Cycle Of Abuse - Tumblr Posts
Learned Behaviour
His dad was abusive. Violent. And his father before him.
Once he asked his dad for money for a field trip and his dad threw him into a wall so hard he went through the drywall and ended up in his sister's closet.
He wasn't born with these skills.
His mother told him when he was in highschool that regardless of what happened, she would always back her husband over him.
He wasn't born cold.
I know exactly where he comes from.
Is it any wonder?
TW - self harm
When he was in his early teens, he confessed to his parents that he had urges to hurt himself. He wanted to take one of his hunting knives and plunge it into his gut.
I’m not a mother, so maybe I don’t know, but if my kid came up to me and told me he was having a hard time not gutting himself, I’m pretty sure we’d be dropping everything and going to the hospital to get some professional help.
They took away his hunting knives. That’s it.
I know we’re supposed to avoid harbouring sympathy for our abusers, but goddam it, he didn’t stand a chance.
Is it any wonder?
TW - self harm
When he was in his early teens, he confessed to his parents that he had urges to hurt himself. He wanted to take one of his hunting knives and plunge it into his gut.
I’m not a mother, so maybe I don’t know, but if my kid came up to me and told me he was having a hard time not gutting himself, I’m pretty sure we’d be dropping everything and going to the hospital to get some professional help.
They took away his hunting knives. That’s it.
I won’t say that I am ashamed that my heart strings still get pulled when I think of the things he suffered. So much of what I’ve read makes me think that as a survivor I’m supposed to be as cold toward him as he was to me.
I can’t do that. I loved this man, and the things that haunted him, haunted me. And I can mourn for the life he may have had if things had been different.
The difference is, rereading these posts, my heart swells for him, but there is no longer the urge to run over and sweep him into a hug he’d probably reject. I won’t accept the shit he’s endured justifying what he did to me.
That is progress.
Learned Behaviour
His dad was abusive. Violent. And his father before him.
Once he asked his dad for money for a field trip and his dad threw him into a wall so hard he went through the drywall and ended up in his sister’s closet.
He wasn’t born with these skills.
His mother told him when he was in highschool that regardless of what happened, she would always back her husband over him.
He wasn’t born cold.
I know exactly where he comes from.
" Once there was a flood in the forest. A frog was resting on the river bank. A scorpion stuck in the floods requested the Frog, "Please help me cross the river!" Thee frog asked, "What if you sting me?" The Scorpion replied, "Silly, if I sting you then we will both drown. Why would I kill myself? The Frog believed the Scorpion and let him hop on his back. They began to cross the river but as soon as they reached the middle of the river, the Scorpion stung the frog. The Frog asked, "Why did you do that?" The Scorpion said, "I am a Scorpion, stinging is what I do. It is in my nature." Some men are scorpions, dear. They never change, Badru. "
-Darlings, dir Jasmeet K. Reen (2022)
tbh when i hear some people talk about 'breaking cycles of abuse', it becomes clear pretty quickly who has come to understand that phrase to mean 'since i was a victim of abuse/neglect by my parents/caretaker/s i will do everything to be nothing like them' and that is all. its not a completely flawed way of thinking either - something that hurt you would very likely hurt someone else; through empathy we learn to understand not to hurt others the way we were hurt too.
but what 'breaking cycles' looks like is more complicated than just not being your parents/caretakers - it's about recognizing how the things that happened to you changed you and how you can heal so you don't hurt someone else in turn. the survival skills you learned in an unhealthy enviroment often translate to poor if not unhealthy interpersonal skills in an enviroment where things ARE safe.
its a difficult pill to swallow for a lot of survivors of abuse (trust me, i know) because we have a tendency to simply want our pain to be recognized. by painting yourself as "absolutely nothing like my abuser" you can abstain from recognizing your own harmful tendencies and live comfortably in the role of victim hood for the rest of your life. it can be tempting to do this especially when so many people will do their best to deny what you experienced - almost like leaning into a stuck door that just won't budge.
