#who are stuck forcibly mentally repressed by their parents

[aeaeaexxzd]

Dogtooth (2006) Yorgos Lanthimos

[fairfellowfriend]

When I was fourteen years old I was sexually assaulted for the first time. I had just been moved across the US to a cold and bitter town. I was isolated and alone and I remember having a panic attack in the car on the way to our new home that left my throat hoarse and aching from the terrified screaming.

His name was M. I’m writing about him in the past tense because in my mind he is a dead thing.

M was eighteen and I was freshly fourteen. I had been sexually groomed and manipulated for years at this point so in my head, an older man being interested in me (me, who was a sexually repressed and porn addicted victim of circumstance) was infatuating.

He held me tight in his lap in the library on the floor as he fondled me up and down, grabbing and squeezing the parts of my body I had never had touched before. It felt like electric was being sent throughout my body and not in a good way. When I tried to pull away he held me there. The cameras were just out of frame and no one was around so when I eventually reported what had happened to me…

…I was treated like a lying, easy whore. I was fourteen, homesick, forcibly separated from my (abusive) dad, completely isolated at home, being abused by my mother and stepdad. (I’ve come to forgive all three of my parents and they are not the focus of this post.)

For the rest of the year until he graduated I was stuck seeing him in the hallways. I was a deer in the headlights every time I saw him. 300lbs, easily 6’4,” a giant man who dwarfed me in comparison. I was 5’2” and 130lbs. I had nightmares that he would attack me. He didn’t, but he did tell all his friends about the easy lying crazy girl. It destroyed my trust in the police and I remember that being the moment that I started getting interested in politics.

Anyways, later during the school year I got with this guy named B.

B was seventeen and I was fourteen. To this day I become terrified and sick when I see fat heute men with long brown hair and beards and glasses (an unusually common genre of man…)

I’ve ran out of writing juice so I’ll end it on this note:

Over the course of our less than two year relationship B raped me over one hundred times. It shattered every sense of self I was hanging onto and I was hospitalized for self harming and suicidal ideation following what he had done to me. This was my second time being thrown into a mental hospital and I left that place diagnosed with PTSD and a long string of other issues.

B is married now. He’s happy, successful (as successful as a poor uneducated working class guy can be), and I’m left writing about him on tumblr.

The world is fucked.

[red-hood-vigilante]

if you feel like it, could you expand a little bit on sam parenting dean as much as dean parented him?

ok this isn't eloquent at all and is a little long but here you go

short answer: dean raised sam in that he fed him and kept him physically safe but neglected to realize sam’s mental state and emotional wants (college, normal friends) which is understandable because dean was a kid himself and ‘keeping sammy safe’ would mean comprehensible needs such as food and sleep. so sam emotionally and mentally raised himself in that he developed and followed his own set of morals and sought out healthy interests, hobbies and relationships with people outside the hunting life and tried to do the same thing to dean when they were adults - i.e providing a space where dean could express his emotions and emotional needs

long answer:

dean was forced to become a parental figure for sam in such a young age and struggled to see them as equals for so long instead of the older and younger brother/parent and child but sam, in a way as the seasons went on, became a parental figure for dean in how he would always try to make dean openly talk about his issues and create a space where it was okay and encouraged for dean to be emotional or just upset at his own circumstances instead of forcing it down, repressing it for sam’s sake and to keep up his facade of always being okay instead of unhealthy and violent habits, and how sam would do this all the time, often at the cost of his own feelings and issues much like a parent would sacrifice parts of themselves and their own stability to ensure the happiness of their child. dean tried to make up for the neglect and horribleness of their childhood but didn’t succeed because sam wasn’t going to be happy no matter what because he never wanted to be a hunter and so when they meet again sam has developed enough emotional iq and had normal healthy relationships with others (jessica and at least some non-possessed college friends like those we met in skin) while dean never got that to the same degree for a longer period of time because he’s so tied to being a hunter he can’t lie or say anything but half-truths when talking to people so sam tries to make dean evolve emotionally by nudging him in the direction of simple honesty, maybe not with sam but at least with himself - like in s3 when sam tried to get dean to admit he doesn’t want to go to hell, which, for anyone else would be the easiest thing to do but for dean who doesn't understand that sam sees straight through him, lies and keeps up the terrible poker face. dean has completely missed that sam knows dean just as much as he knows sam mirroring the whole “i know that kid better that he knows himself” scenes we’ve seen before

