#and whose lives im throwing away for my own SELFISH REASON

[dojan-dog]

reblog this with a fictional character you hate and why

#ill start #DR THOMAS FUCKING STOCKMANN #i HATE him #little bitch boy is like #im so alone #oh hello there FAMILY AND FRIENDS WHO SUPPORT ME #and whose lives im throwing away for my own SELFISH REASON #who cares you all need a reliable source of income and shelter and do not deserve to be prosecuted for my own actions #im gonna use yall and then say that i'm the strongest man on earth because i stand alone #i'm going to kick him in his teeny tinny weeny whiney balls

[manga-and-stuff]

Interview with Makoto Yukimura, the Mangaka behind Vinland Saga

REALQ: What kind of child were you? Yukimura: I was a laid back kid, who took a very, very long time to come to a decision. I'd be late to dinner because I was thinking about something or other. Once, while I was alternately touching the right and left eyes of a snail, I became aware that night had fallen. I wondered why my group of friends were always in such a hurry. I would focus on something and lose the ability to tell if time was passing quickly or slowly.

REALQ: When did you first encounter manga? Yukimura: I was five-years-old and the manga was Akira Toriyama's Dr. Slump. I remember thinking the cover art was cool. When I was little, I used to think that the cover art and the story inside were drawn by different people. [Laughs]    But I watched the Dr. Slump anime before I read the manga. Later, someone told me that there was a manga that the anime was based on and I found the weekly magazine where it was serialized. In the beginning, I was dubious. I didn't see why there needed to be both a manga and an anime. Like, why do the same thing twice? How-ever, after I saw them both it made sense because each had its own idiosyncracies. REALQ: Did your parents say anything to you about reading manga? Yukimura: No, they never said anything. They came from a generation who said reading manga made you an idiot, but they didn't say any-thing. They didn't say anything when I told them at 16 that I wanted to draw manga, either.

REALQ: Was there anything that your parents, siblings, or people around you would say to you often?

Yukimura: There certainly must have been various things, but I don't remember because I was probably concentrating on something else at the time and didn't hear them. However, one thing I do remember is being told to watch out for cars. Like, at the very least, try not to die. [Laughs] Nevertheless, I really did get into a traffic accident. Once, on my way to the park to play with my friends, I ran out into the street and got hit on the side by a sedan. I rolled over the top of the car—the hood, wind-shield, top, rear window, then the trunk. Strangely, I wasn't seriously injured and played in the park afterwards. Actually, there was also another incident.    My sister and I were riding together in a car. It was just the two of us and as we were going down a hill, a car suddenly appeared and we hit its side. I was sitting in the backseat and was launched forward like a catapult. My sister was so surprised she called out, "Mako, you're flying!" Strangely, I wasn't injured that time either, and we decided not to tell our mother. [Laughs] REALQ: Did your way of thinking change after the accident? Yukimura: I think that if it did change, I wasn't conscious of it. Despite being a near-death experience, it was a miracle I wasn't injured. My mother getting angry at me afterward was more frightening. [Laughs] In terms of my "way of thinking," I'm a little different. Like something in me is lacking. It's often the case that for some reason I don't fully comprehend a conversation even if I'm really trying to concentrate on what the other person is saying. What's the reason? If I'm honest about it, it's because I'll start thinking about something else, even if it's just for a moment. REALQ: Did you also have trouble paying attention during class at school? Yukimura: Yeah. Especially classes that didn't interest me. I continued to have this problem in high school, where I'd often be sitting in class and before I realized it, the bell would ring. However, my notebook would have stuff drawn in it...manga. REALQ: Didn't teachers or friends say anything? 

Yukimura: In high school, I didn't have much of a social life, so nobody said anything. I went to reasonably academic schools [REALQ Editor's note: Yukimura graduated from Chuo University and Suginami High School] and my peers studied quite hard. The feeling that I was so different from most of the people around me had a big effect on me. I didn't fit in. I lived in my own world.

REALQ: Did student life give you anxiety? Yukimura: Anxiety was the only thing I really felt. In a way, isn't school a microcosm for society? Despite it being a microcosm, there's this feeling of being left behind. That made me really anxious and sad. But as a result of suffering in this way, I realized that society existed out-side of this microcosm—a kind of society that I had never experienced inside the microcosm of school.

REALQ :What lead you to have this epiphany? Yukimura: It occurred to me out of the blue one day when I was feeling totally devastated. I was 16. One autumn day after school I thought to myself, "I'll finish high school because if I don't, it will make my parents sad. But participating in a society reflected in this kind of microcosm will be impossible." It was just like that moment when a cup is filled to the brim with water and suddenly the surface tension breaks and it overflows.  However, thinking this made me feel better. Until that point, the "ruler" for determining success since the first year of high school had been getting good grades, getting into a good college, and then finding a job with a good company. This ruler contained within it a system of values for how one should live their life. When I decided that this was not the ruler I wanted to use to measure my own life, things became a lot easier for me. I used to get burnt out worrying so much about getting decent enough grades that would allow me to get into university. Like, "please let me just graduate!" Realizing that there was another way to live was a lifesaver. 

Of course, I think it made my parents nervous. In that era, there was still a deeply rooted notion that one's academic background was im-portant and working for a good company made you a good person. Back then, this was like saying, "Your child is the type of kid who won't find their way in the world." It was like throwing away the most important ruler and replacing it with a new ruler that was a little bent and covered with indecipherable markings. [Laughs]    REALQ: Was there anyone from your high school days who had an influence on you? Yukimura: A teacher who taught classical literature. He was apparently a teacher with quite bizarre interpretations of the material. More than anything else, what left the greatest impression on me was when he used class time to talk about how wonderful Michael Ende was [REALQ Editor's note: a German writer of children's fiction]. He introduced me to The Never Ending Story. Once I knew about Michael Ende, he became an influence on me. It was the first book I knew of in which someone wrote a book because he had a sense of obligation and a goal in relation to society and the world. I thought that someone who wrote a book because he felt that it was something he had to do was a rather beautiful thing to wish for. REALQ: Next up... Yukimura discusses the connection between himself and Thorfinn Karlsefni, the protagonist of his Vinland Saga. Is there anything that makes you hesitate when you draw your manuscripts? 

Yukimura: For characters, it's probably the hands. Hands take time to do well. The strength of a character's grip on a sword, for example. Male and female hands are hard to differentiate, too. Hands are the most expressive part of a character, after the face. 

I've heard that you can tell a person's personality from their hands, so I always look at them. [Laughs]    You can fake a facial expression, but your hands will show how hard you work or how hard you don't. If you show the character's life in their hands, you'll get a good result. REALQ: When did you start paying attention to how you drew hands? Yukimura: Since I was young. But I still find it difficult now. When I look at the work of other manga artists, sometimes the faces are well drawn, but the hands are not. To put it bluntly, if I were to choose among artists, I would choose them by how they draw their hands. REALQ: Is there anyone whose work you reference? Yukimura: I'm especially influenced by artists with high amounts of realism. When it comes to hands, it's gotta be Katsuhiro Otomo. 

It's not just his hands, though. It's everything. [Laughs] 

Also, the young, up-and-coming artists are all quite good. Their hands are pretty, but you can see the structure clearly as well. REALQ: Any thoughts on these hands? [While looking at Sigurd's hands in the manuscript] Yukimura: Yes. These hands are drawn fairly well. In Sigurd's case, de-spite the muscularity, his hands are not rough. That's because he has his underlings do the tough work. In Thorfinn's case, he has many small cuts, and there is more cracked and peeling skin.

REALQ: Are there any scenes in Vinland Saga strongly influenced by your own experience? Yukimura: When Thorfinn is on his knees, apologizing. [Laughs] The part where he says, "Please. I won't ask you to forgive me, but allow me to live a bit longer." I've been drawing manga for 20 years. There's always a shadow of guilt that hangs over me. I'm sorry for being so selfish. So, I feel I have to, at the very least, draw something that readers will love... I'm nothing without that. Thorfinn is a young viking from medieval Europe. Since his teens, he's pillaged, fought in wars, and done many other terrible things. His feelings change as he grows, and he starts to feel guilt for his past actions. The ghosts of those he killed appears in his dreams, and he is ravaged by nightmares.    I am only here today because of the care of those around me. I am truly thankful. If anything about Thorfinn comes from my experiences, it has to be this. In his current state, the protagonist has no right to convict anyone else. No matter what kind of scoundrel he meets, Thorfinn always feels that he has done something worse in the past. I think it's good this way.

