agellyfish-blog - Tumblr blog

[agellyfish-blog]

[innocently goes to the bathroom and sits on toilet]

OH. hello period. you fucking fucker.

[agellyfish-blog]

It costs exactly $0.00 to not ask abuse survivors to prove that they were abused

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“i think. my father raped me when i was little, and since i had the recent memory any time i think of him anything below my stomach tingles and feels disconnected. i dont know how to tell my therapist about it/ what to do/ what shell do/ if shell tell my mom. my mom divorced him, and i only have to really see him twice a month at most, but i dont even know if it actually happened or if i made it up”

Those feelings you have may be ‘body flashbacks’, which is fairly common among CSA survivors, especially if the memory was suppressed. If you remember it, chances are that it did happen. It’s not your fault. 

If you don’t remember much, it may be dangerous to go poking for those memories alone. Your brain separated those memories for a reason; be careful about bringing them out unprepared.

I’m not sure about the therapist part, as I’m going through the same thing, though with a different family member. But your therapist is there to help you and they can help you through this. 

How old you are and what kind of contact you have with your dad may change whether your mom is told. I think that after 18, they cannot tell anyone at all. Under 18, but upper teens, I think they only tell if you are in direct danger. Lower teens, I’m not sure. 

Something is triggering those memories and feelings for you. They don’t come out of nowhere and you aren’t making it up. And whatever it turns out to be, it’s not your fault. 

If you feel safe, you can try telling your mom, or first, your therapist. If the visits aren’t court mandated, you may be able to get out of having them. If they are, if you feel ready and okay for it, you may be able to go to the courts so he can’t have visits. 

*disclaimer: I am not the child of divorcees nor have any experience in law

<3

-Okapi

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“I don’t remember what happened.I feel like Something happened that was bad a long time ago but my head blocks it out and I just wanna know what happened and I try to remember and I just get the littlest thing (a memory from along time ago) and then that’s it. All I remember is a man holding my hand in a gas station and then finding my mom little later.i apologize too much, I get scared when people touch me and I am just scared and idk why. Is this normal or am I full of shit? Xoxo”

This is normal! A lot of the time trauma survivors forget bits/most of what happens to them. Sometimes it can come back slowly or not at all. 99/100, you are remembering bits of what happened to you. Everything you listed sounds like symptoms of trauma. Maybe nothing happened, but chances are, your memories and intuition are correct. 

Try not to push it unless you are in therapy, as you can hurt yourself (as I can attest to). Your mind is protecting you. 

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What does it mean to “deal with” a trauma?? People always tell me I have come to terms with what happened to me (rape) but I don’t know what that means. Like yes it happened to me and it sucks and it affects my entire life, but what do I do about it? I tried therapy and medication, but it didn’t change anything for me. What’s supposed to happen? How do you know you’ve finally “dealt with it”?

‘Dealing’ with trauma means different things to different people. 

For some people, it’s getting to a point you can go a while without thinking about it. For others, it’s getting to point that you can live a semi-normal life. For others it’s getting to a point that you can live with flashbacks and trauma symptoms. For others it’s being able to use mostly healthy coping mechanisms over unhealthy ones. For others, it is being able to look at what happened and be at peace and okay with what happened. For some people, it’s being able to see ‘you’ again instead of a victim. 

Half of ‘dealing’ with trauma is figuring out where you want to be and setting a concrete goal. 

For example, one of my trauma goals is learning how to center myself in a flashback and get myself out of it. Another is redirecting self harm urges triggered by trauma towards healthier coping mechanisms, like drawing or walking my dog. For me, I want to be able to be at peace with what happened and have healthy coping mechanisms. 

Where you want to be depends on you. Medication and therapy can take a long time to work or no time at all. Some forms of therapy or meds work for someone people and not others. There is no wrong way to heal.

<3

-Okapi

(also you win the award for my favorite question to answer- this is something I think a lot of people struggle with but isn’t talked about a lot.)

