#anyway brought to you by an abuse survivor who self sabotaged his way out of a full ride scholarship to an accredited 4yr private universit

[izzyspussy]

there's a meta post going around that i disagree with heavily and i wanna say why but i don't wanna be argumentative in op's notes so i'm making a vaguepost instead

a) i don't really remember anything in canon that would provide evidence to say ted is untruthful or inaccurate by saying jamie is "getting good minutes" at city. the one (1) game we see him play for them he IS a starter, and not only that he plays for the entire game (and is also shown to be behaving well, encouraging his teammates, and playing cooperatively). jamie mentioning that he doesn't start every time or play the full 90 every game and is on the bench sometimes really doesn't indicate that he's unfavored as a player, due simply to the fact that Manchester City is a huge, well funded team with more talent to cycle through than it could ever manage to use all of consistently. we also have to keep in mind that TL is not the real world, and while 24 is not a young player anymore here on covid-19's Earth, it is said that jamie is at the beginning of his career several times in canon. it may be unrealistic, but it's not an unreliable narrative - some suspension of disbelief is necessary. jamie is still a junior player in the world if TL so it's not a snub to him or evidence that he's not doing well if he's not a permanent fixture on the starting lineup with more established players on a large and star studded team.

b) and honestly more importantly: abuse makes you crazy. it makes you irrational and/or emotionally unstable. it truly does not matter at all if the rest of your circumstances are "the dream" or not. it does not matter if you might even personally think that bad is worth putting up with for the sake of keeping the good. sometimes people do make that call I won't say that doesn't happen, but it is really unlikely to be a logical cost-benefit analysis of a decision. so like... even if james never treated jamie any worse than exactly what we saw in canon (which i would also say is already quite a bit worse than just "sucking"), there it is not even the slightest leap to think he'd "throw away the dream" to get away, whether he could ideally tough it out or not. sometimes you make choices that are the wrong choices! sometimes you do something irrational and based on emotional impulse! that's true even if your life is relatively easy and low stress and you have a strong support network and no mental illness or trauma responses to manage! and every new factor that contributes to stress makes it exponentially more likely.

say you have a high pressure job, and it's also very physically taxing, and also you have a restricted diet, and also you just made yourself vulnerable and were rejected with no explanation, and also you recently got dumped, and also your mom is disappointed in you, and also you don't have any close friends, and also your abuser can show up any time he wants even at your workplace and push you around and scare you and humiliate you and relentlessly insult you and make sure you never feel any sense of accomplishment or enjoyment from the activity that you love and spend the vast majority of your daily life working hard at and the entirety of your life maintaining your ability to perform. and yeah, you've got your dream job. objectively you're doing very well. but boy i tell you what with all that shit you can fucking bet you're crazy too! and when you're crazy you make decisions that are also crazy!! and btw self sabotage is one of the most common maladaptive behaviors of all time!!!

anyway in conclusion: sometimes coming up with a well reasoned explanation is not necessary (and may even make less sense) when the explanation of bad reasoning has already been provided for you