REALQ: Did you know from the beginning that Thorfinn would become the way he did? Yukimura: Yeah. The story began with the premise that the protagonist is fated to have done many terrible things. He goes from being the oppressor to being the oppressed, and in doing so, he learns many things and becomes an adult. He then departs, saying, "I will go to a new land beyond the sea and build a peaceful country." That is an escape from the values that dominated European society. They do not feel that it is bad to wage war and plunder other countries. And, although their opponents are human beings, they believe they have the right to make the weak into slaves and kill them if they need be. In the society of that time, such things were seen as good things. Thorfinn experiences—and hates—both. But he is powerless to change the system... So he decides to leave. There will be terrible bloodshed if he decides to change the world. So he leaves it to Canute. Because Canute has the power and the shorter path. "I am different," he says. "I will live in a different way." When I put it into words, it seems like a lot of what I think is reflected in my work. [Laughs]

REALQ: From your childhood experiences and your writing process, I get the feeling you are a perfectionist who doesn't com-promise when it comes to goals or ideals. Do the people around you feel the same way? 

Yukimura: I think I am a perfectionist. In the past, my seniors and teachers would say, "If 100 points is amazing work and 0 points is nothing, it's easy to get to 80 points. However, each point beyond that is incredibly difficult. Past 90, it's so rough that you'll start spitting blood. And nobody gets to 100." I don't know if, by absolute standards, my work is at 80 points. But, for my own standards, I care a lot about each of those 1 or 2 points beyond 80. I care so much that others see the changes I make and say, "He pushed back the deadline for this? What's changed?" [Laughs] I've even rewritten an entire manuscript before. REALQ: Is it really rough when you have to throw out a whole manuscript? Yukimura: It's sad that to know the work won't produce results, but the worst possible thing for me is to feel regret afterwards. If I can choose to suffer for a brief moment as I draw, then I'll do it. The regrets afterward stay around much longer... REALQ: Are you happy about the reactions of your overseas readers? Yukimura: Yeah. It's encouraging to know they like my work. Especially when I heard some of them were reading Vinland Saga side-by-side with a dictionary. I forgot which language they were translating from and into, though. [Laughs]

REALQ: Let me change the subject: Advice from adults to children... Do you think it's important to emphasize the importance of having dreams? Should we tell kids to have dreams and tell them their dreams will come true? Yukimura: I used to think dreams were just desires. However, I was a good-for-nothing back then, so I think I was being resentful. [Laughs] At the very least, I don't think doing whatever you want to do is a beautiful thing. That's just you doing what you want to do. The truly beautiful things are helping others, volunteering, things like that... Finding a home for a stray dog, or doing things that no other person wants to do—that's beautiful.    This includes me, but to do what you want to do is simply selfishness. I received my role in society, but I couldn't carry it out. I wasn't a modest enough person for that. I said such things because I thought I would do what I wanted to do no matter what other people said to me. It's the same for everyone, I think. Those who do what they want and succeed are simply the ones who ended up with a place in society. It's a miracle. After all, what some people want is to carry out meaningless terrorism... But it's the same thing. Both are "dreams." REALQ: If you could give an hour of advice to your younger self, what would you say? Yukimura: I'd say, reflexively, to be 3 times as careful of oncoming traffic. [Laughs] More seriously, I'd say, "You're worried that you're inferior to others. But don't worry." I'd tell myself that there isn't only one ruler to mea-sure yourself by. "Humans come in all sorts," I'd say. "There's not a single number line that we all stand on." Text by Shuta Miura

#Vinland Saga #Makoto Yukimura #behind the scenes #Interview #Manga and Stuff #Manga Cap #Manga #Art

[emybain]

The Start of Something New

so I was going to post this yesterday, but then I got busy and I also didn't want to post until it felt right, so Im posting now! thank you to @danna-bell-is-black for beta reading this for me! I definitely plan on writing more fics about Georgia because I LOVE her

     It was well after three in the morning, and twenty two year old Georgia Rawles was standing outside Hugh Everhart’s apartment, banging on his door. She didn’t know where else to go; definitely not back home, even though she lived with Tamaya and could probably get more help from her. No, right now, she needed her best friend, the person she had grown up with. 

    She knew it wasn’t safe for her to keep standing out on his doorstep, but she also knew that most people stayed back when she entered a room. It was a trait she prided herself on, being intimidating, even though in high school she received the reward for Most Likely to Cry Over Puppies. 

    After three minutes of consistent banging, the door finally swung open, and Georgia came face to face with a yawning Hugh Everhart, who was squinting at her. Before he could ask her why she was there at such an hour, Georgia pushed passed him into the small apartment. 

    “Please, do come in,” Hugh mumbled sarcastically, closing the door behind her. “Georgia, it’s three in the fuc-”

    “I’m pregnant,” Georgia blurted out. She crossed her arms over her chest tightly, swallowing. At Hugh’s blank stare, clearly no longer tired, she continued. “I...I-I-I’m sorry, Hugh. I didn’t know where else to go.” 

    Hugh’s gaze drifted down to her flat stomach. Georgia felt the urge to hide it, despite there being nothing there yet. “Please tell me Evander’s not the father.”

    A laugh escaped Georgia’s throat, though it sounded nervous. It was a running joke between the two of them that she liked Evander; in reality, Evander was closer to Hugh than anyone, and she was fine with keeping it that way. He was a little too full of himself for her taste. “Skies, no. I...It’s that guy I went out with a few times about a month and a half ago, remember? I saved him from that shoe factory?” 

    It took him a moment, but Hugh slowly nodded. He still looked dumbfounded as he suggested they sit down. He faced her. “Does he know?”

    Georgia curled her feet up underneath her legs. “No. I just found out myself. I was headed home when I came across a robbery in a convenience store.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t just let them rob the poor old man, so I knocked them out and tied them up outside. The man was so grateful that he let me take whatever I wanted from the store-”

    “And you took a test?” Hugh leaned back against the couch cushions. 

    She nodded. “I almost took some medicine, just because that’s always good to have around, and it’s so rare, but I was selfish. I remembered that I missed my period, and I acted for myself.” She grabbed one of his throw pillows and hugged it to her chest. “Hugh, what do I do? I can’t bring a kid into this world. Not like this.” 

    Her stomach turned over at the mention of a child. She had regretted hooking up with that guy, whose name she refused to think about, soon after. It was never a good idea to do anything in today’s world without proper protection, and now she was paying for her mistake. 

    Hugh rubbed the stubble on his chin, studying Georgia with sympathy in his eyes. “You’re not messing with me. You’re actually pregnant.”

    Georgia refrained from chucking the pillow at him. She sighed, clutching it tighter. “Yes! I’m pregnant! That’s been established, dumbass!” She jumped when another young man appeared from thin air in the tiny kitchenette, a glass of water in his hand.  

    “You’re pregnant? What the hell, Georgia?” 

    Georgia groaned and actually threw the pillow this time, but only to the spot beside her. She should’ve known he was going to be here; he and Hugh had been together for a while now. Well, it wasn’t like she cared if he knew as well; she had known him almost as long as she had known Hugh. “Hi, Simon.”

    “Is it that handsome man you saved a few weeks ago? You seemed to really like him.” Simon padded over and sat beside her. 

    She nodded, bringing her legs up to her chest to rest her chin on them. “I broke it off, though. He was scared of me, of what I can do.” 

    Hugh made an exasperated noise in the back of his throat. “Wait, you aren’t seeing him anymore?”

    “No. He didn’t like that I’m a prodigy...said it was too much pressure to date a superhero, so I dumped him before he could dump me.” She shrugged weakly. “I didn’t tell you because it wasn’t important.” She was sure part of it was also because she was nearly six feet tall and was a couple inches taller than him, even if he never admitted it. Her height couldn’t be helped, though. It ran in the Rawles blood. He was starting to bore her, anyway, the more she got to know him. His personality didn’t match his looks. 

    “Well, it’s important now.” Simon shook his head. “You have to tell him.”

    Georgia froze, blinking at Simon. “What? No, I...I don’t even know where he lives! We only went out a few times. And besides,” she licked her lips, “what if he doesn’t care? Or what if this baby is also a prodigy? He’ll want nothing to do with us.” She surprised herself when she placed a hand over her belly protectively, but let it fall to her side just as quickly. “I don’t think he should know.” 