the problem with this is if you never recognize that being mistreated made it so you LACK a lot of what other people learned from a loving enviroment, you can hurt people pretty badly even when doing your best just not to replicate what your parents/caretakers got wrong.
this also hurts for victims because, when it comes down to it - it's not FAIR. you were hurt for no reason, and most of us will never hear an apology or even admittance from the person who did it - so why do YOU have to change? why do YOU, the person hurt unjustly, have to put in the work?
and i mean. that's what breaking a cycle is. it means pushing against what's fair and comfortable deliberately so that you can stop something that's been repeating. it's work. its not just recognition of pain, it's the purposeful healing and treatment of it. but thats scary, and it's not fun, so a lot of people fall right back into it. its a lot easier said than done.
Blood is lives. It has been since the beginning. My creation wasn't a mistake or nature's laugh at the universe, but a calculated birth of blood and violence. Death was certain, I thought, but I was proven wrong. And, so, I am a breathing being fueled on flesh and the suffering of others. A lonely experience. A lonely life.
My creator- I hardly remember- was like I am now. Desperate. So lonely and in need of another person like himself that he would thrust this curse on another sentient animal. I was born on a bloodied battle field with my men defeated on the ground beside me.
A terrible life was made.
I lived in a quiet solitude with only my creator to humor me. He wasn't a good man by any definition. Selfish. Like I am now, I think. Living so long makes you selfish.
My creator didn't live much longer when he revealed the secret to killing our kind. A had tired of his philosophy, his face, his voice. He thought he was so charming. He wasn't, not to me. Unrefined.
I had traveled for a long time. Long expanses of unexplored land became my solace. The blood that flowed was deliciously filled with a real sense of life. I was living how I was meant to. An animal, eating, walking, and talking like a man but no soul was connected to my body.
After settling down, I found myself wanting more of the world. What lands had I not explored? What blood had I not tasted? The refined tastes of the English were described as a wonderful conquest to my ears. I must go to England.
The solicitor was a charming man. And that loneliness was filled. I had wives, sure. But they were as much as beasts as I once was. No brains, no intelligence was present in them. Their only fine quality was their faces. So pretty, lovely, even. I had forgotten why I had created them at all after meeting Johnathan.
Johnathan, having a youthful face and personality, good company. My sights were on him.
And what a good day it was to see him become like me. He screamed, like I did all of those centuries ago. But he kept himself. His life. The light behind his eyes didn't dim into that beastly personality those women had. He was like me in intelligence. A wonderful creature.
"England is all I've dreamed of, Johnathan." The scene before me was as I've always wanted. Refined people, refined blood. "God, it's... a sight."
Johnathan sighed at that. He disliked me still. "Is it?" His voice was uninterested. I didn't take mind to it. I will make him interested again in me.
I didn't. Perhaps it was foolishness that drove me to trust Jonathan. The secret I had spilled the night before. How to kill our kind. It was my undoing.
My eyes gaze at my body, a ways away. The feeling was gone. Jonathan above me with the ax I had mounted on the wall. In the last moments of consciousness I experience, I notice how much he looks like myself when I had killed my own creator. Eye blazing with a fierce determination I had in myself once. His face is contorted in a snarl. If his heart were beating it would be like a jack rabbit in his chest.
And this man I turned, who has killed me, I still admire. So much like me, and he doesn't even know it. He will follow the path I did. As much as he will refuse, he is to himself. He will create another one of us out of desperate loneliness that takes hold of every one of the undead. They will hate him. They will kill him. The cycle continues forever.
I do have sympathy for jojo siwa for what she had gone through on dance moms but that doesn’t excuse her abusing the kids in her own group XOMG POP. It’s sad that most people who are abused and don’t get proper therapy or don’t actually come to terms with it end up being abusers themselves in the future. It’s a the cycle of abuse, which is why it’s important to talk to people and go to therapy. I genuinely do hope she realizes the harm she’s doing and the people she’s surrounding herself with aren’t good people (Colleen ballinger, Shawn Dawson, etc…) Despite her pass she’s still hurting people and surrounding herself around people who’s hurt so many. It’s terrible, this whole situation is terrible.