Or…he’s able to convince child services it’s not that big of a deal and proceeds to make life worse for Howard. Or child services does intervene and sends him…where? That seems like something could be a legitimate and prohibitive fear for Ruth.
Child Services unfortunately do not have the resources or manpower or social support to do anything but intervene in the most extreme horrifying of cases. And those cases do desperately need their attention, because holy fuck.
But it means a high school kid with facial bruising from their parent isn’t even likely to get a real investigation outside a casual look-in that’ll trigger an even worse punishment when CPS moves on. Something like this where “sir” knows to only hurt them where it doesn’t show? Much harder to get the forces of good to take seriously.
And “sir” knows this. And is exploiting this. Because like a lot of abusers, he enjoys dancing on the line of just enough to get away with it and then pushing on that line anyways just for fun.
Exactly. He is not acting with any intention at all to be caught or even to face consequences and has a laundry list of protections ready before anyone can even articulate the weird vibe they get if they have time from his granddaughter with the slack blank face.
Which is what makes Sir, funnily enough, vulnerable pretty much exclusively to the loose and craaazy cannons with nothing lose that Billie was half-joking to be. I think Billie is not aware of how little that was joking and that is a damn shame in some ways though very good for her and for Ruth and Howard in others. Because people like Sir even from Ruth’s mouth to our eyes have the power or the influence or SOMETHING that gets the Chloes downstairs to listen, and understand wrongly and move on. I think Sir was as near as one misplaced hand away from Billie actually going off on him, and considering she is powerful and presumably enraged? And, unlike nearly every other physically combative person in this strip, has a history like of demonstrated, aggressive bullying of ‘weaker’ people with the muscle memory to step backward, shut her brain off at a moment’s notice to the suffering of others, and fucking do horrible things to them and fucking laugh at them if she feels like doing it?
I don’t want Billie to punch Sir in the face or have him in a position of finally being threatened down the way he threatened Ruth, just as Robin has finally been thrown out to the wolves of the media in full consequence of every shitty thing she did and pretended not to know. Nossir, no Sir, not me.
Ruth’s over 18, so unless things are very different in Indiana than in the state where I went to college in the early 2010s, child services can’t do anything. I worked in student affairs part-time and came into contact with a student suffering from severe depression related to abuse at the hands of their parents. The student wanted to withdraw from the school to get psychiatric treatment, and the school facilitated their return home to their abusive parents. A video of Sir abusing Howard miiiight potentially do something, although as others have said, it’s unlikely that meaningful action would result – and Ruth isn’t gonna provoke her grandfather to abuse her brother just for a slight chance that it might potentially help, but would more likely lead to more abuse.
But seriously. I’m hoping this means deescalation, and Clint leaving means Ruth and Billie will at least get a temporary reprieve, but I’m sensing another shoe high, high in the air, ready to drop and loud and hard…
And pain is always something of high stakes; those who say otherwise have never lost. Even if Sir is being a crap, Ruth is keeping her younger brother safe, and that endears me more to her. May Howard eventually escape Cliff’s clutches and leave the old man harmless. ‹3
Also, I’m 100% curious to know what’s on the plaque under what I think are Walky’s shoes (yes, I can’t read alt-text at the moment) on the wall. Maybe something like, beyond the femur, her second-greatest prize, worthy of being mounted on the wall of the murder cave(tm)?
Actually if I had to guess it seems like she’s lost weight, because that’s typically a reason that boobs seem large or small in comparison because in reality the ratio of the waist that they’re attached to is what actually matters.
And I don’t think her losing weight would be unintentional or a bad thing, either, because it’s a symptom of the kind of depression she’s going through and why Ruth was so far under by a few weeks in that a couple of beers would make her tipsy enough to talk nonsense after skipping meals.
Gesc
That’s a sound theory and now that you mention it, Billie seems to have more of a waist here.
I wasn’t particularly fond of of Ruthless at first but the more we learn of her the more relatable, and despite her issues likeable she get. The fact she actually seems to have some real integrity under the surface makes me like and feel for her all the more.
