Star.

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faithliesinme:

aliewa:

Five months ago, I took these photographs and wrote a paper on them for my philosophy final project. As soon as I had the idea, I knew I had to do it, or I might never be brave enough to face the truth again. So, one night, using Sharpie on our bare skin to write what we said and posing us to show what we meant, I took these photos with my ex-boyfriend - the person who abused me. I titled it “Reading Between The Lines.”
At the time these photos were taken, I still loved him; you can see it in my eyes. I was also being abused; you can see that in my eyes, too. You’d think that those two things would be mutually exclusive, but they aren’t, and that is what I wrote about.
I wrote about the strength I had to love him and to stay even though I was being emotionally abused, putting all my love into him, and muffling my sobs into my pillowcase every night as I cried myself to sleep.
“If we didn’t care about each other, why would we even bother with each other after all this time? We each still desperately want the other to know they are important and that we love them.” That was one of the first things I wrote, and it breaks me, because I had gotten to the point where that THAT’S what I thought was love, and that’s sick. I was rationalizing what was happening because I thought it was love; because when he said, “I love you, but ______” the “I love you” was what I clung to even though everything else broke me. If everything else he said was true, that part had to be too, right? Which is why I wrote, “the first picture represents the fact that, no matter what happens, I cannot stop loving and caring for him, but he can easily and has easily stopped loving me. On my stomach is written, ‘I sometimes hate you,’ which is true. He does some things that make me so incredibly depressed and angry, and I hate him for it sometimes. Really, though, I am ashamed to admit that I have never truly hated him; only what he has done to me. I’m ashamed to admit that, if anyone, I have hated myself.” I read that and feel so angry and sad. I feel so incredibly frustrated with the abusive mindset: you hear it, and you think you deserve it. That sounds ridiculous to an outsider, but when you’re in that kind of a relationship…what they say is true, you deserve it, and you are a horrible person. I mean, HE was the one telling me all these horrible things and acting terribly toward me, and still I thought that I was the one that needed fixing. I thought there were all these things wrong with me, and although that’s not my fault, it’s still extremely frustrating to look back on.
“‘I like your personality well enough, I really like your body,’ he tells me. I ask him if this is a way to have the best of both worlds - to have my body while he looks for someone he likes better. ‘Why not?’ he asks. I tell him exactly why not: I am nobody’s back up, and I am nobody’s sex object. He says we already did our relationship right the first time (which was technically the second time), now he wants to do it the ‘wrong’ way. He describes this to me, and I do not really see much of a difference except for the fact that he can hook up with anyone else he wants to. I end up bringing up the scenario of me being with someone else, and he adds on ‘which is not okay with me, by the way.’ I stop cold and shoot him a look that lets him know what he has just done. He realizes the double standard and sits in the hole he has dug himself, caught off guard. We sit in silence, soaking up the truth of the situation: we still love each other. The only difference is that he stopped accepting me for everything that I am, and I never stopped doing that for him. ” This one is especially damaging to me, because I always seem to be just my body, for better or for worse: I am either a sex object, or all the diseases I have. In that moment when I had that conversation with him…I was just an object. I could have been substituted for anybody, and frankly, I was. Everything else was just words. This was what he wanted, and he wanted it now. He didn’t want me, he wanted my body, and he wanted it when he pleased. After that, he’d want me gone. I was a filler; something to bide his time with until something much better came along. But I said no, so I was gone.
“The amount of times I have heard by ear or read ‘I’m sorry’ over text is impossible to count. However, one theme of these apologies is starting to be recurring: now I will get an apology accompanied by ‘I mean it this time,’ which makes me wonder, ‘when did you not mean it? Were the other apologies not as important? Do you genuinely mean it this time? Should I believe you?’ This is why he has ‘I’m sorry,’ quotation marks and all, written on his arm: because sometimes his apology is genuine, and sometimes it is not. All of those previously stated questions then float around in my head, so I tell him that his apologies will be ‘good enough’ when he stops doing things he needs to apologize for. He tells me that that is fair, and I say it is more than fair; I’ve been treated terribly and called horrible things, and yet I stay, take his abuse during his good times, as well as fix him and build him up again during his bad ones. This habit of mine makes me both a weak and a strong person at the same time. I am weak because I choose to keep someone in my life who repeatedly hurts me and does not learn how to be truthful without being hurtful, and I am strong because I am the person he needs and goes to when everyone else he thought he wanted is not good enough anymore. I am not the person he wants, but the person he deserves, although many, many people have told both myself and him that he does not deserve me. I am strong because I am still standing, because I know how to battle through things that would break anyone else, because I stand up for myself, and because I put the needs of others before my own, even when that other person is someone who has repeatedly hurt me and who I know will hurt me again. So what I always do when his bad times come is focus on him and tell him ‘it’s okay,’ which is what I have written on my hand. My hands are on his hands, which are covering my mouth. His hands are covering my mouth because, in the end, he has taken away my voice and my ability to decide things for myself.”