    “He’s the father, George.” Simon rolled his eyes. “You were both careless, and it’s only right that he knows.”

    “Careless?” Georgia frowned. “Easy for you to say, Mister I’m-gay-and-a-man-and-therefore-don’t-have-to-worry-about-these-things!” 

    Simon raised his hands up in defense and shot a look at Hugh when he laughed. “I still think you should tell him.” 

    “Well, he’s the least of my worries right now.” Georgia grew quiet. “How am I supposed to be a mom? I don’t have time to raise a kid, and this world is too violent for any baby.” 

    Hugh scooted closer and took her hands in his. “We’ll figure it out, okay? You’re not alone in this, Georgia.”

    Tears welled in her eyes, her wall that she had been building since she read that test falling. She thought she was going to be able to get through this calmly and with a clear mind, but the more she thought about being pregnant and motherhood, the more frightened she grew. “You know that I’ve always wanted to be a mom, but not like this, Hugh. I’m broke and unmarried and there’s crime every night down the street from my apartment.”

    She felt the cushion lift up as Simon stood and went back to the kitchenette. Hugh pulled her closer to him until her head was on his lap. A tear trickled down her cheek and landed on his knee. “What am I going to do?” 

    Hugh rubbed her back soothingly. “Well, you can have the baby or not, but there aren’t many doctors around these days, and prodigy healers are rare, so it’s more dangerous to terminate the pregnancy. You could give them up for adoption when they’re born, or you can keep them.” Georgia sniffled, not liking any of those options. “Just know that we’ll be here beside you no matter what, okay? You have five people who care about you, George. We’ll support whatever you do, and you don’t have to decide right now.” It was just like Hugh to give her rational options, even if he wasn’t always the most rational person in the world. But when she needed a pep talk, he always had the right things to say. That was one of the reasons why she became friends with him so many years ago. 

    Simon came back and held out a glass of water. Georgia sat back up and accepted it gratefully, the cool liquid feeling good on her closed throat. “I’m going to be fat.”

    “You’re going to have to rest.” Simon sat back down, narrowing his eyes at her. “At least, as the pregnancy goes on.”

    “I can still kick ass even if I’m fifty pounds heavier,” Georgia said, curling her lip up at him in mock disgust. 

    Simon smiled. “I’m not saying you can’t.”

    She took in a slow breath, wiping away the last of her tears. “Kasumi is going to be thrilled. Tamaya will be pissed. Evander...hard to say.” 

    Hugh chuckled and patted her knee lightly. “They’ll all support you, don’t worry..”

    But Georgia did worry. Even with his lighthearted tone, she still felt dread at the road she was headed down. Her...a mom. Hugh had said she didn’t have to keep the baby, but Georgia knew deep down that she was going to. Ever since she was little, she had dreamed of being a mom, having always loved kids. Her parents never gave her any siblings to play with, much to her dismay. She always figured it was because of her gift, that they didn’t want to risk having another prodigy in the house. 

    Oh, skies. Georgia could only imagine what she would do if her child was a prodigy as well. Were the children of prodigies also prodigies? Was it something in their blood that was passed down? She had no clue, and as prodigies were still held at a distance in the world, she could only hope that this baby was normal. As much as she enjoyed her gift of flight, she would never want her child to be discriminated against as she had been all her life. 

    Hugh was right, though. She had a support group, which was more than many expecting mothers in her position had. She could do it. 

    After all, she was the inimitable and powerful Lady Indomitable. 

_______

    At three months, Georgia made her decision, surprising herself and the other Renegades with how quick she made up her mind. 

    At five months, she felt her baby kick for the first time, and felt an immediate burst of love for the life growing inside of her. 

    At six months, she rescued a prodigy healer from a burning hospital and found out she was having a boy. 

    At nine months, she was still terrified of her future. 

    It wasn’t until she held her son in her arms for the first time that she finally had a name for him. Adrian. She wasn’t sure where it came from, but it felt right. For a while, she considered naming him after a family member, but this was so much better. It was something of his own, not something he had to share with a passed on relative that he would never get to know. It was so rare in today’s world to have something that belonged only to one person, anyway. 

    “I will always protect you,” twenty three year old Georgia Rawles whispered to her son, who was only a few hours old. He stared up at her, mouth open wide. He had her eyes, much to her delight. “I promise no harm will come to you, my angel.” She brought him up to her face and pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead and thought of how tiny and vulnerable he was in her hold. A new fear entered her mind, but she pushed it down, not wanting to worry about it right now. She was happy, truly happy. 

    A knock sounded at the door, and Georgia looked up as the door opened. Hugh entered, smiling with a curious twinkle in his eyes. “Just wanted to check on things in here,” he murmured. 

    Georgia gestured for him to come in, and he came closer, sitting beside her on the edge of her bed. He had helped her give birth to her son in her bedroom, a feat that took almost eight hours. Not as long as some mothers, but still long enough to render Georgia exhausted. She needed a long, long nap, but she also didn’t want to miss any of her son’s new life. 

    Hugh regarded her and Adrian with a look she couldn’t decipher. Adrian was watching this new face intently with his big eyes. He stuck his tongue out at Hugh, as if he were just realizing he had a tongue, and Georgia had to giggle softly. 

    “How would you like to hold your godson?”

#renegades #archenemies #supernova #Georgia rawles #adrian everhart #nova artino #ruby tucker #Oscar silva #danna bell #anarchists #my writing

[livebloggingmydescentintomadness]

(1)So I've recently come to the conclusion that I want to cut ties with my mother because she's extremely toxic and bad for my mental health. My parents are divorced and she never physically sees me (It's been 4 years) but she messages me and calls me to get angry at me if I take too long to say happy birthday or on any holiday. The majority of my childhood memories with her are all blurred out except for 2 good memories and all the times she frequently screamed at me at the top of her lungs.

(2) My mother has bpd and anger issues, so this would happen a lot over every small thing I did. It totally destroyed my confidence in asking or doing anything without checking to see if it was okay with literally everyone or to see if I could have permission first. She'd yell at me over everything if I couldn't find a certain item she wanted (and her constantly doing that made it to where whenever she'd ask me for something I'd go into panic mode and wouldn't be able to find it as a result)

(3)She'd also yell at me for not understanding my homework or when I'd accidentally hurt myself, drop something, or spill stuff. I also learned after coming out to my dad that my dad has told her he thought I was gay and that she'd vehemently deny it. She's extremely conservative as well (to the far right) and whenever I would visit her she'd spend all the time talking with my brother and I'd be in the background terrified something bad was going to happen and I'd be yelled at.

(4)To put it even more into perspective, on my birthday I took too long getting ready she and my brother left to go get yogurt and I only found out about it once I finished and came out of my room much to my dads confusion who asked why I wasn't with my mom. My entire childhood scope of her is just an amalgamation of her being violently angry and selfish. I dont want her to be in my life or to force my partner or future children to interact with her in any way. But I don't know how to cut ties.

(4) Like I said she hasn't visited for a while, but she will text me and call usually to just inform me that she's upset with me. I know if I don't pick up or respond she will go in a frenzy of angry texts and will spam my phone. I also still live with my dad (who is absolutely wonderful) so there will probably be questions directed at him or even my brother who she talks with all the time. Im 21 now and I don't know how to officially cut ties as I've never really considered it before seriously.

(5//end) but it feels like she will use my cutting her off to victimize herself and won't even hear any reasoning I have. I know for sure she is the type of person to plaster screenshots of conversations on her social media and passive-aggressively make posts if she doesn't. I don't want that but I feel like I'd owe her an explanation as to why I felt compelled to not speak with her anymore What should I do?

Sorry this took so long for me to answer, hon, and I’m really sorry you’re in this situation and that you’ve been put through so much misery. The way your mother has treated you is absolutely awful, and you’re completely right to cut her out of your life.

I’m low on spoons, so let me just relate to you my own experience: my dad walked out on me and my mom just before my 17th birthday, and I cut him out of my life. It took a few emails and texts, and he still sends me cards and tries to play the victim of the daughter who won’t ~reconcile~ with him, claims he misses his ~little girl~, but I throw away the cards and I go on with my life.

I hate my father, and I haven’t missed him even once. My life got so much better when he left and I never had to see him again. It got even better when I stopped responding to his digital communications and I stopped playing into his victimhood. Yeah, I’m sure he tells lies about me to his new family and stepchildren, he acts like he’s the poor guy whose heartless daughter won’t talk to him, but I honestly don’t give a fuck, because I don’t think about him. 

