I don’t know all the reasons why I like dark things, and I don’t think I need to know them all, but… I was just looking at the blog of that person who said I “dehumanize and fetishize” gay men, and I saw that he was quite young (15) and his blog was all full of pastel colors and references to his mental illness and something dawned on me that I hadn’t thought about in a Tumblr context at all.
Part of my PTSD is about experiences I had in hospitals, and because of that one of my triggers is… not pastels, all by themselves, but like… have you ever stayed in a hospital as a kid? And everything is covered in soothing soft colors and all the nurses wear scrubs with like… cute animal drawings on them and everyone talks in a sing-song voice and reassures you things won’t hurt when they OBVIOUSLY will and you’d rather they tell the truth, accept that you have good reasons to be scared, and get it the hell overwith?
Yeah, I think I just figured out why those kids’ blogs give me a weird tingly feeling of creeping dread.
And I think I figured out, also, where my intense leeriness of “safe spaces” and trigger warnings comes from too–even though as a person with PTSD I’m supposed to want them.
It’s because in my experience, people who were trying to make me feel safe were LYING. They were lying because it was in their interest–in mine, too, but in theirs–for me to feel calm and soothed. For me not to feel despair, or anger, or blind screaming rage.
…Is it any wonder I like the stories where the people with the knives and the cruel smiles and the mind games are blatant about it? Or that I might want a few knives of my own, even though I have no desire to hurt anyone who isn’t going to get off on it?
I don’t want those kids to not need safety.
I want them to stop pretending safety looks the same for everyone.
Yes, this.
When people tell me “You’re safe,” I don’t think of Helpful Adult saving me from the monsters under the bed. I think of my teachers, saying the people who hurt me would never do such a thing, and I should stop lying because I was perfectly safe. I think of the people who used to hug me until my lungs wouldn’t fill and my ribs creaked, and got away without a whisper of a reprimand. Because they were pretty and soft, and I was cold and harsh.
That’s not safe, to me. That’s the most dangerous place in the world, because the people who live there will do anything- anything at all- if it means they don’t have to acknowledge how nasty their walled garden has really gotten. Because if I defend myself, they can’t pretend anymore. And they sure as hell won’t defend me.
THIS.
I have experienced a lot of passive-aggressive emotional abuse in my life and let me tell you – my abusers had a vested interest in keeping me calm.
Upset means resistance. Upset means that they have to face the damage they’ve caused. Upset means that you may finally realize that you should leave. Upset means that you might just get up and leave. So they soothe you. They make you doubt the validity of your feelings. They make you feel guilty for getting upset. They make you think that the issue was your fault in the first place. They make you feel like getting upset is pointless. They make you feel like you have wronged them and yourself by being unhappy.
You do not have to let yourself be soothed. You do not have to let them take the fight out of you. If you do not feel safe; you do not have to feel guilty for getting yourself out. You do not have to feel guilty for being upset when someone has wronged you. You do not have to feel guilty for seeking your own brand of safety.
This is the most poignant description of what it actually feels like to be helpless in an institution that I’ve ever read.
It’s a special kind of violence to be hurt and to be told that it’s kindness. It’s intensely intimate and perverted. Succumbing to it is… spiritually destructive in a way that I have a hard time putting to words. Just… in my safe space I’m always fighting because as long as I continue to struggle that very special form of violence can’t take hold of me and I’ll be okay.
Like… when I get triggered about some of these experiences I’ll even have fantasies about dying while resisting. I mean… I don’t want to go into details because super triggering but… just think about that for a moment.
“It’s a special kind of violence to be hurt and to be told that it’s kindness. It’s intensely intimate and perverted.”
My experiences are not exactly the same as yours, but this, yes.
This is why I have such intense reactions to unkind SJ, whether it’s “sit down, shut up, and listen” (gee, what might that resemble?) or “representation means heroes with no serious flaws.”
Because that particular “shh, shh, shh, if we pretend utopia is already here, it soon will be” lie has hurt me EVERY TIME I’ve heard it.
I’m learning now that the roots of a lot of my trauma was this exact “your life is perfect, you’re not allowed to feel anything other than happiness, you’re ungrateful,” yelling more if I cried, any inkling of talking back or standing up for myself was met with twice the punishment, etc
So while it’s understandable that those in a dark place seek softness and gentle color, and there’s nothing wrong with that, those of us forced into it seek the grime as a form of truth and expression that wasn’t allowed for us, or a fictional playground of violence and anger where we can actually scream our frustrations onto a canvas.
And telling people that they should ditch such exploration for holy goodness is just another form of telling us our anger shouldn’t exist
Boom.
i’ve just realized this is why i have such a negative reaction to ‘think of the children’ rhetoric. because my abuse was so often put in terms of ‘think of the other children, they’re more important than you’.
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just moving along like everyone else 