THE LOVE WITCH (2016) dir. Anna Biller
living with abusers means having constant ongoing record in your head of all the things you could possibly be blamed for
Having abusive parents, you learn to only care about things in secret. Liking things openly becomes unsafe, because your parents notice, and it’s the first thing they’ll take away from you the second they need to blackmail you. After a while it only feels safe to not care about anything, to not want anything, and to not be attached to anything, because then it can’t be used against you, they can’t use it against you. You have to be apathetic if you don’t want to be openly vulnerable to abuse. Eventually you learn to hide everything from everyone. Even your friends don’t find out about it. Every pleasure feels like guilty pleasure, like you’ll pay for it later. Your entire life becomes a secret that feels too dangerous to tell anyone.
Every time you think “they could have hurt me worse”, remember that you shouldn’t have been hurt at all. You should have received support and help on everything you struggled with. You should never have faced pain from the hands of your loved ones. You should have been safe and happy and without a care in the world as a child. That’s what you compare your abuse to.
have not struggled this much in a long time
