. Have some real cathartic moments of characters calling each other on their crap. Have your MC learn to stop taking blame on herself for stuff beyond her control, choose her own path, etc.

You do ALL THAT right,

And then your big answer at the end is to GO BACK TO THAT PERSON who abused you and make nice with them, and then get in a romantic relationship?

‘Cause that’s realistic.

I mean, it’s not uncommon for victims to go back to their abuser, but it is uncommon for survivors who get out of it to ever willingly put themselves back in. Even when the plot demands it, Adora is hesitant to trust Shadow Weaver.

Someone would say “Catra isn’t Shadow Weaver, Catra was a victim like Adora, so it’s different.”

Ah, no. No, no, NO!

There’s a few reasons that won’t hold up.

  1. The obvious one? Catra tried to kill Adora several times. I know, I know, if people can ship Sasuke with Sakura and Harley with Joker, that won’t stop them. But consider what the point of Adora’s whole arc at the end of Season 3 was? She gave up trying to talk Catra off the ledge, and just stopped her. My World's On Fire, How About Yours? — So when I first saw the ... It was great. In Season 4 she’s in the next stage, learning to just not care what Catra says or does to try to get under her skin. (It’s a fun phase, you feel so free). Season 5 marks the time for Catra to have her own arc, of learning to let go of control, to not give in to anger, and to forgive. Then either at the end or in a future season, a reconciliation could happen, but by no means would it be romantic. That would take years, if it happened at all (which it wouldn’t just to be clear. Once you’re out, you’re out. Unless you’re still married, maybe. A kid isn’t going to move back in with an abusive parent. Sorry.)

2.   Adora was already moving on. As I just said, Adora had gotten over a lot of the anger and guilt she felt over Catra, she realized it was Catra’s choice to screw over the world, not hers. She wasn’t even obsessing over stopping her, she was treating it like a chore. You don’t want to, but you have to.

And that, my friends, is the best place to be in.

As someone who’s kicked an abuser out of my life, let me say, I don’t enjoy reinforcing that. I don’t like making him suffer. I do get catharsis out of seeing the same tactics no longer work on me or anyone else, but I know it’s not over. I have to see this through till the end, but it’s not all I think about.

3. It would never, ever happen.

Even in fiction, two victims of the same abuser who were raised together are not going to end up in a relationship, and this is why:

When an abuser has multiple victims at the same time, usually a parent, but it can be a boss or tyrant also, they will pit them against each other to curry favor. They get a kick out of making one scapegoat feel small, and the other feel dependent on them for their self esteem.

Case in point, I’m the scapegoat in my family, and one of my sisters is the “good sheep” (commonly called Golden Child) but when she caught on to the abuse and began calling it out, she fell from grace within 2 weeks. No joke. It took about 3 days to go from being the good kid to the same basket case as yours truly. Why? She changed, but our dad didn’t.

The scapegoat will realize what’s happening to a certain point, and resent the abuser, and usually, they’ll resent the Golden Child too. Sometimes they get over it and realize the other person was also a victim, like in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (a much better handling of the same dynamic), other times they turn on their fellow victim, like in the new show The Dragon Prince, with Claudia and Soren (another much better depiction.)

The Best Nebula Quotes From MCU Movies, Ranked By Fans Assorted Thoughts on The Dragon Prince Book Three | Manic Expression

Even if you reconcile, you never get away from the fact that they were in that with you and will always remind you of it. Ideally, you both go on to live independent lives, and stay close, but you know you can’t be dependent on each other, or the cycle continues.

Growing apart is actually good for abused siblings, because abuse traps you into one little circle of people. I hardly ever had friends over growing up, play-dates didn’t get set up, nothing. I think there was just this instinct to keep to ourselves. It’s not malicious on everyone’s part, it’s just there, darkness hides, that’s all there is to it.

People who marry victims of abuse may find the family will either make them a part of the cycle, or always resent them for being outside it, and it causes more problems in marriage than most realize. If two abuse victims get married who never got over it, then it’s likely they’ll become part of both cycles in some way, directly or indirectly, and so like attracts like, it’s what’s normal to you.

All this to say, Adora and Catra’s best case scenario always should have been parting ways at the end of the show. Even if Catra had joined Adora at the start of it, eventually she would have needed to find her own path, apart from Adora, to find out what it’s like to not revolve around Adora and Shadow Weaver.

Adora’s whole journey in seasons 1-4 is learning not to revolve around Catra and Shadow Weaver, which the ever unhelpful Glimmer does not make easy.

Certainly, once Catra started trying to kill her, any chance of being close like they were before was out the window.

save with the cat | Tumblr

I am all about forgiveness, but I am not about stupidity. We have flaws. You can forgive, but some things you should not forget. You need to remember, so you value your freedom.