like... sam used to be the child and dean was the parent but the roles reversed at some point or has at the very least fluctuated between friends-brothers-parent-child since dean will never stop viewing sam as the child and himself as the adult but act like a bratty toddler with his violent outbursts, temper tantrums and emotional decisions driven by his morals that constantly and impulsively changes while sam is forever stuck in the role of being the one who needs supervision and help while simultaneously expected to be more sensible, forgiving and adult to problems and conflicts to curb dean’s anger, because dean (and the narrative) never stops viewing sam as the thoughtless and impulsive child.

and then what underlines this dynamic more is how sam gives up and ceases to guide dean because when dean treated sam and his body like a piece of property instead of a person with his own thoughts, feelings and opinions (bringing him back from the dead regardless of the consequences, locking him up in the bunker twice to forcibly detox, shoving the soul back into sam's body despite multiple warnings, overriding sam’s wish to spare amy, believing becky should've asked for permission to marry sam, getting hypocritically mad sam found happiness with amelia and letting gadreel possess sam etc etc etc), sam probably understood that dean, almost like a scared little child, needed their dynamic to be a specific way so he could feel some semblance of safety and control in the familiarity and stick with what he was most comfortable with because sam also knew dean was emotionally stunted because of sam’s existence - if sam didn't exist, dean wouldn't have be a parent.

this is, i think, at least one of the reasons why sam held on to the adult and sensible persona because he has to, many many times in the series, explain to dean whose actions has hurt sam (and often others), the basic principles of ‘you can’t hurt people like that without suffering consequences’ and ‘when you do something wrong you have to apologize and take responsibility’ instead of walking away and allowing himself to be rightfully furious and independent. he feels a responsibility for dean’s emotional well being because, again, he believes he has to make up for it being so stunted in the first place. this is especially clear in season 9 when gadreel possessed sam's then-comatose body and dean lied to him for months about it and then got mad that sam was upset about being treated like that.

in turn, dean doesn’t understand what sam’s saying to him in these moments because in dean’s mind sam will forever be the child and dean the parent who always knows better. for dean, sam isn’t a parent, hasn’t experienced that same type of responsibility for another person's life and well-being and according to dean, sam isn’t an authority figure in any area or field in his life (the area being hunting and here it’s about how sam’s morals are so different and unacceptable to dean’s that it feeds into the idea that sam doesn’t know what he’s doing - narrative always treats dean as being in the right and sam in the wrong regardless of context and consequences), and so sam gives up in trying to change dean because he will never achieve any sort of authority and better knowledge about himself or when it comes to hunting. while dean respects and trusts sam, he very rarely acknowledges how grown sam is and how sam has taken care of dean in similar ways to how dean has taken care of sam. 

as the series progresses, especially after s5, the narrative regresses and never allows anything to change between them so the cycle keeps repeating; dean is too stuck in his ways and sam resigns himself doing the only thing he can do; soothing dean’s anger and bearing the beatings of it because if he can’t change dean’s perspective, temper and control issues despite his attempts across multiple seasons - the entire series, really. he still tries to create these safe spaces for dean to be vulnerable and emotional but instead of suggesting solutions that could come from opening up, sam can't do much more than try to help dean by taking responsibility for things that angers dean even if it's things that aren't sam's fault in the first place (not living up to dean's extremely high standards, being manipulated by ruby, letting lucifer out, being soulless, living with amelia, suspecting benny for murder, not being grateful for being saved by gadreel, etc etc etc)

sam continues shaping himself according to the needs of the ones around him, thus becoming a blank slate when it comes to himself and his own identity because he doesn’t open up, express needs or wants like he did in the earlier seasons because he doesn’t want to be that burden he often felt he was (and other reasons tied to the plot and lucifer and stuff) and so all the growth and development he achieved at stanford is erased in favour of atoning for existing and warping dean's emotional state. sam becomes a burned out, self sacrificial parental figure at a loss for what to do when dean gets angry and tries to do what he can to help things calm down, almost always at the cost of himself.