Your Trauma Is Valid
Isn't it funny how people who don't know you and your story seem to have the strongest opinions on your life? It is always those who think they know better than you do who feel the need to let you know that, in fact, your traumatic experiences are not "real abuse". For years, I struggled to understand why this kept on happening to me, no matter the circumstances. People who have met me once make insane assumptions on my trauma based on nothing – or at least, that's what it always felt like to me.
Tough It Out, Bitch
It was around those very first times I went up to my teacher to tell her what kind of things my classmates were putting me through on a daily basis that I remember her giving me the ultimate solution to every one of my problems.
You Were An Easy Target
Victims of all kinds have always had to defend their status as victims. They've always had to fight for the right to declare that they were wronged by other people, with no justification. Oftentimes, it is particularly those people that have not experienced any form of abuse who feel the most strongly about the victim label: no one becomes a victim for no reason, which means you must have done something to deserve it, or at the very least, to instigate the abuse!
Don't Worry, This Is A Loving Punch
Violence is never an act of love. It's a myth that we have been force-fed, especially women and female-presenting people. That the reason that boy is being mean to you is that he just likes you. We've been conditioned to expect violent behavior out of the people closest to us. Almost everyone has some type of experience this with this, I'm pretty sure.
Too Weak To Take It
Weak. That is a word I've heard people describe me with for all my life. I can't recall the first time it happened, but it must have been pretty early on, maybe in kindergarten already. Weakness and sensitivity have – at least for me – almost been each other's synonyms. They're sisters, very close ones too. Overly sensitive people get labeled as weak because of their emotional reactions to things that others can just "brush off" and "not take so seriously".
The Hurt Once Caused Is The Hurt Of Every Single Day After Today
Trauma survivors are often called things like 'dwellers' by people who don't understand what having mental trauma actually means. "Don't dwell on the past, you should focus on the present!" "I mean yeah, the fact that that happened to you sucks, but why are you so focused on something that is in the past? You can't change it." You know those sentences, you've heard them hundreds of times. The idea that you could still be hurting because of something that happened to you years ago is very foreign to people who've had the fortune of not having to deal with immense amounts of trauma in their childhood. But for some reason, these are also the people who claim to know the most about your situation.
But Who's To Blame?
The world is unjust, we all know that – especially those of us who've had to suffer more than most people. It is really hard to find justice in a world that is so divided, polarized, filled with so much evil and malice. But sometimes, that is not good enough of a reason for us. Sometimes we need more than that, a guilty party, someone to put the blame on.
"Sometimes, Bullying Is Okay"
You're on Instagram, mindlessly scrolling down your Explore page without really focusing on anything you're seeing on the screen. Until, when one of those TikTok rip-off reels somehow succeeds at capturing your attention. You click the video open. There's a young teenager, filming themself with their phone. They're wearing some type of cosplay costume, they've done their makeup, they even have a wig on. The kid is smiling, they look really happy. They step away from the camera so that you can see the entire costume they're wearing. They twirl around, making the poor quality skirt fly in the air. The kid faces the camera again, puffs their cheeks and does a cat-like pose with their hands.
Language Matters
The role language plays in my life has always been a bit bigger than the average Joe's. My passion for language started as soon as I learned how to read, which happened at a very young age because my parents were both Finnish and literature teachers and massive bookworms. Reading was something we all did a lot in my family, and my parents always had at least one book that they were reading at that time. Hundreds of books, huge bookcases...I was brought up in an environment where stories and language were constantly visible in my everyday life.