It’s like how we remember 9/11 and Memorial Day, and JFK’s assassination. How the Israelites remembered being set free from Slavery on Passover. You need to be reminded that freedom is hard, costly, and has to be maintained. Or you’ll lose it.images

In my mind, Season 5 was doomed as soon as Adora went back for Catra after Catra told her not to. Not because I was against Catra getting saved, but because I think it needed to be someone other than Adora. Glimmer, Bow, Entrapta, anyone it wouldn’t have been codependency with.

They could have still saved it if Adora had understood what needed to happen after saving Catra, but she goes right back to blaming herself, worrying, and saying she “doesn’t want to lose her”.

On most shows, this would be a red flag that the person was getting too obsessed with the other, but nope, its okay now, because…uh, no reason really. The fans wanted the ship, I guess.

Catra’s arc is undermined by the fact that she is not letting Adora go, but still basing her self-worth on Adora and Shadow Weaver.

Even to the point where Shadow Weaver successfully manipulates her into running off again, so, she learned nothing, really.

This “ship” hit all the wrong branches on the abuse-victim tree for me, and it was infuriating to see it be endgame.

I both think it was never going to be romantic once it was depicted as two abuse victims trying to deal with their past, and that it should never have been romantic once they were free already, and that even if it was going to be at all costs, they could have at least tried to be mature about it.

But nope, let’s just kiss and do the love defies death cliche (I love that cliche when it’s done right, by the way).

Now, you may think, I just don’t like gay ships.

But let me counter with this, I watch a reviewer of the show who does support gay ships, and he has made the abuse comparison in each season of the show.

Here’s the problem, he still ships it (and no, he’s not gay himself, he just wants to be progressive.)

Now, he called it abusive, before I did, in fact. But he still ships it. Do you see the problem here?

Warning tape danger tape Royalty Free Vector Image

I suppose someone who hasn’t been abused can make glib comments about it, but overlook it in the end if they get the butterflies from the sickly sweet shipping moments.

But let me spell this out for anyone who might think I’m being too harsh:

Abuse is hell, at least, it’s pretty darn close.                         images

Abuse tears apart who you are, and gives you nothing back but poison. It’s selfish, it’s isolating you from anyone who might help you.

When you are finally out of it, you dread somehow getting tricked into going back. You have depression, guilt, fear, anger, rage, grief.

It can feel like you’ll never be a normal person. You’ll never have a happy life. This will blot out the sunshine forever.

All this can go on for years, at the very least, months.

And that’s AFTER you got OUT. Not even mentioning what it was like while it was happening. Not feeling safe any day of your life because that person is there, or will be, or may find some way to hurt you even if they aren’t there.

Words can not describe the amount of loathing I would feel to ever willingly subject myself to that again, as well as the paranoia that I someday will. The only thing that keeps all that at bay is knowing God is there, having my back. I can’t imagine how I would feel if I was not a Christian and the same thing happened…yikes.

So, seeing someone dismiss that on the grounds of “cute shipping moments” kind of makes me want to throw up.

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This is my issue with the show, in summary. They threw out all that good writing in order to ship the characters, which is a terrible example for kids, and gay people, for that matter. Don’t get back into an abusive relationship, just don’t.

There is no going back. Even if you forgive the person, and miracle of miracles, they are actually sorry and learn to be better, distance is what maintains that.

Abuse is about control, distance is the sincerest form of repentance for an abuser, and the truest form of freedom for a victim.

In a perfect world, with perfect people, it wouldn’t matter. But the world isn’t perfect.

And that’s also my other problem with the show’s ending.

It’s a pastel pink, gay paradise. Literally. No one mentions the people who just died, we see no funeral, no one mentions Angella even though her husband is just getting to see his home without her for the first time, no one talks about all the damage they’ll still need to repair.

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And no one even thinks about how Catra still has a crap ton of issues, and needs to resolve them without Adora’s help.

Nope. Best friend Squad, my foot.

They make it look perfect, because any acknowledgement of the real problems that still need to be dealt with breaks the illusion that this could actually be the ending.

Don’t say “Disney does it all the time” not the same thing. At its worst, Disney doesn’t end with abusive relationships.

Paradise is a good ending when the main problems have been resolved, or the path to resolving them has been made clear for the audience, not when there’s a lot still to do.

Freaking Naruto ended better than that… and it was awful.

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Anyway, yes, I did turn this into a rant, but I hope it’s clear why I feel so strongly about this.

To me, it seems the writers must not have talked to anyone who has been abused, because it’s just so repulsive to you if you have gotten out of it.

I don’t by any means wish to make my abuse story a badge of identity to myself, I detest that mindset.

Force Captain Badge | She-Ra and the Princesses of Power Wiki | Fandom

 

But if the subject comes up, as it clearly did, I think I have the right to call them out for doing it wrong.

I still liked some things about season 5, but the conclusion is not one of them.

Until next time, Stay honest–Natasha.