[agellyfish-blog]

cw: abuse, abusive father

i know my dad was not ok to me and i know he abused me and other people i love and changed us, but i am so scared for him not being happy. i want my mom to be happy so much it fucking hurts to think about it every day, and i think about it every day. i want her and all of the women he abused to be happy and i feel so much for how they are living their lives today after what happened. but i also worry SO much that my dad isn’t happy. is it because it’s possible that he is? would i be wishing his life miserable if he were actually miserable? i feel like i would want him to be happy no matter what. when i picture this possibility, i picture the father i knew as a kid... when i was way too naive and entirely, blindly devoted to my parents, when he was the absolute perfect soul who could do no wrong. who deserved so much to be happy. is this person a figment of my imagination? if so, how the hell could he affect me so fucking much?! the dad i think about agonizingly every day is not the person i thought i knew at all. did that EVER exist? did i completely make him up?? are our minds so powerful that we will fucking MISS, with all of our hearts every single moment of every day, a person that we just made UP in our heads. 

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“I’m 13 and currently being groomed by a 38 year old man. (I’m a girl) The reason I’m “okay” with it is because nobody cares about or loves me and everyone gets mad at me when i’m sad. But when I poured my heart to him last night he told me to stop bitching and I feel lonely and sad all over again. I wish I was dead. Why doesn’t anyone want me”

Hi, nonny. I’m not sure when this was sent to me, but I hope you are safe.

Please get out of that situation. I know it seems like no one cares about you. As someone who comes from abusive family, it makes it even harder to see. But I can guarantee there are people out there who genuinely care for you, even if it is just as a human being. Even if you can’t find anyone right now, there will be people. It’s statistically impossible to never find a single person who would care for you.

The man who is grooming you is a predator. I know this will hurt to hear and may even seem harsh, but he does not care about you outside of how he can use you. That is not love. That is not care. What he is doing is abuse and you will get hurt more than you already have. 

Please tell someone- a guidance counselor, a friend, a friend’s parent- your parents, if they are safe. 

You are stronger than you think and there are more people who care about you if you just reach out. People want you as their friend and more- but those people aren’t a 38 year old predator who just wants you to satisfy his sick desires.

I believe in you. You are strong. You will get through this. I care about you, no matter how corny and unbelievable that seems. 

<3

-Okapi

[agellyfish-blog]

CW: anxiety disorder, self-destructive tendencies, self starvation

6/02/17

And out of nowhere, I have an anxiety disorder.

Maybe not out of nowhere... Now that I look back, it’s been building up and up, I don’t know how long. 

I cannot eat without feeling nauseous. I would rather feel the heat of claws scraping the inside of my stomach, that bubbling hunger, than commit the act of eating. 

There is something closing in on me just outside of my peripherals. It is moving in on my ears, backing my hearing into a corner where my own voice reverberates and I cannot escape my heartbeat. I am not allowed to forget my formerly - and mercifully - unconscious crawl towards the end of life. 

Being trapped here while sober has become more and more unbearable. It’s closing in. My body howls at me as it shrivels. But there is no reward in taking proper care of myself. It seems the most peaceful path is to distract myself as I wither quietly.

[agellyfish-blog]

when ur learning more about yourself, more about what you like and dont like and you can sense more and more the kind of person you don’t wanna be around. And that happens more and more often, until almost everyone you meet is someone you don’t like and don’t wanna waste your time on. you let yourself feel those feelings so that you can figure it out. then suddenly it’s too late, you can’t stop yourself from just not wanting to be around people, you can no longer just tolerate it and act the way people are supposed to act, laughing it off when people misgender u or talk about killing animals or say racist, sexist, misogynist, ableist, classist, horrible micro aggressive shit. but you HAVE to. you HAVE to learn how to deal with it and let none be the wiser that you fucking hate it. cuz you have to work in this shitty capitalist society, you have to interact with people doing something mindless while your brain harasses you just so you can survive... and all the while, you realize how entitled and privileged you are to even want better. how do you reconcile? 