I literally don’t think about him, and that’s a freedom I wish for every child of asshole parents.

I can’t tell you the answer for how to deal with your mom bothering your brother and father, but I can tell you that whatever bullshit victimhood she pulls will be worth not having to constantly deal with her in your life. Deciding she doesn’t matter will be so fucking liberating, and you have the right to make that choice.

You don’t need to justify or reason yourself to her, you don’t owe her anything. You don’t have to argue with her or make her try to understand, you can just lay down your terms and your boundaries and enforce them. It might take practice, but you can do it. You don’t have to say happy birthday to the person who traumatized you, you don’t have to take her call or answer her texts or reply to her emails. Let her be her miserable asshole self and live your own life.

I’m not saying it won’t be hard or won’t hurt or cause problems sometimes, but I wouldn’t go back to being in contact with my father for anything. 

#abuse #parental abuse #abuse tw #long post for ts #anonymous #ask

[daughterofhel]

Just, void screaming. Ignore

Is this a pity party? Honestly. Maybe. Which I hate even further but fuck man, I’ve got no one to talk to but need to feel like I’m talking to SOMEONE. This is just bitching and ranting and woe is me bullshit. Sorry; just figured Tumblr was the spot to do it. Easy to be lost to the void while somehow feeling public enough that I can convince myself it matters.

Not that I expect anyone to still be reading, as this really is just a stranger here throwing a fit, but I’d like to say I already am going to therapy.

That out of the way..

Holy. FUCK.

I’m trying so god damned hard to work on myself. To get better. Get over shit and improve and grow as a person and shits always shoving me back. I still keepnfuckin going but man some days it’s just fucking overwhelming and you spiral down. I hate how often I’m spiraling back down.

I hate how alone I feel even with a wonderful wife. She and I talk. None of this convo is something we haven’t talked about but I also don’t want to just dump my constant woes on the woman I love. To the only person who loves me without any strings or conditions or whatever. I adore her. But god are we both lonely. I worry strongly it’s partly my fault. I think often; I can’t help it but I really am working on it. But god damn. My parents were kinda warped and conditional with their affections for me.

Only once I got a little older did my mother really bother, since I was no longer a burden but could be of use. Especially once she had her own kids. Now when I do get graced with any kind of greeting it’s for a mix of things. Typically I means she’s about to hit my father up for money; which means she’s gotta make sure she and I are cool so that cash still keeps coming. Other times it’s cuz she wants that mother daughter bond thing we absolutely do not have and wants to pretend it’s there. Nearly every call we speak her traumas of the past get brought up.

And fuck I feel really bad that happened to you mom, I see how it’s really wrecked your life up even now and I’ve offered the best advice I can, I’ve offered the kinda words, the supporting words, done what I can to my own best ability. Even if it’s always just letting you speak about the rapes of your past that I don’t want to hear about at all. I know that sounds selfish but I’ve heard it a lot and I know they still bother you so much and I know I am not the person whose gonna help you work through those. Im just.. not.

I hate when she cries about how her life was ruined from the few years she was together with my father; how his abuse and manipulations to this day affect all these things. How she reminds me and talks about them in detail nearly ever call as if this is news? Woman, I grew up ALONE with him. I’m fuckin aware what he’s like and how that fucks you up, thanks.

It’s some kind of fucked up bonding to her. Our last call, with my grandmother in the hospital and I having FaceTimed to get updates and say hi to my grandmother (I live in another country than them) she loudly detailed her miserable life with my father in front of the nurses as she reminded me how she’d have to hide us in closets in the dark to calm and feed me as he’d snap at any noise. How he’d hurt her. How she took us out of that home from him before she decided it was more important I had my father in my life since hers never really was. How she did what she could but there was no winning custody from my father when it came down to it.

I’m so use to hearing two different stories from both my parents as they paint the other as bad and I remember more than I want to. I silently listen and mumble the appropriate words. But I know my mother is either in denial or magically forgotten her own shit just like my father has his own shit.

While he slept around and wasn’t home for days and shit she would lock herself in her room. Or she’d go out dressed up to the bars and shit and leave me locked in that room. Sometimes for a couple DAYS. I KNOW this.

It was just worse when they were both home though. God. The screaming and breaking of shit. I still can remember trying to clean snotty tears and blood off my mothers face as I apologized for being bad and making dad mad after he had picked her up by the throat and threw her through our crappy american drywall walls.

I hate how this came up in convo. I hate how she mentioned how she wasn’t sure if my father ever touched me; sexually. Like hers did to her before he fucked off forever. I also hate how much she kept trying to bring up stuff and cases where she thinks it might’ve been possible, as if I needed that to be a thing on top of the other shit. She kept talking about it as if she WANTED it to be true. For us to have another fucking thing to relate to each other. Which. HOLY fuck woman. I called to say hi to my possibly dying grandmother and get info on THAT. Not for any of this.

Honestly. I don’t know. I don’t know if dad did that shit. If so, that’s a really sealed tight fucking memory. I’m currently focusing on the, what my therapist flat out calls torture, he put me through. My very own Mr Jeckel and Mr Hyde. Me Perfect Mr Nightmare. At the flip of a switch back and fucking forth. Spoiled and tortured.

I had my first breakdown that I can recall at age 5. I barely remember that trailer but fuck I remember enough. I remember a solid week of constantly getting the leather belt and screamed at by that marine. I didn’t immediately pick up my toys. I was struggling to tie my shoes. I didn’t answer right away. I made a mess with my food. I almost burnt our soup I was supposed to be managing on the stove: I had my own stool and all. I just felt.. overwhelmed. I told a childish lie, I don’t remember the lie but he utterly lost it. Lying remains the very worst possible offense to my father. What was an attempt to avoid more beating and screaming turned into a long nightmare.

I don’t remember those walls. But I remember his face. I remember being sat on the counter, as he demanded I look him in the eyes when I was talking to him or being screamed at. I remember him visibly shaking, him being so so red. The veins popping out of his forehead and neck. The muscles on his arms in the shirts he always had to cut just to fit those arms through. I could draw that glare as he always held it close to mine to make sure I couldn’t and didn’t focus elsewhere. His interrogating. I know I thought I had caught a break when that landline started ringing. I’ve no idea who it was who called.

My dads teeth were gritted as he responded curtly to the person on the phone who wasn’t getting the hint he didn’t want to talk. And I remember, sitting so high up on that counter, alone with this man, knowing he was about to hang up and no one was gonna stop him, that I was never gonna get this right, that I just. Felt some hopeless I started laughing. I saw the look he shot me and I swear the memory still makes my stomach sink every ducking time. And I was crying cuz I couldn’t stop laughing. He hung up quick and demanded to know what I thought was funny. That did I think lying was funny? Of course I didn’t and my ‘I don’t know’ responses never ever were received well. I just. I couldn’t stop laughing.

God I’m glad I don’t remember the rest but I do know he fixed that laughing problem pretty quick. I only remember how much I hurt.

I have so many things to say, so many years of even more shit; the things you just learn to survive. How you learn to not play strong with a man whose strong enough to make it hurt if he suspects it isn’t. You learn he wants to hear you scream and cry. But to a certain degree; when I got to that barely breathing ugly crying with pouring snot sniffling stage he got grossed out and threatened he’d give me a real reason to cry if I didn’t cut that shit out. Leaning over a surface so it doesn’t matter if your legs give out as your there’d bare assed to a folded braided leather belt being brought down amidst yelling was only part of that shit.

Once the beating was done I was orders where I was to stand or sit waiting for him to call me into his office. This could sometimes be a few hours. And god forbid I moved; he moves so silently, occasionally checking to make sure I was ‘reflecting on what I did wrong.’ Assuming I didn’t fuck that up it would be time for a new round of mixed levels of yelling. A foot or two from his face he’d want me to inform him what I did wrong, that I didn’t want to be miserable and anything like my mother, that it’s hard enough on him when I’m not doing my job and he’s doing his. (My job being the house and my grades). Then it was time for me to explain how I’d avoid doing what I did wrong again, and then I was to pick an appropriate punishment.

Takin away my time to tv, my PlayStation, going outside or having friends over. This was its own test; if I was too light on the punishment he thought my offense deserved I’d get screamed at and beat there by hands of his like iron and sent back to my room to wait to further reflect with a 50-50 chance of him either calling me into his room to whip me or to give me a second chance with a worse longer punishment chosen by me for the now double offense.

