sanerontheinside:

flintsredhair:

See, the thing is, I had. It’s frighteningly easy. I wasn’t originally planning on doing a response to this, even though I appreciate the support greatly, but I decided to because this needs to be said.

The thing is, it’s frighteningly easy to forget that you have a right to be angry. It starts with a simple phrase, and that phrase is, “I can’t afford to feel this right now.” It starts with the understanding that expressing your anger is just going to get you hurt, and it continues when you start telling yourself that your reaction was overblown – that you had no right to react the way you did, essentially. That even though someone did something shitty to you, they had their reasons, as if that somehow makes their behavior ok, because it has to be ok, because fuck, who else have you got that even pretends to give a shit about you? It continues when “I can’t afford to feel this right now” becomes “I shouldn’t be feeling this at all.” It continues when the people around you validate that feeling instead of telling you you have a right to not be ok with what someone’s done to you – instead of acknowledging the shitty behavior and ensuring the person responsible experiences some kind of consequence from someone other than the person they’ve hurt. It continues when you start hearing, “but they’re family!” as if being related to someone negates the fact that they’re a shitty human being. It continues with being hushed, and silenced, and told to calm down, and generally refused any kind of expression of your pain with the people you’re supposed to be able to trust. 

What I’m saying, Anon, is that holding onto anger can be a difficult proposition under the right circumstances and it’s super important to be there for people when they tell you that someone’s done something terrible to them or help them find someone who can be there for them if you can’t do it yourself. It’s important to let them have their rage, because otherwise they wind up, like me, forgetting that there are options other than knuckling under and taking people’s shit because they’ve been required to do so far, far too often. 

^and I want people to remember this even if their family isn’t shitty. I want people to keep this in mind, because kind, decent people don’t always know the damage they do just telling you it’s not worth being angry about.

‘It’s got nothing to do with you, so why are you angry about it?’ You know what good question I don’t fucking know I’m gonna go and think about it shall I? Good idea.

‘It’s a stupid thing to be angry about’—yeah, maybe for you it would be. For me, this is an important part of my life, and I know you don’t understand that.

‘Stop shouting!’ But I wasn’t. ‘I won’t talk to you when you’re like this’ because anything I have to say is inherently wrong and without value if I am angry? Really?

If only ‘I won’t talk to you when you’re like this’ wasn’t backed up with years of ‘that’s stupid’ and ‘you shouldn’t be worrying about that’ and ‘it’s none of your business’ and ‘it doesn’t affect you so stop worrying about it’—if only—

Maybe then I might have read it as ‘take a moment and then come back when you’re not fuming’.

But wait, no, never mind. Even when I come back with a reasoned argument, ‘you shouldn’t be worrying about that, your priorities are wrong.’

No one ever gets to tell you you don’t have the right to feel the way you do. It’s not a privilege. You already do.