Trying to interact with the rest of your fandom as a whumper:

and is your shame helpful? is it inspiring goodness and change? or is it keeping you frozen in time unable to move on and be everything you have expanded to be?

Content: Caretaker-turned-whumpee, forced to watch, beatings, recapture, captivity, PTSD/trauma, recovery.

You know what I love? Whumpees being dragged back into captivity, but their caretaker being brought with them. For near a year, Caretaker has been watching the long-lasting affects of what Whumpee went through. As they got more comfortable around them, Whumpee started to open up about it. The trauma. The pain. The control that they were under and the things they were forced to do as a result.

But Caretaker never thought they'd have to witness it firsthand. They can see how utterly humiliated Whumpee is as they're beaten into the ground; their punishment for leaving. They can't bear to look Caretaker in the eye, often averting their gaze to anything else or staring up at the ceiling until it's over. They're ashamed to have put someone they've grown to care for in such danger. They never thought anyone from the outside would see the hell they lived in for so long.

If you’ve had a period of basically dissociating from a hard time of your life, you’ll know that doing even the littlest thing that has an effect in the real world vs on a screen can be so profound. Something as little as you doing a favor for someone, or someone noticing something about you that you didn’t think anyone would even pick up on bc your brain is all messed up about being perceived. Your living footprint is all muddied and murky. It takes a lot to even feel like you’re inhibiting your body. So consequences that come as a direct result of you just living, whether big or small, blow you away on an inexplicable level

if you've ever lived an isolated life, knowing that you're making a mark in the "real world" can feel so wonderful and strange. you mean i exist, outside of this weird liminal space i inhabit? i get so hungry for that validation. you know my favorite color!!? you think i have a sweet voice?!! you remember that thing i said ages ago!!? because of these seemingly inane things, i get to affirm, again & again, i exist, i exist, i exist. im a real person!! i do things that have consequences!! i won't disappear off the face of the earth if you remember me in these big & small ways.

eventually you realize you don’t want to die. you just don’t want to live the life you’re living. and slowly you try to create a life you want to live. just gotta start there.

no one needs to add “sounds fake but ok”, “no”, “well, not me”, “impossible”, etc. to this post. and i’d rather you not.

one day you think: I want to die.

and then you think, very quietly: actually. actually. I think I want a coffee. a nap. a sandwich. a book.

and I want to die turns day by day into I want to go home, I want to walk in the woods, I want to see my friend, I want to sit in the sun

I want a cleaner kitchen

I want a better job

I want to live somewhere else

I want to live

The thing to understand is that Depression

Even When It Is Trying to Kill You!

Is Defensive.

Your brain exists to preserve you; it’s just Dumb, and how it goes about “preserving” is determined by evolution’s ‘Good Enough’ meat-and-chemistry mechanisms rather than a firm grasp of biology.

You know how, stuck atop a burning building, ppl will sometimes throw themselves off in a vain hope of surviving? That’s what depression-driven suicide is. You are under THAT amount of stress, often sustained for a FAR longer time. Your brain only understands “Stress”: it doesn’t know causes, it doesn’t know Events, and it only has the one set of instinctive ‘extreme measures’ to fall back on. I made things SO hard on myself for SO Long conceiving of Depression as a Fight I had to Win, rather than a chronic illness in need of my understanding and careful management.

Help your brain. Nurse it. Ask yourself where it hurts and why. Recognize that the desire to die is a symptom, an injury, and not your ‘Truth’. Try to calm it, Try to endure: It WILL Pass. As perverse as it sounds, your desire to die is an expression of how PASSIONATELY you want to get away from the pain tormenting you; of how MUCH you want to LIVE. PLEASE Live!

FEBUWHUMP - DAY FOUR

Oddly specific. Got a deposit for 6,837 today

fuck it, i never ever do those “reblog for X, this one really works!” posts, but this one doesn’t have any of that BS, this is just straight up wishing us good things; and then the comment doesn’t even say any of that either. Zero claims on this post, all positive vibes

May you end this week feeling ever more certain of a future you’ll love

McCall’s Children’s Wear Merchandiser, 1967

via retro-space

Béla Lugosi and Boris Karloff The Black Cat (1934) dir. Edgar G. Ulmer

"You know, if you're not going to talk," - he takes the prisoner's injured hand in his own, fingers brushing over broken bones - "and you're not going to make this fun for me anymore," - he lightly taps his fingers against the breaks - "then I don't really have much use left for you, do I?"