There’s a lot there to dissect. I don’t think there has been one “apology” that has not been retracted. I later learned that he always said “that’s fair” when he knew I was right but didn’t want to admit it. He hated that I was in the right so many times and that he did and continued to do something that could define him as a “bad person,” but couldn’t stop doing it. I was right in that my habit of helping made me both a weak and a strong person. I would not tell anyone that putting the needs of someone who constantly hurts and abuses you and who does not love you is strong, because it isn’t. That is never a choice that I would make now. I made that choice then because I thought it was the only one I had. When somebody emotionally abuses you and breaks you down, they eventually own you. They break your heart and collect the pieces for themselves so you can’t put it back together yourself; so you’ll need their help. That’s why his hands were over my mouth; because my voice was gone. My voice was his. Everything he said was true, I was awful, I deserved what I was getting, and I had to put him first because that was the manufactured way out. I was only strong for staying alive and standing up for myself; doing the best I could in that situation. Everyone else was right in saying that he didn’t deserve me, but I thought he did, because I thought that this was love, remember? I thought he had to care and he had to love me. After all, he was telling me that he HAD to tell me these things; that it was “his truth.”
“His truth” was abuse.
The concluding paragraph to my essay was this:
“These three pictures represent the past two months of my life, what I have learned about myself during this time, and the constant inner struggle I have with myself to do what society perceives as ‘right,’ or cling to the ‘love’ that I don’t know I will get anywhere else. The description of each picture clearly shows how convoluted these ideas of right and wrong are and how easily they are twisted and held hostage, which can lead to holding a person and their entire being hostage as well. The photos represent all of the strength it takes to be seemingly weak, and all of the weakness it takes to be seemingly strong, and how there is often no grey area perceived in between those two extremes. These pictures show than one often needs to read between the lines to grasp the real meaning of his or her situation or relationship, and that doing so is not always joyful or easy. In fact, the space in between those lines is so small, it is all too easy to find oneself trapped, so that is exactly what happens: you stay because moving one way or the other is simply impossible. The situation and space isn’t ideal; in fact, it is far from ideal, but you are receiving those little bits of what you need and you know for sure that you will get them there, which is something that cannot be said for moving outside from in between those lines. So you sacrifice, and you justify staying there because those little bits of what you want are better than nothing, right?”
You don’t think anybody else is going to love you, so you just shut away and sweep under the rug whatever he’s doing to you this time and say it’s no big deal, when inside, it is. You end up believing it. You believe every word he says and you think you’re nothing. You really think you deserve it and that it’s your fault. You’re afraid that if you leave, it’s going to be just as hard as before with the added bonus of being fucked up because of this guy, and so nobody is EVER going to want you. How could they? You’re messed up, you’re insecure, you don’t love yourself or even like yourself. You’re drowning and everyone can see it. It’s hard, and nobody wants that. Nobody wants to work. That’s what you tell yourself. So you stay, because you knew it was possible for him to love you once, so you hope that it might be again. A small part of you says you deserve better, but you don’t listen. You just don’t, because if you did, wouldn’t someone give that to you? So you stay, because you know that if you leave, you’re going to be standing alone.
So you just stay because you think something is better than nothing, even if that something is sometimes abusive. Because “you’re used to it” really means “I deserve it.” Because you think you’re going to be too far gone and have too many scars for anyone else to love. Because you think your Somebody is something that people made up to make you feel better about yourself. Because people excuse his behavior and he doesn’t face any consequences, so you think to yourself, “What’s the point? Nothing’s going to happen, anyway.” Because you don’t want to fight a one person battle. Because this person saw all of you and rejected it after loving it, so loving you is exhausting, so how is anyone else going to do it?
Because you just can’t believe anything else anymore. You just…give up.
That’s what it was like, and this is something that I will have to deal with for the rest of my life. It’s going to taint every relationship I have. Those words will never leave my mind; they crawl into my brain late at night, whenever I mess something up, when I’m feeling down, and I think, “maybe he was right,” but I know I can’t do that. I get flashbacks, and things that I would normally enjoy are sullied because they are somehow connected to this. I still get anxious. I’m still affected by this, even when I don’t have any interaction with him at all, and that’s horrible. I may have been his when his hands were on me, but the thought that my brain is, and as a result, the rest of me is as well when he’s not even a part of my life anymore is scary, and I hate it. I hate that I will never be able to sever this connection fully and that a sliver of me will always be afraid. Going through this almost killed me. He abused me to the point of suicidal ideation because of every single thing he said and did. I know that this is not my fault and that I do not deserve it, but the fact that for so long I didn’t know that is horrible to me. This is one of the hardest, if not the hardest thing I have ever gone through and will ever go through.
I’m just glad I made it through alive and that I got to experience happiness again. Now I know the signs, and I will never ever let somebody do this to me again.