If you use two or more links in a comment, it goes into auto-moderation to prevent spam attacks and link barrages.
Willis usually approves them in the morning though. And one link comments go through automatically which is why I only try to have one link unless I’m doing a comprehensive rundown of a character.
Final panel reaction: Aaaawwww. That’s…that’s sweet. Ruth’s trying her best to be a good sister and…yeah I’m on the verge of tears because my heart feels very warm from this right now. And for all her flaws, Ruth has always tried to be a good big sister.
Second panel reaction: Ooowww. As much as Howard can be silly/naive/dumb sometimes, I still like the little guy. And…well ooff but I’d be lying if I said this panel didn’t hit me hard in the feels.
Final thoughts: I want to reach in and hug both of these two.
Ah, spite. A good and remarkably cherished friend of mine for all its nasty little reputation, and one friend that’s held my hand through some shitty times this year and been my saving grace when I was at least smart enough not to put myself intentionally in a place where I was anyone’s consequential determiner. Besides myself and the actual people deciding directly above me, of course. Spite let me be finally mean and being mean was the first step to acknowledging I was suffering so much for so little that I realized it wasn’t just depression caused by life and hell but overexplosion of that from non-presenting autism that never got detected.
It goddamn sucks when you are stuck not even being able to cling to spite out of fear, though, and especially more so when you’re at the awful point where that fear has no longer been applied to your own self.
I don’t like to think I’m poisoned for being spiteful. Petty, sometimes, mean or rude or acting in ways that aren’t good for my own health which is when a coping mechanism becomes such a danger. But I don’t think being spiteful is somehow making me worse a person except when it’s in detriment to my own health or I’m so unaware of it (and I have been before) that I don’t stop and consider carefully enough before I pick my targets.
I mean, being vindictive and blunt and uncaring at times works quite a lot better sometimes on people who are actually going to pause for that moment of self-doubt (like I do) when someone makes an attack. I know it works because sometimes used in the right way, picking your targets, spite can be as much of a statement and a last impression as a defense. If I was more aggressive and vindictive in real life as I was in forums where I’m able to carefully pick and barb my arguments, I would not be at the point where I allow other people’s comfort to fucking kill me and keep killing me to the point it became a disability. Spite is doing more good now than when I was young when it was the only coping mechanism I had instead of a coping mechanism I learned to use as a defense strategically because I’m more likely to be compassionate to even myself if I can blame a target like outside forces or “my brain” for all my misery.
Idk if I can accept yet that spite is comparable to poison, except in the most obvious sense that in the sense there’s still technically benzene in our drinking water. Where my ASD might have been ‘high-functioning’ it’s now a disability because I was too afraid of being directly angry and even now I can’t express direct anger unless there’s some part of it that’s driven, by necessity, that I get satisfaction from winning and all arguments I make are ones I’m goaded into partially by my old friend spite.
zoelogical
ehhhhh more like:
while spite gives you the strength to keep going, it also keeps you bitter. it’s a preservative, but one with a limited use. i mean, it essentially is the refusal to stop being angry, which is powerful and important!! there are things that deserve to never be forgotten, to always be angry at. there is a level of which spite allows you to stand up for yourself.
but it’s also not something you can build a positive on, i think. like if you spend your life on the things that you hate you don’t get to spend it as much on the things that you love, which are fundamentally more important and valuable. and while it helps you preserve what you love, it’s useful; when it starts taking away from what you love, it’s not.
but also like i’m kind of thinking socially/professionally here about how, like, not focusing on the positives can wreck yr ability to connect with people and present as someone who’s made the best of their life
Minder
People telling me to focus on the positives, in a situation I was perceiving a hundred times more traumatically than they thought I had a right to be, got me so sick I yanked out half the hair on my head and stayed locked in my room for two years to get some peace and quiet.