Silence.

"Really, are we done here? Should I just lock you up for good and leave you to rot?"

Tap. Tap. Tap.

A voiceless breath of a whimper.

"That's it? Not even gonna scream for me?" He frowns, loosely wrapping his fingers around the broken hand. "C'mon. Is there any fight left in you?"

Without warning, he tightens his grip and twists.

The room echoes with the almost silent scream of an overstrained voice. Gasping for breath, eyes unfocused, weakly, uselessly attempting to pull away, the prisoner manages to breathe out two words.

"Ff-fuck…. you."

"Ah," the man smiles. "There you are."

I actually love kinksters so much

Learning from every source in your life that sex is disgusting and sinful, that you should be ashamed of your feelings, thoughts and desires and then having someone in a dog mask tell you, "No, it's all cool, actually," is mind-blowing lol

In the comments seeing a lot of aces saying "Yeah I appreciate that kinksters are often accepting of ace people" and that is because there are many asexuals in kink! Sexual attraction or behavior is not essential to kink/BDSM.

My spouse and I are both a-spec kinksters who do a lot of Kinky Activities and exactly zero traditional genital-involving sex. I write about being nonsexual kinksters professionally as well.

-Angela Chen, Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex

it's hard to explain because inevitably you sound like an asshole, but some people are allowed to lose their temper, lose their mind - you're not, though.

when your friend never texts you first and misses your birthday and never makes an effort; you don't mind. you know she's struggling, and you want her to get the help that she deserves. you give her every excuse and every chance.

it shouldn't matter to you so much that people are always coming through for her. you want her to be happy, you love it for her. you love that her community rises up to the occasion. why does it bother you that when she snaps at someone, says horrible mean things - but two hours later, everyone is comforting her while she's crying. you know she's stressed. why do you kind of hate that she is welcomed back to her job, that her parents are endlessly wiring her money.

and you're - fuck, are you envious?

but when you don't text back, someone sits you down and says i know you're struggling, but you're being a bad friend. when you're too numb to show up for work, your boss just shakes his head. i'm sorry. i can't approve more time off. we have the company to protect. when you finally snap back at your family for making that shitty comment again, you're forced to apologize for being too sensitive.

god forbid you need something. people aren't used to you being the one asking. you're the giver like the book you hated; your pages all open and rumpled. you always have the answer, always have the solution. you are reliable, trustworthy. people like you don't struggle with things. you're supposed to be lifted by tragedy. you are given a maximum of 24 hours to grieve, and then you need to just behave at the party.

you can't read the giving tree without feeling like crying, and even that feels like it's too much emotion. like, nobody looks at you and assumes you're the tree; they'd name five other people before even considering you in the running. you're just there, never-asking.

your friend gets to say mean shit, that's just her personality. when you make a snide comment, you're just being petty. people laugh when your friend stands you up for another event; they say she's just like that. you were 5 minutes late to a meeting with friends and they were mad about it for the rest of the evening. your friend sets everything on fire; everyone applauds her through the ashes. you so much as light a candle: and suddenly now you're an arsonist.

you don't want your friend to suffer, though. the thing is that you just wish that the empathy and kindness your friend gets - you wish you had that option, that everyone offered you grace and money and a gentle reception.

the other day you were fighting down the bad urge; the void call, the end note. you tried-anyway. you went to the family event, tried laughing at the right moments. nodded and smiled and all of it. one of your siblings threw a fit, but she's allowed to, so everyone just rolled their eyes about it. you took 3 whole minutes to stand outside when you got overwhelmed. you literally set a timer about it.

in the morning you woke up to a text from your parents: you were a complete disgrace last night. idk what your attitude problem is, but you really need to fix it.

Oh buddy just you wait

*cue the night terrors