I hate how awkward I am with gifts. I know it’s partly dads fault. He’d buy me all kinds of things all the time. I didn’t really ever ask. Not to the sheer amount he would go out and get and give stuff. I was to be appropriately thankful. But of course, if I messed up with having not finished all the chores (and the right way) or not responding to him quick enough, watching cartoons before I finished my homework, you name it, my new stuff often got broken in front of me. Snap and crushed and thrown and shattered as he screamed over me as I was also yelled at to pick that shit up. And fast.

So yeah mom. I’m sorry he ruined holidays and gifts for you. I’m honestly sorry you still think about your time with him and that it hurts you. But you’re talking to the wrong person. I’m aware what it’s like, and I know you know. You want to relate on that but not really hear much from me except validation to how much it’s fucked you up.

I wake from the dead of sleep when a door slams. I didn’t even wake when I was asleep in a carcrash, that’s how heavy I sleep, you hear? And this door thing isn’t new but it got revamped by an event when I was just out of highschool. We built a home in Texas and we had a lot of space. I just happened to met and know and bond with folks in shitty situations and offered them a place to live until they got on their feet. One of the girls begged for her mother’s dog to stay with us. Mind you she never took care of this dog. My other roommates and I did. I even built the lady a doghouse as well as buying a big water thing for outside since it’s TEXAS.

But one weekend I was dog sitting for a friend who was going out of town for a horse show she was part of. Big lanky playful pup. He wasn’t hurting the old little dog but he did keep trying to get her to play. The girl didn’t like that and kept separating them. I told her to not move that dog away from the shelter and water, it’s summer in Texas. I had been working a double shift (16hrs) and was fucning exhaushsted and just crashed on my bed with one of my friends. (I had a big bed. Often shared with a handful of people). Well, apparently that girl moved that dog far away from hers, leaving the poor thing chained up to a single tree, no shelter, no water, and he was crying. My father stormed into the basement madder than fucking hell.

He doesn’t tolerate animal abuse. I was barely an hour into sleep, unaware of the situation, when he grabs and yanks me by the ankle, it startled awake my fried next to me, as he screamed at me. I thought he was going to throw me against the wall. I was still not fully awake to process what he was screaming at me for. Which enraged him more. I figured out what it was and quickly moved the dog back to the shelter and water and reported to my still super pissed off father. I got pretty upset with that one roommate; it ended up being one of the many many things that I had her move out over. I’m not my father, even if angry at the other shit she had pulled, I packed her stuff and helped load it into her car as she went to live somewhere else. No matter how bad it got between me and some of my temporary roommates, I always packed their stuff and helped loaded it away.

But being jarred awake and fearing instantly for my life as I was face to face with my fathers rage has me still on alert with slamming doors.

And right now? Living with my wife’s parents and aunt, it’s becoming a slight problem. Our nephew spends most of his time here than he does at his own home. Since COVID he’s been to his own home less than a week in total. And his grandparents and great aunt are 100% enablers of really shitty behavior. They just want quiet so they left him have whatever he wants no matter what. Anytime my wife and I try to law down rules and enforce them he screamed and slammed shit, telling everyone to fuck off and how he hates them, loudest screaming he can manage, more slaming more screaming, and this can go on for an hour or more.

And the ‘adults’ yell at US and tell us off in front of the kid. He’s aware he will get what he wants. If he doesn’t want to go to school, he doesn’t go. This kid spent well than more days home than at school. Just cuz he didn’t feel like it and wanted to play video games. He watches stupid shit on Instagram and tilt ol and your Uber influencer folks and sees all this named brand shit and insists he HAS to have that shit. That shit that costs enough money to make your eyes buldge for a stupid crappy hoodie or his, no joke, 100th pair of shoes or newest PC assessory or whatever.

His mother time to time borrows money she doesn’t always pay back, cuz she and her boyfriend struggle with bills or feeding their own cats cuz she never tells this kid no since he throws a bitch fit. It’s wearing so fucking thin on us. It’s hard to dote and love on our nephew when he’s so shitty to his family. He refuses to go to therapy and no one makes him go. He literally less than a YEAR ago finally started wiping his own ASS, and he’s 11.

I’ve been warning him a lot lately to not have his laptop at the table cuz there’s a bunch of folks at the table with plates and bowls and multiple glasses of water, pitchers of water, and he’s gonna be really upset if he ruins his computer. He can just use his phone. It’s not like he stays at the table that long as it is. He’s been super bitchy about it but I’ve been very stern on it the last few days. Well, today he was fucking around with something with the water and got it on his phone. There were no paper towels.

So he threw an horrid fucking fit. Lost his entire fucking mind. As my wife and I are trying to reason with him and teach him to not react like this when things happen like that and to instead ask for help or thibk, what else can I use, like the kitchen towel for example, everyone’s enabling his tantrum and coddling it and telling us to hush up. We are trying to teach him how to fucking handle life! Any time any little thing doens go his way immediately he gives up or throws a fit or something! It’s not healthy. So we are trying to ask him to talk about why he’s feeling overwhelmed with this or that, help him figure out what can be done (or accept that sometimes that’s just how life is, what’s important it your attitude, a spilt glass is a spilt glass, whether you laugh or scream and cry. It’s happened. Your approach to how you handle that will make you a happier person and folks happier to be around you).

We help him where we can, try to show him things. But no one else cares! If it’s not an instant quick fix to what he wants we need to shut up and back off. And it just fucning sucks to see how this is only going to end badly! He isn’t being raised how to handle anything at all in life. His moms off living her single life with her boyfriend and we’re trying to raise this kid with three adults who are all making things worse and overriding any progress we make.

Today. He snatched his laptop and made a point of putting it on the table during us prepping dinner. I took it out and told him it can wait until he’s done with dinner, we’re already trying to fix his phone. He will survive one dinner without being on his phone or computer.

He throws himself to the fucking FLOOR screaming and crying. I get yelled at by one of the grandparents while the great aunt tried to ‘reason’ with me. Last time she distracted me with what I thought was genuine conversation she was actually having with me but was really jsut so the kid could sneak his laptop into the kitchen. So I stood my ground this time. Let the kid throw his stupid fit. Dinner will be finished soon and he can play and watch his videos. He literally takes 10 minutes to eat and leaves. I’m in the midst of helping my wife cook and set the table when I’m told to essentially shut up and let him have the laptop and.

I just got so mad. I apologizes to my wife but i know my limits. I know them. And I was about to do or say something. It’s every god damned day with this. I literally wake up to this kid screaming and bitching and slamming doors and throwing fits cuz he wants something and he’s not getting it. He literally got those tiny finger plastic skateboards cuz he saw and wanted them. And his mom came and picked him up to go BUY these when she’s nearly broke, yelled at us for calling him out on this and how he could have waited, and then ten minutes later ask us for money and food for her pets.

And today?

Today I was so fucking done. So fucking mad. So mad at how they treat my wife. So mad at how their attitudes are ruining the development of this kid who I really do love and I only see him getting shittier as a person. And I went to our room. And my wife joined and cried and cried. Of course the kid got his laptop and all was fine for everyone downstairs. Of course it was. My wife had already cooked dinner and prepped the table. I already folded and hung out the latest laundry. Who cares if we’re hurting.

On my way up the stairs I told that kid he’s an asshole. To be fair its almost daily he screams at us to go fuck our selves and that we are assholes and how he hates us. I told him he treats his family badly, the family who loves him. And that’s what I left it at. They’re all Italian. I’m still learning to speak so I’m not able to articulate myself super strongly. Which makes ALL OF THIS so much harder and more frustrating. So so so much harder. But I’m so tired of my wife crying. I’m so tired of how they treat her. I hate how her aunt texted how she loves her and then goes on to excuse this kids shit behavior and reprimand our actions and shit. Why is it the kids feelings are the only ones that matter? Why is my wife constant collateral? You’re damned right I’m fuckin mad.

I’m struggling to work on overcoming my own personal problems and triggers with this EDMR therapy and I’m wakin up up a cocktail of some of my literal nightmares and the kid and family KNOW IT. They don’t know the finer details like my wife and therapist. But fuck man. They KNOW and yet they let him keep behaving like this. They keep telling us we are wrong and we’re being too hard on the kid and he’s struggling cuz his parents divorced.