[agellyfish-blog]

when u know the way ur dad acts is because of his own unresolved issues/trauma but at the same time u know u dont deserve to be treated the way ur being treated but u cant do anything abt it

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i get so excited when i get to have a night alone and i dont have work the next morning lol. im like YES tonight im gonna PARTAAAYYY. and i plan it all out in my head. first im gonna watch some GAY SHIT, then im gonna do some drawin and writin, then im gonna READ GAY STUFF, then im gonna play my GAYme while i watch GAY netfliiiiix...

[agellyfish-blog]

my first post. unedited thoughts from a small experience recently that brought back many almost blacked out memories. 

CW: abuse, misogyny, sexism, father/child relationship... let me know if there is anything else i should tag.

6/26/17

Today I found a ticket to a party on my sister’s dresser. It was for my dad’s birthday, last year. He was fifty. He just turned fifty-one a few days ago. I haven’t spoken to him in over a year, and it’s been four or maybe five years since our conversations involved more than just “hi” or “your grandmother passed away” or “i’m not sure if i’d care if you died” (I said this..) or “you are full of hatred and this is why your sister doesn’t love you”

I guess I was surprised that the pass said “fifty”...

I miss my dad. I miss who I imagined Dad was when this person was raising me. When he was there for me. When I looked up to him and when I was at my happiest when I made him proud, when I felt like I was like him.

Proud that I could type fast, like him. Proud that I played hockey like him. Proud that I was COOL and SMART and knew facts about space and science, like him. Proud that I could be flippant and seemingly emotionally detached, like him...

But now I realize the latter is not a good lesson for a child to learn. I am proud that my worship of his qualities stopped at his anger. Stopped at his physical abuse of women. Stopped when I caught glimpses of how he looked at woman, how he talked to women, how he seemed to regard them. The bits of arguments I heard between him and girlfriends.

I am proud that I questioned that growing up. I wanted to be him so much when I was a kid. And now I am thankful that something in me did not feel right when he thought the naked women on my sixteen-year-old boyfriend’s shirts were funny. I am thankful for that sick feeling I got when he got mad at his girlfriend for wanting to talk about all the naked women he stared at while at work (he works in las vegas).  I struggled to be okay with the naked women I’d catch him watching on TV. The strange motorcycle forums with the aggressive, violent language and yet more naked women I’d see when he’d leave his laptop open on the couch. Was that his obsession with motorcycles? His obsession with objects? His obsession with women being his objects, and owning a motorcycle would give him that power?

I also had that same feeling - this unease, nausea, my body wanting to retch whatever was telling me that this was not right because my dad, my entire world, was telling me that this WAS right - when I discovered my dad wrote. He drew. He expressed himself, but only in secret. No one was allowed to know this part of him. I wanted to know, I wanted to know he was human and had compassion. But he hid that, and I became scared of it. What he expressed could be even worse than the glimpses of the things I saw, the other things that he was trying to keep secret.

For most of my life I felt like there was something wrong with me for having those bad feelings. For being uneasy with the objectification that happened to every woman around me, the objectification that I would have to be okay with happening to me. I saw that as my future. I would be treated just as those women were, just as my dad’s girlfriends, his wives, my mom. If my dad was someone to look up to, someone to want to be like... I would have to be okay with being the woman people like my dad abused and dehumanized. That was where I fit in his world.

And I wasn’t okay with it. I am not okay with it. 

And I am so sad... why can’t that go away? Why am I sad about this? Why can’t I just see him as another gross cis man who treats women like shit

Because we were close once? Because I still hold onto that image that isn’t all those things I saw. Because I still hope he isn’t that... I wish I didn’t miss whoever I imagined him to be. Even after all the people I’ve loved that he has hurt, including myself, I still can’t help but love him and that fucking sucks.