61
august 31, 2026
i guess it doesn't really matter what it means.
but i'll say so anyway.
people were beating the shit out of me before i was old enough to remember it. i was shoved into a pile of dirt and had my face ground into it by my cousin when i was a toddler. this same cousin used a toy to smash my face and break my nose before i could walk. my entire face apparently turned dark blue from it. i had people grabbing and hitting me for no reason i could comprehend for as long as i could remember. i was being intentionally intimidated by grown male family members when i was in kindergarten.
when i wasn't having the shit beat out of me, every remark was a criticism. i stopped bothering asking anyone for comfort before i left elementary school. if i ever had a problem, it was my fault, and i was threatened with an ass beating for being a nuisance.
people bullied me relentlessly. i started to respond by threatening them with violence. if they didn't stop, i acted on the violence. eventually that stopped working, and i just withdrew. people thought it was funny when i cried. when i was in highschool, my little brother laughed along with his friends while they mocked me and compared me to livestock to my face. he, like everyone else, was aware that defending me would knock him down a rung with me, and chose not being bullied over his relationship with me. it didn't recover.
a long time ago, i learned that people are cruel to me and they enjoy it. it filled me with a lot of hate and anger. i used to think things like, "if you've ever bullied a fat person for any reason, you're less than scum to me and i hope you die painfully." i used to fantasize about enacting violence on the people who hurt me. i sneered and sniped at all of them at any given opening to make sure they understood that i hated them as much as they hated me. some of them did understand, and that was the only satisfaction i got. however, it did take all their pleasure out of hurting me, so some of them redoubled their efforts to make sure my feelings were still hurting worse than theirs at the end of it all. and they were. i had a sincere wish for them to die.
having anger problems and a knee-jerk instinct to lash out is not a good thing. when i get cornered, i go into fight mode. it never mattered that i was weaker and smaller, i would thrash and punch and scream. the only thing that stopped my brothers from doing the same to me was my dad who was adamant about never getting physically violent with girls. if they did, he would have whipped their asses for it if i tattled on them. so they didn't. i didn't have a lot of reason to hit my brothers and it didn't happen more than a couple times. we usually just yelled at an insulted each other.
i learned from books and TV shows like barney and sesame street how to be kind. i did not have a cruel heart. i learned "do unto others" when i was very small and internalized that i was a being worthy of respect and anyone who didn't treat me with respect would receive none from me in turn. people really didn't like that about me. i don't know if it's because i was fat or a girl, but a lot of people who saw that i expected respect from them, regardless of whether they believed i had "earned" it, reacted by trying to put me in my place. for most of my childhood, it didn't work. only by the time i got to 9th grade had i finally had my spirit broken and started internalizing that i was not deserving of respect, or even love. it took a really long time to recover from that.
i guess, tl;dr: this is about anger and violence. i hate being angry, and i hate violence. i don't want to be angry, and i don't want to see violence. i've had enough of that shit for a lifetime.