Well shit kid. That sucks. I’m sorry. That’s rough. But you literally have a huge family of people who adore and love you. My god I would love to have that. Right now? The fucked up part? My closest kindest most helpful person in my life besides my wife is my father. His age has mellowed him out. He’s still fucked on some stuff. But it’s been nearly 30 years. He’s not totally changed but he surly is worlds away from the man I started out with. His financial help provides us food on the table. He recently helped us get a new fridge so my wife’s parents can use it without bending and hurting their backs.

Today I get informed by my mother in law, who had not been present for any of tonight’s drama, that my wife needs to stop and that I am to not curse as her grand son ever again. Which, I said he was being an asshole? Cuz he was? He was screaming Curses at us, has been nearly every day anytime he’s mad. I called him out. I didn’t scream it; I don’t scream. I want to be nothing like my father. But I did call him out. Am I proud for calling an 11 boy he’s an asshole? Erm. No. But god he’s emotionally abusive to this family ajd they allow and encourage it. I’m so scared he’s gonna end up pushing one of them in his fits and it’s gonna hurt one of them badly or worse! Their health’s already shaky. We’ve already had to help her father up the stairs and to the bathroom and get dressed and undressed due to him feeling back. Hell today my wife took him to a few different docs. It’s been a long fucking day.

This kid was being horribly rude and nasty to my wife. To the grandparents who love him. Was close to breaking stuff. All cuz he had to eat without his laptop! Cuz he didn’t listen and got water on his fuckin phone! Which is now working thank god; we fixed that. I just.

I want to cancel therapy. Wise? No. Probably not. But we NEED to get out of here.

We already don’t really have any friends. We kinda do. But it’s.. kinda temporary conditional. Generally more along the lines of ‘work’ related or we’re the only ones free at that moment in time. Not that they’re bad folks they just don’t need us like we need in return.

Personally I know I have problems. I’m boring. I’ve abandonment issues I have and still am working on. And I overthink and I’m so worried that this fucking cluster of things just.. make me one of those folks doomed to just. Not have friends. I hate myself every waking moment of my fucking life cuz I so badly want friends. I wish I didn’t. I have tried and tried to not want it. But I do. And it sucks. I know it’s me; when something keeps happening it’s clear you’re the problem. And I ask often. Maybe once a week, a month for sure, my wife what I am doing wrong. What I’m not doing enough. What I could do better. She doesn’t have any answers and I can’t keep asking her. I hate to ask. I hate wearing her down. I don’t know what to do. I am just a fun fling friend. A week, a month, sometimes a year or so, but then it dwindles and dies off

And I spent all my life living between homes when it wasn’t with my father, giving up on my privacy, on my interests, my freedom, to put on a smile ajd take on new chores, often caring for kids, and swallowing my own feelings and being less than second or even third place in anyone’s life; I just want someone to choose me first you know? I miss the days of having friends who were excited to have free time cuz that meant they had time to hang out or chat or something! I don’t beg; I won’t beg. I don’t want to have to fight for a slot in someone’s schedule and pray I get lucky. I also know I can’t expect people to have the same wants in a relationship as I do. And so I’m stuck. Sad, quiet, and thankful for what I get when I get it, and quietly letting stuff go. Because the few friends I have are decent folk, but I’m never going to be that friend folks want to be around to just be around.

And I’m still struggling to accept that. Cuz fuck. Alright it hurts. I look back and every friendship lasted only as long as I had something to provide in service. Once I couldn’t provide or they found something better, either they drifted off or just completely dropped off the radar. And that…

That sucks so fuckin much. I don’t think I’m a shitty person? I think I can be entertaining? I listen. Maybe my humor isn’t okay? I ramble too much? Too spacey? I go over the list so often I don’t even know. I’m tired.

I’m not talking romantic here but god I do want to be loved. Or at least have a couple folks good at faking it. I hate that I miss my most toxic friendships. At least they were around. I knew theyd talk to me. Want to. Would seek me out. I knew free days meant we were gonna chill (not always but a good chance!). And I know adult friendships are a bit different. I know work and romance and family take the front seat.

I just want to matter to someone a little more than the one use I can provide. I want to be more than a fun temporary distraction.

I’m beyond thankful for the woman I married. And I mourn that her friends live far away too. We both just want friends. I want to have my wife tell me she’ll be back late cuz she’s going out. I want to see her send me a silly photo or a food snap and have her come back home late, glowing and laughing and smiling with her friends. I want to invite them over to dinner and be on comfortable terms with them. I want to goofy around and be loud and rough house and geek out with my own friends. I want to have that found family you know?

Nearly everyone’s dead on my fathers side and whose left is.. best left alone. Or has made it clear they don’t thibk much of me. Ajd my mother’s side don’t talk to me. I moved so much I don’t know them and most of them never bothered cuz they never thought I’d survive as it were. My mother’s burnt bridges and that means any chance I had is pretty much gone. I don’t know where each and every cousin and and it’s just wierd to try and connect cuz we have blood. It’s just. Been too many many years. And it’s not like a single persons ever reached out my way you know? Polite to my face and I so back. But that’s the end of it.

God I’m just so burnt out. I’m so sad more than not. I’m trying to get out of my funk. I hate how I stay in bed. I don’t mean to. I just. It’s our only space to be left alone in, for the most part. Every home I’ve lived in being alone was best. My room (if I had that, or at the least it was shared with someone else), was one of the few solace’s. Usually my only real peace was the bathroom.

And I am finding it hard to break out of that. I want to quit therapy and save up money and get us OUT of here. I feel my progress would go better and my wife would be so much happier if we could just Get Out.

Maybe we’d even be fortunate and meet some friends who liked us and wanted to be around, if we had our own place? A fun possibility. I am use to running a house. I’ve done it countless times. It was my job with my father. Often it was a strange mash up of that with other families but with a lot less freedom.

I’ve stayed up all night cuz I feel like puking and I’m drowning and I needed to just.. get the thoughts out of my head just a little. I know I’ve only scratched the surface. I haven’t shared everything. I don’t really plan to. But these are the things most in my head

Dealing with this shit. On top of this therapy that has me reliving my childhood traumas one at a time to heal them over or some shit on top of waking up to screaming and doors slamming as my wife gets yelled at for trying to stop that situation sucks. Seeing my phone buzz only to constantly see just comic updates (often to comics I’m not even waiting on), my father messaging me either bad news or stuff he’s doing, and my mother with her bullshit and her bad news and guilt trips, instead of a friendly hello is just.

I’m tired of crying too. My fathers discipline has made me adverse to crying. I literally tore myself off the road when I wrecked my motorcycle, I forced my knee to bend so I could continue on my way to work where I treated the road rash, the rolled flesh, the open wounds, with rubbing alcohol— which took the breath right out of my fucking lungs, and I didn’t cry. But this shit?

I’m so worn. My therapist praises me for surviving when I wish I didn’t.

For my wife? I will try. For her. I can’t hurt her.

But god. What’s fucking relief it would be. I wish there was just something I could do. To fix this. To be less selfish and problematic. Though as I can very clearly remember wishing all my life for any kind of mercy to never see it, I know that’s not gonna happen. You are your own hero or your own villian. Right now I’m both and I’m losing.

I’m probably gonna just get dressed since the suns up and start drawing more wood plans. I need to make extra money. I can be sad and work; I’ve had jobs before. Ha.

I thoroughly believe life will be a little better once we have breathing room. I’m so tired.

#don’t read #just let me void scream #I’ll get over it #always do

[samanthasroberts]

Dangerous idiots: how the liberal media elite failed working-class Americans

Trump supporters are not the caricatures journalists depict and native Kansan Sarah Smarsh sets out to correct what newsrooms get wrong

Last March, my 71-year-old grandmother, Betty, waited in line for three hours to caucus for Bernie Sanders. The wait to be able to cast her first-ever vote in a primary election was punishing, but nothing could have deterred her. Betty a white woman who left school after ninth grade, had her first child at age 16 and spent much of her life in severe poverty wanted to vote.

So she waited with busted knees that once stood on factory lines. She waited with smoking-induced emphysema and the false teeth shes had since her late 20s both markers of our class. She waited with a womb that in the 1960s, before Roe v Wade, she paid a stranger to thrust a wire hanger inside after she discovered she was pregnant by a man shed fled after he broke her jaw.

Betty worked for many years as a probation officer for the state judicial system in Wichita, Kansas, keeping tabs on men who had murdered and raped. As a result, its hard to faze her, but she has pronounced Republican candidate Donald Trump a sociopath whose mouth overloads his ass.