Positive meant deluding myself into thinking I was and had to be capable of the same things as everyone else. Fighting back was only a first step in realizing, yes, my pain is real, and I do in fact deserve fucking accommodations to survive professionally and live independently if I am in fact able to do that at all and I hope that I can. And that is not a battle that ends unfortunately with the all-consuming relief of something, anything that would serve as a diagnosis. Until the world is perfect I don’t think it’s ever not going to be a reality that I can let go of spite or not keep it close by as a good reminder, because falling into older habits is easier when they’re self-destructive but what is actually killing me is outside stimuli and not anything I did first.
Spite may be necessary for those infractions on my sanity that aren’t insidious enough or are imposed manipulatively enough that think I have no reason to fight what’s happening and have the moral high ground. A lot of the time I fight based on what’s vindictive and feel bad after word except that it turns out again and again that my first and spiteful assumption was RIGHT. I am not sure any of my focused interests are applicable to careers, and if they were, then my relationship with spite in fueling them might be different. But it’s a shitty world and spite’s better than outright malevolence because even good humans need an outlet for anger because staying positive is very, very good in my experience in preserving yourself at the expense of other people who desperately need or needed someone that’d get angry with them or at least hear “yeah, that’s fucked up” instead of saying that anger and grudges themselves were unhealthy.
I mean, I get it. I get why people think people fueled purely by spite might be more liable to harm than to do good. I get why people think Mike is a toxic and horrible person and interpret what I see as lashing out as getting joy from a power he’s taking away, or that I might one day be led to do the same.
But…we’re both reading this comic. This comic would not exist and certainly not be as prolific and well-researched and extensively openminded without a fucking heavy dose of authorial spite. Whether or not I ever benefit by using my seething rage as a tool in a profession that puts food on the table, I think it’s far far better that this comic exists sharing and taking full joy in the detractors it breeds in the act of giving a home to an audience that rarely gets that kind of vindication.
zoelogical
…i would never want to take away your rage, or your spite, or your need for either, or your drive for survival. i don’t…intend to pass judgment on any of those things here
i just honestly don’t know how to reconcile these two things: the need to acknowledge that bad things happen, and the need to make the best out of your situation. and maybe that’s something that can’t be reconciled but it feels like something that ought to add up and i can’t quite figure out why it doesn’t
all i know is that while getting angry empowers me, it also makes me miserable and exhausts me; but being positive doesn’t always satisfy, because it doesn’t let me feel my pain. and being positive doesn’t have to mean lying about your situation; sometimes it’s just accepting it for what it is and moving on however you can. but. i don’t know.
i mean there are plenty of things i hold on to anger about; i just also know my anger can be as likely to hurt as to heal, and i have to be careful with it
i just also know that being angry or upset or not one hundred percent happy about stuff seems to drive people away, and i guess especially people who want to live in a happy space. which is not exactly a bad goal, i guess, because it’s not like you can expect everyone to be your venting space
Minder
I know that anger can hurt and I’m not trying to de-legitimize your experiences either. For some people, in fact many people, rage is NOT healthy and even for someone like me that it’s incredibly useful for I still end up feeling that moment of self-doubt when the old fear kicks in and I get terrified I’ve hurt someone innocent (I have) or I’ve really and truly gone too far or my anger was wrong or not fueled at least under the right assumptions–and sometimes, I think being positive just means taking positive where you can.
Sometimes it’s winning internet points over saying you knew [x] fictional character would act [x] way or that someone’s argument about their behavior was wrong for 3000 word’s worth of reasons. It’s not exactly ideal, but it does drive people away, and for many that could and would be a bad thing and a negative direction of outcome for their life. But I’m someone that actually would benefit and gets something healthy by knowing how and what to do to drive people away that will let me still be happy I was right to make it a combative issue instead of accommodating them like I did irl until my emotions fried. And spite fuels internet arguments like this that make me very very very mindful of what I write because it has to be PERFECT because well-constructed arguments change minds, and that takes actual spite to fuel the effort of making an argument I will win or that will make someone reconsider their arguments. Or give me the exact thing I was missing I needed to turn around and research instead. Anger is…not easy, but it feels different depending on the context when it’s used. Spite is an anger that I rarely needing or having reason to be employed legitimately by the people who have resources to act for reasons far more directly selfish and self-serving. Trolling isn’t quite spite, momentary aggression is not quite spite, but it’s every bit a sharp little animal as you’ve described.
It’s not a friend I’d keep around without being very mindful of, and still not caring about, the fact that it’s as liable to bite me as anyone else. I know that. It’s in the calculus. I’d still rather get bitten on my own terms and decide how much of it I can take than let other people have the benefit of the doubt and abuse it because I got so good at letting them. I’m misanthropic. I try to be good. Spite is pretty nice.
Minder
And with all that said, as bad as I am at empathy I do sympathize with your position as well and I understand completely the fear or rather nihilistic catch-22 that anger itself cannot be a thing that fosters happiness or relationships that are positive except mainly through validation and solidarity–and yet embracing or being open to happiness can have results that are as bad or worse and we can’t have the comfort of removing the equation from the context of how different all this is for everyone that is capable of experiencing a full range of emotions and thought at all.
Anowan
Hey Minder and zoelogical, I just read that thread and I wanted to tell you something you already know : it’s okay to feel “bad” emotions that keep you alive. I know it sucks, I know the stigmata. I’ve been complimented for not being bitter despite my life, like having a defense mechanism is something rude to have. I wish you to get in a place you can feel safe enough to lower your defenses, even if it doesn’t feel good right now.
Mind a heart ? Here’s a heart if you like it : <3
zoelogical
I MEAN LIKE sometimes when you’re angry you’re miserable because the situation is miserable and you just. you know. caught on!!! in which case being aware of the misery is better than not being miserable, because it’s genuine to your situation and you can take active steps to decrease your misery.
and sometimes that means being angry!! sometimes that means blowing up. but like holding on to your anger post blowing up is definitely something that can be poisonous – but, i mean, it’s not like it’s easy to integrate something that painful into your experience. and sometimes going over and over something is what you need in order to process it, but i mean: processing it should be the end result. unless not ever having processed it is what you need in which case i don’t get to judge lmao
like: i am familiar and comfortable with certain levels of anger that you hold to survive, that you hold to remind yourself that this was not okay. i just can’t live there. like: i have ADHD! i am pissed as hell that this was a thing all my life and nobody realized it!! and this was a thing because studies on girls with ADHD are a lot more limited than studies on boys, and also my parents don’t entirely believe that mental issues are real issues that need assistance, and because i was usually able to perform well enough that it didn’t look like i had ADHD. and i didn’t even realize it until college, so, i guess there we go
but the work of living with ADHD is not accomplished by being angry at all the reasons why it’s so difficult to live with ADHD. because, i mean, at a point, those are just things that exist. and constantly getting angry at them is exhausting and also…counterproductive. one of the things that i really needed to realize in order to live with this successfully is that no one has their shit together, and that realization is kind of a work in progress!! you go from “no one has their shit together” in the sense that, ok, it’s okay when people screw up; to “no one has their shit together” in the sense that since nobody has their shit together, you don’t have to have your shit together one hundred percent of the time as long as you get your shit together when it counts. mostly.
…i mean like, also, i have a Stephanie Brown avatar in the year of our lord 2017. i know so much about holding grudges and maintaining anger. my feminist rage at what was done to her will probably never be quieted and it shouldn’t be because it should never have happened in the first place. but like the work of loving Stephanie Brown isn’t entirely based in her trauma. a good part of it is in her trauma and being angry about it and never forgetting it, but that’s not all about it. i don’t love her for what happened to her, i love her for who she is and who she can be. and that love is the more critical work, i think, because it seeds potential and growth. which are things any character needs in order to exist
i guess where i’m coming from is you can’t create from a position of anger, you can pretty much just destroy; and while destruction can be the impetus for creation (and is valuable and important!!) they can’t exist at the same time. dumbing of age doesn’t exist because it hates bad stuff; it exists because there’s a real and genuine love for these characters out there, and the desire to see what happens to them.
ergh i feel like i should apologize for overgeneralizing and being trite in the beginning of this, haha; we’ve talked enough that You Deserve More Work From Me i feel like. but i do super appreciate your questioning what i say and coming out with arguments and like. all that work you put into these posts!!
zoelogical
@anowan you are a sweetheart <3
Halpful
What Anowan said, and also, I feel like there are important puzzle pieces here that fit together if I can just remember a few pieces I’ve got … I need a real keyboard for this. And paper. BBS
Halpful
ok, here goes.
zoe: I might have found what’s not adding up. destruction and creation at the same time? … spoilers, steven universe season 2: Tnearg, orvat ehol naq fnccuver gbtrgure. that’s how you reconcile acknowledging the bad things while making the best of it. I think the end of the Mistborn trilogy might be a good metaphor too.
Maybe I need to give more context, so… Story time!
I usually think of my anger as a shield of thorns. It hurts me and it protects me, which sucks but is better than being defenseless. Several years ago, before I understood this, I joined a meditation group. The first part of it was tolerable, but they’d end with a passage from some meditation book, and I found these passages deeply uncomfortable, like, I-want-to-tear-my-skin-off levels of discomfort (I feel like I’m missing a word here). But they were about love and gratitude and compassion, and those are good things, right? So I spent quite a while wondering what the hell was wrong with me that they felt so wrong and horrible and unsafe and twisted.
Eventually, I… well, I still wasn’t able to approach it with words back then, but I poked at the feelings, trying to feel what was so scary about it, and one of the images that came up a lot was Darth Ex. I was angry at him, not for what he did, but because I knew that without the anger I couldn’t keep myself safe from him. I wanted so much for him to be a safe person and he wasn’t and anger was the only thing keeping me from reaching out and getting hurt again. I couldn’t afford to feel compassion in his direction. When I realised that, I felt a lot less bad about my weird reactions. I held onto my shield.
Around the same time, I was starting to learn about boundaries. Learning that took time, and starting to build my own boundaries took a lot more time, but once I had a few boundaries, I discovered I didn’t need anger as much. I could put down the shield of thorns sometimes, because I’d built better defences, and the more boundaries I built the better it got. 🙂
That wasn’t the end of it, though. I forget how it started, but at some point anger was back and stirring up trouble. I didn’t want to be angry, didn’t see the point, but eventually I sat down and listened to it. By this point, it could actually use words a little, which makes things a lot easier. 🙂 So we talked, and talked some more, and I practised listening instead of suppressing it, and one day I grokked my anger, and something completely fucking unexpected happened. It transformed. It went from a shield of thorns, protective but destructive and dumb as rocksrubies, to something constructive and empowering, something that spotted problems and then lent its power to an aspect better suited to finding solutions. 🙂 I’d read about this kind of anger, but didn’t think it existed in me, or ever would. 🙂
The first time it happened, iirc, I got up and did some of my old martial arts forms, because what the anger needed was big, wide movements, it needed me to take up space and move and it felt really good to have that outlet that let me feel my feelings without the risk of hurting anything. (other people’s suggested outlets had been useless or worse. hitting pillows actually makes me *more* angry and frustrated and bitter.)
It’s not a stable transformation yet, but knowing from experience that it’s possible is, like, a lot more than half the battle. 🙂
So… I suspect/hope that this is related to other people’s bad meditation experience. maybe they’ve been pressured into the overly-positive BS when what they need is more like “it’s ok that it’s not ok”; when they need to feel and process those inconvenient emotions and not suppress or dismiss them; when they need to be able to defend themselves first, and only move on to compassion when it’s safe to do so.
