me: flint is a flawed character with many interesting aspects to his personality and it’s impossible to sort him into categories like good or bad beca-
someone: flint is a monster and thomas would hate him if he knew about the things he did
me: JAMES MCGRAW FLINT HAMILTON HAS NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG IN HIS ENTIRE LIFE
I think the particular kind of “goodness” that my mother aspired to – that so many of our mothers aspired to – is not actually goodness at all.
Her concept of goodness was a person perpetually sacrificing everything important to her for the comfort of others, even with no acknowledgment or thanks.
The perfect person, to my mother, was gracious in the face of cruelty and had bottomless wells of love to give even if none was given back. Her only joy should be the knowledge that she had given and given and given, her only triumph over those who would hurt her should be a quiet, unspoken sureness that she Had Done Right.
This is not goodness. This is not something a real, living person can safely try to achieve, I think. This is what you attempt to become in order to survive brutality.
This is a recipe for the perfect victim, the victim who has made herself so small and given so much that there is now, finally, no reason to abuse her. This is the image cruel people would have us try endlessly to become, so they can more easily take and violate and control.
They want you to be not just meek, but the kind of person who strives always to be meeker. Someone they no longer have to bully into anticipating their wishes, because you have not just honed this skill but made it your life’s purpose. They want you to see your fury and bitterness and self-pity and desire to escape as faults to be overcome, instead of valid reactions to being hurt and controlled and taken advantage of.
It’s a way to survive what you can’t escape, and in that situation alone it has value. Even in that situation, though? This ideal can never be achieved, even if you somehow destroy every shred of self-respect (anger, desire to escape, etc.) you find in yourself. You can never be the perfect victim. There will always be a “reason” to abuse you, even if you are careful not to provoke, because the reason was never you. Abusers like to abuse.
Trying to be the perfect victim broke my mother, and it’s fucked me up pretty badly too. I wish I could go back in time and warn her. I wish I could tell her:
You cannot give endlessly; no human can, and you shouldn’t have to. It is not a virtue to suffer endlessly. It is not proof of love to allow someone to destroy you.
You deserve someone who doesn’t expect your suffering as proof of love. You deserve someone who gives back joyously, who feels your pain as part of their own and hates to cause it. You deserve to be surrounded by people who value you and all you think and want and are. You have worth. You deserve respect. It doesn’t have to be like this.
Sometimes, setting boundaries instead of complying with every whim and action is the greatest proof of caring. If you love someone, you get some responsibility for keeping them on track.
one of the more valuable things I’ve learned in life as a survivor of a mentally unstable parent is that it is likely that no one has thought through it as much as you have.
no, your friend probably has not noticed they cut you off four times in this conversation.
no, your brother didn’t realize his music was that loud while you were studying.
no, your bff or S.O. doesn’t remember that you’re on a tight deadline right now.
no, no one else is paying attention to the four power dynamics at play in your friend group right now.
a habit of abused kids, especially kids with unstable parents, is the tendency to notice every little detail. We magnify small nuances into major things, largely because small nuances quickly became breaking points for parents. Managing moods, reading the room, perceiving danger in the order of words, the shift of body weight….it’s all a natural outgrowth of trying to manage unstable parents from a young age.
Here’s the thing: most people don’t do that. I’m not saying everyone else is oblivious, I’m saying the over analysis of minor nuances is a habit of abuse.
I have a rule: I do not respond to subtext. This includes guilt tripping, silent treatments, passive aggressive behavior, etc. I see it. I notice it. I even sometimes have to analyze it and take a deep breath and CHOOSE not to respond. Because whether it’s really there or just me over-reading things that actually don’t mean anything, the habit of lending credence to the part of me that sees danger in the wrong shift of body weight…that’s toxic for me. And dangerous to my relationships.
The best thing I ever did for myself and my relationships was insist upon frank communication and a categorical denial of subtext. For some people this is a moral stance. For survivors of mentally unstable parents this is a requirement of recovery.
it’s also because Leonard COHEN (!) was Jewish and this is a quintessentially Jewish line, and changing it to that level of Annoying Certainty is stripping it of its Jewish meaning and imbuing it with that particularly American smug evangelical Christian attitude that makes me tired, so very tired
THAT IS EXACTLY WHY
I don’t think I’ve heard any cover artist sing my favorite verses
You say I took the name in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well really, what’s it to you?
There’s a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah
I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
um woah
I will always hit the reblog button so hard for Hallelujah but ESPECIALLY mentions of the elusive final verses which are just about my favorite lyrics ever. Why do people always omit the best part of the song??
In Yiddish
In Hebrew
In Ladino
It got better
Also people keep putting it on Christmas albums? Like not only is it a Jewish song, holiday albums are pure cheese. Hallelujah is about losing faith. It’s like putting Losing My Religion on a Christmas album because it has the word Religion in the title.
He’s not working an honest job for room and board, he’s a prisoner in a labor camp. He has no freedom, he’s watched by armed guards, he can’t earn a wage, he has no say over his hours or his living conditions. And I don’t know if you know anything about planting/harvesting sugar cane but it’s back-breaking work. Slavery of any kind is not an honest job for room and board, that’s ridiculous, no matter how “progressive” the master.
At the end of the day, James and Thomas are in that camp as a punishment for loving each other. They are being forced into backbreaking labor by armed guards just for being who they are. There’s no way that the man who wouldn’t accept a pardon in exchange for apologizing for loving Thomas would stay in that camp a day longer than he had to.
Hey Gandalf you know a heads-up might have been nice? Even just a “It might be nothing, but I have a bad feeling so be on alert just in case" would have been helpful…
Meg's Mumbles 