No one loathes Trump who suggested women should be punished for having abortions, who said hateful things about groups of people she has loved and worked alongside since childhood, whose pomp and indecency offends her modest, midwestern sensibility more than she.

Yet, it is white working-class people like Betty who have become a particular fixation among the chattering class during this election: what is this angry beast, and why does it support Trump?

Not so poor: Trump voters are middle class

Hard numbers complicate, if not roundly dismiss, the oft-regurgitated theory that income or education levels predict Trump support, or that working-class whites support him disproportionately. Last month, results of 87,000 interviews conducted by Gallup showed that those who liked Trump were under no more economic distress or immigration-related anxiety than those who opposed him.

According to the study, his supporters didnt have lower incomes or higher unemployment levels than other Americans. Income data misses a lot; those with healthy earnings might also have negative wealth or downward mobility. But respondents overall werent clinging to jobs perceived to be endangered. Surprisingly, a Gallup researcher wrote, there appears to be no link whatsoever between exposure to trade competition and support for nationalist policies in America, as embodied by the Trump campaign.

Earlier this year, primary exit polls revealed that Trump voters were, in fact, more affluent than most Americans, with a median household income of $72,000 higher than that of Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders supporters. Forty-four percent of them had college degrees, well above the national average of 33% among whites or 29% overall. In January, political scientist Matthew MacWilliams reported findings that a penchant for authoritarianism not income, education, gender, age or race predicted Trump support.

These facts havent stopped pundits and journalists from pushing story after story about the white working classs giddy embrace of a bloviating demagogue.

In seeking to explain Trumps appeal, proportionate media coverage would require more stories about the racism and misogyny among white Trump supporters in tony suburbs. Or, if were examining economically driven bitterness among the working class, stories about the Democratic lawmakers who in recent decades ended welfare as we knew it, hopped in the sack with Wall Street and forgot American labor in their global trade agreements.

But, for national media outlets comprised largely of middle- and upper-class liberals, that would mean looking their own class in the face.

The faces journalists do train the cameras on hateful ones screaming sexist vitriol next to Confederate flags must receive coverage but do not speak for the communities I know well. That the media industry ignored my home for so long left a vacuum of understanding in which the first glimpse of an economically downtrodden white is presumed to represent the whole.

Part of the current glimpse is JD Vance, author of the bestselling new memoir Hillbilly Elegy. A successful attorney who had a precariously middle-class upbringing in an Ohio steel town, Vance wrote of the chaos that can haunt a family with generational memory of deep poverty. A conservative who says he wont vote for Trump, Vance speculates about why working-class whites will: cultural anxiety that arises when opioid overdose kills your friends and the political establishment has proven it will throw you under the bus. While his theories may hold up in some corners, in interviews coastal media members have repeatedly asked Vance to speak for the entire white working class.

His interviewers and reviewers often seem relieved to find someone with ownership on the topic whose ideas in large part confirm their own. The New York Times election podcast The Run-Up said Vances memoir doubles as a cultural anthropology of the white underclass that has flocked to the Republican presidential nominees candidacy. (The Times teased its review of the book with the tweet: Want to know more about the people who fueled the rise of Donald Trump?)

While Vance happens to have roots in Kentucky mining country, most downtrodden whites are not conservative male Protestants from Appalachia. That sometimes seems the only concept of them that the American consciousness can contain: tucked away in a remote mountain shanty like a coal-dust-covered ghost, as though white poverty isnt always right in front of us, swiping our credit cards at a Target in Denver or asking for cash on a Los Angeles sidewalk.

One-dimensional stereotypes fester where journalism fails to tread. The last time I saw my native class receive substantial focus, before now, was over 20 years ago not in the news but on the television show Roseanne, the fictional storylines of which remain more accurate than the musings of comfortable commentators in New York studios.

Countless images of working-class progressives, including women such as Betty, are thus rendered invisible by a ratings-fixated media that covers elections as horse races and seeks sensational b-roll.

This media paradigm created the tale of a divided America red v blue in which the 42% of Kansans who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 are meaningless.

This year, more Kansans caucused for Bernie Sanders than for Donald Trump a newsworthy point I never saw noted in national press, who perhaps couldnt fathom that flyover country might contain millions of Americans more progressive than their Clinton strongholds.

In lieu of such coverage, media makers cast the white working class as a monolith and imply an old, treacherous story convenient to capitalism: that the poor are dangerous idiots.

Poor whiteness and poor character

The two-fold myth about the white working class that they are to blame for Trumps rise, and that those among them who support him for the worst reasons exemplify the rest takes flight on the wings of moral superiority affluent Americans often pin upon themselves.

I have never seen them flap so insistently as in todays election commentary, where notions of poor whiteness and poor character are routinely conflated.

In an election piece last March in the National Review, writer Kevin Williamsons assessment of poor white voters among whom mortality rates have sharply risen in recent decades expressed what many conservatives and liberals alike may well believe when he observed that communities ravaged by oxycodone use deserve to die.

The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles, Williamson wrote. Donald Trumps speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.

For confirmation that this point is lost on most reporters, not just conservative provocateurs, look no further than a recent Washington Post series that explored spiking death rates among rural white women by fixating on their smoking habits and graphically detailing the haggard face and embalming processes of their corpses. Imagine wealthy white woman examined thusly after their deaths. The outrage among family and friends with the education, time, and agency to write letters to the editor would have been deafening.

A sentiment that I care for even less than contempt or degradation is their tender cousin: pity.

In a recent op-ed headlined Dignity and Sadness in the Working Class, David Brooks told of a laid-off Kentucky metal worker he met. On his last day, the man left to rows of cheering coworkers a moment I read as triumphant, but that Brooks declared pitiable. How hard the man worked for so little, how great his skills and how dwindling their value, Brooks pointed out, for people he said radiate the residual sadness of the lonely heart.

Im hard-pressed to think of a worse slight than the media figures who have disregarded the embattled white working class for decades now beseeching the country to have sympathy for them. We dont need their analysis, and we sure dont need their tears. What we need is to have our stories told, preferably by someone who can walk into a factory without his own guilt fogging his glasses.

One such journalist, Alexander Zaitchik, spent several months on the road in six states getting to know white working-class people who do support Trump. His goal for the resulting new book, The Gilded Rage, was to convey the human complexity that daily news misses. Zaitchik wrote that his mission arose from frustration with hot takes written by people living several time zones and income brackets away from their subjects.

Zaitchik wisely described those he met as a blue-collar middle class mostly white people who have worked hard and lost a lot, whether in the market crash of 2008 or the manufacturing layoffs of recent decades. He found that their motivations overwhelmingly started with economics and ended with economics. The anger he observed was pointed up, not down at those who forgot them when global trade deals were negotiated, not at minority groups.

Meanwhile, the racism and nationalism that surely exist among them also exist among Democrats and higher socioeconomic strata. A poll conducted last spring by Reuters found that a third of questioned Democrats supported a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States. In another, by YouGov, 45% of polled Democrats reported holding an unfavorable view of Islam, with almost no fluctuation based on household income. Those who wont vote for Trump are not necessarily paragons of virtue, while the rest are easily scapegoated as the countrys moral scourge.

When Hillary Clinton recently declared half of Trump supporters a basket of deplorables, Zaitchik told another reporter, the language could be read as another way of saying white-trash bin. Clinton quickly apologized for the comment, the context of which contained compassion for many Trump voters. But making such generalizations at a $6m fundraiser in downtown New York City, at which some attendees paid $50,000 for a seat, recalled for me scenes from the television political satire Veep in which powerful Washington figures discuss normals with distaste behind closed doors.

The DeBruce Grain elevator. Federal safety inspectors had not visited it for 16 years when an explosion ripped through the half-mile long structure, killing seven workers. Photograph: Cliff Schiappa/AP

When we talked, Zaitchik mentioned HBO talk-show host Bill Maher, who he pointed out basically makes eugenics-level arguments about anyone who votes for Donald Trump having congenital defects. You would never get away with talking that way about any other group of people and still have a TV show.

Maher is, perhaps, the pinnacle of classist smugness. In the summer of 1998, when I was 17 and just out of high school, I worked at a grain elevator during the wheat harvest. An elevator 50 miles east in Haysville, Kansas, exploded (grain dust is highly combustible), killing seven workers. The accident rattled my community and reminded us about the physical dangers my family and I often faced as farmers.