Compassion is important. Boundaries are important. You need *both* to find balance, and you need the other defense mechanisms to survive long enough to get there. (and not having gotten there yet is not some horrible flaw. it’s normal. you’re allowed to enjoy your imperfect life and not spend every waking moment on self-improvement. 😉
Halpful
some other scattered thoughts:
* not sure if adhd or osdd-ish, but, I find it exhausting/impossible to hang onto an emotion. I’ll quite easily forget to be angry unless it’s so big it’s completely running my brain – and even then it can’t last once it’s burned all my spoons. I have the same problem with boundaries, but smaller. habits help.
* anger and such can push people away. so can excessive calm. it’s hard to know when you need to rein it in, and when you need to find someone more resilient to talk to. I suppose it can be both, too. partly knowing your audience and partly moderation. there’s a lot of grey in there that I’m still exploring – like, when I’m irrationally angry at something because it triggered a bunch of anxiety, is it reasonable for someone close to me to argue with my feelings? I know it’s not the fault of the trigger, but my feelings are still real, and it hurts to be told I should just not have those feelings. Is there a better way to express myself to get the support and comfort I want? Should I expect more effort from the other person to see my perspective, or should I just expect coldness or obligation-based gestures of comfort when I let the illogical emotional mess show? …huh, that got offtopic. I guess I don’t want to say that I’m being irrational when I’m being irrational, it feels like… like when Smoky Quartz wanted to show off the yo-yo. we’ve both got a bit of Sardonyx in us, maybe. and a bit much attachment to Truth for Truth’s sake at the expense of feelings. (no this isn’t meant to make sense to anyone but me at this point, I’m talking to myself….)
Minder
@zoelogical I’m…actually happiest when I’m angry now, if that makes sense? Because the freedom to feel what I’m feeling and having a reason is all I wanted for so long without even knowing that repressing that was making me so dead and tired. But I understand it obviously will not be that way for everyone, shouldn’t be that way, and for people in a better place or with differently working minds (even I had rage that hurt me in the past when again, I had to bite it down and was helpless to say anything or feel like I earned it) be only painful. I feel you on the anger at misdiagnosis because I did ‘have’ ADD until I found out the real reason I’ve been not paying attention to anything but the stuff I obsess over is, well, actually being low enough on the autism spectrum to pass for neurotypical time and again despite all the red flags now that people are finally sharing they had seen. And I do believe anger can create because anger is another type of energy and if you can combine it with love and good intentions then I think it can be used to do more than destroy even if destruction and dismantling and analyzing is my point of strength.
And I appreciate your POV and you taking the time to argue your points as well, even though I will hold onto my spite for now, and hope that one day I can start to broaden my motivations beyond it though I doubt it ever truly goes away and I may be not the same anymore without it for ultimately better or worse.
@Anowan TAKES ALL THE HEARTS, DISTRIBUTES, you are sweetheart
@Halpful I love the way you describe anger and how it’s gone for you from something that dug in and hurt so much because it was all you could really do to hold on, to get a handle and use it and feel control and empowerment in it. I don’t mean to imply with all this that I live my life in anger, that I’m upset every second of every day, but I have a chip on my shoulder and it’s ready in the better times to block me whenever something comes up that I otherwise would suffer through needlessly to protect someone that never would realize otherwise I could not sit there and take it. I like anger, but spite is the friend and the dangerous kind, and I keep them closer now than I did when they were my entire reason to live. They protected me and I protect my right to have them, because the people who want you not to be angry are not always doing so with bad intentions but most also are not always aware of specific things I can or can’t see in life and people because of how my mind works. And I think part of me must have been aware of that before I ever had the reason or a way to put it into words.
@halpful: UNFORTUNATELY im not caught up with steven universe and i’ve never played Mistborn, rip. i can work with anger as a protective thing, though!! i mean like i can even say that i’ve experienced that, i guess. i feel like that’s different from spite, though? like spite can be very much about pettily cruel actions taken over a long period of time, and that’s damaging. it’s when you hold on to anger past any possible use or purpose, i think? or at least that’s the image i’ve gotten of it.
i mean like: there’s anger and spite for self defense, and then there’s anger and spite for anger and spite’s sake. because outrage addiction is, unfortunately, a very real thing, and that’s…a pretty harmful thing.