I love this.

6507

fun prank: stand up in the middle of class. run out of the school. keep running. do not turn back. start a new life under a fake name.

(Source: slydigger, via fake-mermaid)

86,383 notes | 9 hours ago

2880

words-and-reality:

Click here for more personal!

"Three times I lost her: once with the flowers because of the noisy clouds of smoke; once when she went into the sea instead of smiling at me; once under the bridge when I went in to join her and she came toward me but did not smile. She whispered to me, chewed me, and swam away. Now I have found her in this house. She smiles at me and it is my own face smiling. I will not lose her again. She is mine."

- Beloved by Toni Morrison (via thechocolatebrigade)

(via aplanetaryworld)

110 notes | 9 hours ago

“He may be the best boy who ever drew breath and it would not matter. My duty is to the realm. How many boys dwell in Westeros? How many girls? How many men, how many women? The darkness will devour them all, she says. The night that never ends. She talks of prophecies … a hero reborn in the sea, living dragons hatched from dead stone … she speaks of signs and swears they point to me. I never asked for this, no more than I asked to be king. Yet dare I disregard her? We do not choose our destinies. Yet we must … we must do our duty, no? Great or small, we must do our duty.”

“Your Grace, the cost…”

“I know the cost! Last night, gazing into that hearth, I saw things in the flames as well. I saw a king, a crown of fire on his brows, burning … burning, Davos. His own crown consumed his flesh and turned him into ash. Do you think I need Melisandre to tell me what that means? Or you?”

(Source: stannisbaratheon, via fourfinick)

250 notes | 9 hours ago

gleeson666:

do you ever get into one of those situations where you’re like “I need to stop hating this particular person it’s not going to get me anywhere I’m just going to grow up and move on with my life” but then they do the tiniest thing to piss you off and then you’re like “nope fuck you right off I want to throw you off a bridge”

(via blessedsighs)

86,526 notes | 5 days ago

hungarian: