a stargazer just trying to have a good time/life. ☆ 23 ☆ they/them ☆ contents may include: media, fandom, mental illness, trauma, art, personal posts...misc. ☆
I went through a lot of things after surviving abuse, but one of the things that traumatized me the most was how all the shrinks and counselors treated my anger.
I wish someone had said this to me, instead of making me feel like a monster.
This is the book for those that want to pick it up. Quarter of the way
through and it’s destroying the white woman ignorance and frailty
charade. Great read so far.
A good read on this is The Half Has Never Been Told, by Edward Baptist.
Dr. Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers is the black female professor
To all the White women who like to act like they’re not enforcers of White supremacy and also get benefits from said system, here you go.
Yo, this might be a joke but speaking to you as a social worker who has worked in housing and homelessness services and food banks?
ALWAYS CHOOSE YOUR RENT.
Food pantries are a punch in the nuts to your pride but they require WAY less hoops to jump through to get than the financial side of housing assistance. Also, there is often going to be MORE RESOURCES AVAILABLE for you when it comes to food assistance of MULTIPLE TYPES (food stamps/ebt, places that double said EBT, food pantries, places that just give away free food like soup kitchens, places that give away their leftovers from the day before etc) rather than housing assistance which are neither numerous nor are people likely to apply for.
I personally have used food pantries. I may have to use them again. They are there to help you for that reason, okay? Please fucking choose to pay your rent until we can abolish landlords and live on mutual aid.
Stay housed. Do you hear me, if this choice happens, seek mutual aid or charity for food and STAY HOUSED. Statistically, it is better to take the hit to your pride, go ask for food assistance, and sleep in your bed and eat that food in your home because coming back from losing said home is going to be so much harder that recovering from food insecurity is.
ITS FUCKED UP THAT WE HAVE TO CHOOSE BUT PLEASE TRUST ME ON THIS ONE OK? JUST TRUST ME.
While I do enjoy seeing John unapologetically smacking Star Wars nerds down and telling them off after all these years, part of my heart has been slowly breaking over a long period of time because I can’t imagine the level of hurt and betrayal he had to have experienced being a fan of Star Wars himself and having all that racist vitriol be a part of his life for damn near five years.
I never got into Star Wars because it just wasn’t a thing my parents were into, and personally I’ve never been interested in a piece of media that saturates the world in whiteness. But a kid like John looked at this piece of media and fell so deeply in love with it. Part of what made me even interested in it was seeing him and how many people praised him when TFA came out. Because of him I was willing to give Star Wars a chance.
And now I won’t. I was sadly proven right about the level of white elitism within the entire landscape of the fandom but more importantly, watching John go from being genuinely excited about being a part of the project that served as one of his greatest childhood dreams and slowly morphing into someone that just can’t wait for this to be over so he doesn’t have to ever interact with the fandom ever again makes me so goddamn mad.
Antiblack racism in fandom space is one of the most dangerous aspects of this whole gambit. I truly mourn the Black children who really love a certain piece of media, especially if it’s sci-fi or fantasy, but we’re ultimately chased out of it because vitriolic white fans refuse to learn how to fucking share.
If you’re living in an abusive
environment, and you often doubt your own memories and wonder if it’s really
that bad or if you’re overreacting, here’s a few things you can do:
Write down what your abusers are
telling you in the time of abuse. It can be easy to disregard it at the time
it’s happening, but once you write it down, you can read it later and only then
see how actually horrid and disgusting these words are. Whenever you doubt
yourself, read these words. No loving parent or partner would say words like that, no
matter what kind of angry they are. If you write in the dates too, these
writings will also serve as a proof, if at any time you decide to take legal
action against them.
Check the double standards –
would you be able to get away with acting toward the abuser the same way
they’re acting towards you? Would you be safe doing any of the things abusers
are doing to you? For instance, if they threaten you, or pick apart your
appearance, insult and humiliate you, destroy your confidence, ruin your plans and
goals constantly, invade your boundaries, act like you don’t have feelings or
imply you’re worthless and a burden – could you ever do any of that back,
safely? If the answer is no, then all of their aggressions, even ones they mask
as ‘jokes’ and ‘well intentioned’ are based on a power imbalance. They’re
punching you down because they know you can’t defend yourself. That’s abuse.
Ask yourself, would I ever do
that to someone. For every and each of their abusive actions, imagine yourself,
with your own future kids, or a partner if it’s the abusive relationship, and
ask yourself if you would ever do any of that to a loved one, anyone. How would
that person feel. Once you put yourself in their own shoes, and imagine someone
else suffering at your hand, it becomes clear their excuses are worthless, a
decent human being would never do what they did, no matter the circumstances.
Only abusive people will ever try
to tell you that you’re lucky it isn’t worse. Only abusive people will demand
you to be grateful, or compare themselves to someone worse to prove how bad it
could have been. What you can do is keep having healthy references to what a
non-abusive environment looks like. If it’s your home, you should feel safe and
loved in there. If it’s a relationship, you should be completely equal, never
diminished or told you’re less than. If these people are nowhere near making
you feel safe and loved, and insist on you being less competent, stupid,
unworthy, deserving of pain – ask yourself what the heck is wrong with them.
Even if by some insanity you could possibly be stupider or less competent, a
loving person would never ever feel a need to say that to you to your face,
they would see what is good in you, and point that out, over and over.
If your doubt in yourself is
based on this person treating you badly, while they treat everyone else good,
know that normal people treat their loved ones, their family, with more warmth,
more allowances, more softness and forgiveness than their collegues,
neighbours, outsiders, bosses or strangers. If this abuser chose the most
vulnerable person, the one who relies on them the most, to abuse, something is
wrong with them. They’re obviously capable of being polite and respectful – as
they let on by treating others better, so why don’t they utilize their skill
with someone who truly cares about them? Because at heart, they’re just an
abuser. Playing nice with others is only to build a reputation that helps them
discredit victims. Problem is not within you, but a monster who treats the
people they supposedly love, worst than enemies. They’re incapable of love. You
were lovable all along.
Additionally, if you find yourself struggling with anxiety
and low self-esteem around this person, if you’re scared of their next word and
action, and experience trauma symptoms because of the things they’ve done to
you, know that there was no way you could have done it to yourself. These are
not overreactions, or you being too sensitive, they’re human reactions to
trauma, and it’s impossible for a human being to cause this to themselves. It
takes a lot of continuous abuse and hatred in order for you to struggle like
this, it takes work and a lot of abuse to psychologically damage a person, make
them scared and doubting their own worth, or their own experiences. It means
this person is capable of traumatizing someone in order to control them. That
is messed up, and it’s not on you. You should have been protected from that,
and nobody had the right to do this to you.
“When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”
From the moment a child is born, they crave touch. They want to be held, not just to eat, but for safety, for warmth, for comfort, for affection–for love. A newborn will show preference in who they want to be held by, especially when they’re tired or sick or scared. We are born ready to be loved. Our first need is to be cared for, to be fed and changed, and held. To learn that we are loved.
Don’t let anyone, anyone tell you have to be able to love yourself before you can be loved. You were born ready to be loved wholly, and having self-esteem issues or a mental illness doesn’t make you any less lovable.
You don’t need to fulfill any condition. You are worth loving. You deserve to be loved, and have deserved to be loved since the moment you were born. You are worth loving.