I kept going to work like everyone else and, after a long day weighing wheat trucks and hauling heavy sacks of feed in and out of the mill, liked to watch Politically Incorrect, the ABC show Maher hosted then. With the search for one of the killed workers bodies still under way, Maher joked, as I recall, that the people should check their loaves of Wonder Bread.

That moment was perhaps my first reckoning with the hard truth that, throughout my life, I would politically identify with the same people who often insult the place I am from.

Such derision is so pervasive that its often imperceptible to the economically privileged. Those who write, discuss, and publish newspapers, books, and magazines with best intentions sometimes offend with obliviousness.

Many people recommended to me the bestselling new history book White Trash, for instance, without registering that its title is a slur that refers to me and the people I love as garbage. My happy relief that someone set out to tell this ignored thread of our shared past was squashed by my wincing every time I saw it on my shelf, so much so that I finally took the book jacket off. Incredibly, promotional copy for the book commits precisely the elitist shaming Isenberg is out to expose: (the book) takes on our comforting myths about equality, uncovering the crucial legacy of the ever-present, always embarrassing if occasionally entertaining poor white trash.

The book itself is more sensitively wrought and imparts facts that one hopes would dismantle popular use of its titular term. But even Isenberg cant escape our classist frameworks.

When On the Media host Brooke Gladstone asked Isenberg, earlier this year, to address long-held perceptions of poor whites as bigots, the author described a conundrum:They do subscribe to certain views that are undoubtedly racist, and you cant mask it and pretend that its not there. It is very much a part of their thinking.

Entertain a parallel broad statement about any other disenfranchised group, and you might begin to see how rudimentary class discussion is for this relatively young country that long believed itself to be free of castes. Isenberg has sniffed out the hypocrisy in play, though.

The other problem is when people want to blame poor whites for being the only racist in the room, she told Gladstone. as if theyre more racist than everyone else.

That problem is rooted in the notion that higher class means higher integrity. As journalist Lorraine Berry wrote last month, The story remains that only the ignorant would be racist. Racism disappears with education were told. As the first from my family to hold degrees, I assure you that none of us had to go to college to learn basic human decency.

Berry points out that Ivy-League-minted Republicans shepherded the rise of the alt-right. Indeed, it was not poor whites not even white Republicans who passed legislation bent on preserving segregation, or who watched the Confederate flag raised outside state capitols for decades to come.

It wasnt poor whites who criminalized blackness by way of marijuana laws and the war on drugs.

Nor was it poor whites who conjured the specter of the black welfare queen.

These points should not minimize the horrors of racism at the lowest economic rungs of society, but remind us that those horrors reside at the top in different forms and with more terrible power.

Among reporters and commentators this election cycle, then, a steady finger ought be pointed at whites with economic leverage: social conservatives who donate to Trumps campaign while being too civilized to attend a political rally and yell what they really believe.

Mainstream media is set up to fail the ordinary American

Based on Trumps campaign rhetoric and available data, it appears that most of his voters this November will be people who are getting by well enough but who think of themselves as victims.

One thing the media misses is that a great portion of the white working class would align with any sense before victimhood. Right now they are clocking in and out of work, sorting their grocery coupons, raising their children to respect others, and avoiding political news coverage.

Barack Obama, a black man formed by the black experience, often cites his maternal lineage in the white working class. A lot of whats shaped me came from my grandparents who grew up on the prairie in Kansas, he wrote this month to mark a White House forum on rural issues.

Last year, talking with author Marilynne Robinson for the New York Review of Books, Obama lamented common misconceptions of small-town middle America, for which he has a sort of reverence. Theres this huge gap between how folks go about their daily lives and how we talk about our common life and our political life, he said, naming one cause as the filters that stand between ordinary people who are busy getting by and complicated policy debates.

Im very encouraged when I meet people in their environments, Obama told Robinson. Somehow it gets distilled at the national political level in ways that arent always as encouraging.

To be sure, one discouraging distillation the caricature of the hate-spewing white male Trump voter with grease on his jeans is a real person of sorts. There were one or two in my town: the good ol boy who menaces those with less power than himself running people of color out of town with the threat of violence, denigrating women, shooting BB guns at stray cats for fun. They are who Trump would be if hed been born where I was.

Media fascination with the hateful white Trump voter fuels the theory, now in fashion, that bigotry is the only explanation for supporting him. Certainly, financial struggle does not predict a soft spot for Trump, as cash-strapped people of color who face the threat of his racism and xenophobia, and who resoundingly reject him, by all available measures can attest. However, one imagines that elite white liberals who maintain an air of ethical grandness this election season would have a harder time thinking globally about trade and immigration if it were their factory job that was lost and their community that was decimated.

Affluent analysts who oppose Trump, though, have a way of taking a systemic view when examining social woes but viewing their place on the political continuum as a triumph of individual character. Most of them presumably inherited their political bent, just like most of those in red America did. If you were handed liberalism, give yourself no pats on the back for your vote against Trump.

Spare, too, the condescending argument that disaffected Democrats who joined Republican ranks in recent decades are voting against their own best interests, undemocratic in its implication that a large swath of America isnt mentally fit to cast a ballot.

Whoever remains on Trumps side as stories concerning his treatment of women, racism and other dangers continue to unfurl gets no pass from me for any reason. They are capable of voting, and they own their decisions. Lets be aware of our class biases, though, as we discern who they are.

Journalist? Then the chances are youre not blue collar

A recent print-edition New York Times cutline described a Kentucky man:

Mitch Hedges, who farms cattle and welds coal-mining equipment. He expects to lose his job in six months, but does not support Mr Trump, who he says is an idiot.

This made me cheer for the rare spotlight on a member of the white working class who doesnt support Trump. It also made me laugh one cant farm cattle. One farms crops, and one raises livestock. Its sometimes hard for a journalist who has done both to take the New York Times seriously.

The main reason that national media outlets have a blind spot in matters of class is the lack of socioeconomic diversity within their ranks. Few people born to deprivation end up working in newsrooms or publishing books. So few, in fact, that this former laborer has found cause to shift her entire writing career to talk specifically about class in a wealth-privileged industry, much as journalists of color find themselves talking about race in a whiteness-privileged one.

This isnt to say that one must reside among a given group or place to do it justice, of course, as good muckrakers and commentators have shown for the past century and beyond. See On the Medias fine new series on poverty, the second episode of which includes Gladstones reflection that the poor are no more monolithic than the rest of us.

I know journalists to be hard-working people who want to get the story right, and Im resistant to rote condemnations of the media. The classism of cable-news hosts merely reflects the classism of privileged America in general. Its everywhere, from tweets describing Trump voters as inbred hillbillies to a Democratic campaign platform that didnt bother with a specific anti-poverty platform until a month out from the general election.

The economic trench between reporter and reported on has never been more hazardous than at this moment of historic wealth disparity, though, when stories focus more often on the stock market than on people who own no stocks. American journalism has been willfully obtuse about the grievances on Main Streets for decades surely a factor in digging the hole of resentment that Trumps venom now fills. That the term populism has become a pejorative among prominent liberal commentators should give us great pause. A journalism that embodies the plutocracy its supposed to critique has failed its watchdog duty and lost the respect of people who call bullshit when they see it.

One such person was my late grandfather, Arnie. Men like Trump sometimes drove expensive vehicles up the gravel driveway of our Kansas farmhouse looking to do some sort of business. Grandpa would recognize them as liars and thieves, treat them kindly, and send them packing. If you shook their hands, after they left Grandpa would laugh and say, Better count your fingers.

In a world in which the Bettys and Arnies of the world have little voice, those who enjoy a platform from which to speak might examine their hearts and minds before stepping onto the soap box.

If you would stereotype a group of people by presuming to guess their politics or deeming them inferior to yourself say, the ones who worked third shift on a Boeing floor while others flew to Mexico during spring break; the ones who mopped a McDonalds bathroom while others argued about the minimum wage on Twitter; the ones who cleaned out their lockers at a defunct Pabst factory while others drank craft beer at trendy bars; the ones who came back from the Middle East in caskets while others wrote op-eds about foreign policy then consider that you might have more in common with Trump than you would like to admit.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/dangerous-idiots-how-the-liberal-media-elite-failed-working-class-americans/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/01/05/dangerous-idiots-how-the-liberal-media-elite-failed-working-class-americans/