…so much of this is very gray territory and changes from place to place and person to person
@Minder: i can see how getting angry could be a happy and even meditative thing! like there is a certain kind of joy in methodically crushing something. there is a freeing quality in being able to be angry. and i mean like…ugh i’ve been too…excluding in all this? like. there are plenty of people who make things with anger, but i dont think that anger is the foundation. ergh. i’ve said this.
but like: analysis is its own kind of creation, in that you take what has been presented and create a reading, an interpretation, a combination between the original text and your own perspective. and it is important and valuable!
Halpful
There’s a game? i was referring to the books by Brandon Sanderson. I disagree with some of the things in later books but he’s very good at writing non-NT characters. Although it was Preservation and Ruin I was thinking of as parallels to Sapphire and Ruby here. (omg do get caught up on steven universe, it is so so good and so many important concepts are in there. including a hint of what constructive anger looks like)
Anyways… I think we should trust Minder’s judgement on whether they still need anger/spite in their situation. I mean, a part of me is also going “but what if we’re wroooong?!?” but I’m starting to see that sometimes that voice gets counterproductive. You can’t force someone to see your perspective, you can only explain it and hope, and I think you’ve explained well enough. 🙂
…I’m not getting the analysis comment, but I think that’s because the cider just hit me. (yes, just cider, low alcohol tolerance.) my brain’s off duty for a couple of hours now 🙂
wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee love that experience when you put up with things you should never put up with so that other people won’t get hurt
and you start to get to the place of feeling like you deserve it because you are putting up with it because you’ve never really had an end goal and the now is eternity
and having Billie in this is…different because it is a completely different person who can see how Messed Up everything is and validate that while also shaking literally everything to the ground. all the preconceptions, missed values
Yup. That’s the exact hole my uncle got me into. Trying to protect my ex so going in to see him with no support or aftercare. And becoming more and more convinced I deserved the dehumanization and having to beg for my humanity to even be seen much less respected.
It’s a nasty spiral to get sucked into. And I feel so bad for Ruth who is in the midst of it, has internalized that self-hatred, and doesn’t see her way out yet.
haaa…I just, like, put up with so much shit because I needed a place to live and my younger siblings needed someone who could be emotionally stable around…and I don’t really regret the latter, exactly, but I feel kind of sick when I think about how much unnecessary fear I had to live in because my parents wanted to control us. because apparently parenting is all about controlling your children, or something.
and like i guess right now it’s more just like…this vicious tangle of people who are messes, and the actions that come out of their messes, and the behavior they expect to see. and like i can be as empathetic as i want but i’m still going to come out of interactions with them feeling like i’m crazy, and having to deny my own emotions, and being pressured to perform certain roles because they love me or whatever, and their love for me is always going to be more important than anything i might actually need or want. because the things i need and want are inconvenient.
idk i never felt like i was explicitly dehumanized more just like i didn’t exist, which is its own thing
but like the only thing that gets you out is therapy and leaving
Panel 1: Pin-prick eyes, short answer, “sir”. I’ve seen that face on loved ones interacting with parents on the phone before. I’ve been that face. It’s soul-crushing to live it, it’s heart-breaking to see it, because it’s a complete loss of fight to an abuser who already knows they’ve won and has the power they have. And they are so very good at taking away options or make it feel like the greatest mistake/cruelty to make a clean break. This hits especially hard because my gf recently had to let her dad back into her life for financial help to retain the place she’s using to hold firm against her mom. And he is very “sir”-like.
Panel 2: Ugh, “sir” is such a creepy power-tripping fuck. Like, everything needs to run perfectly on his time and when he’s completed his duties rearranging the pieces he considers Howie and Ruth to be, he immediately expects them to jump, no questions asked, both understanding the price for any lateness.
And it creates a situation like this, where Ruth is having to deputize “sir’s” bullshit just to try and protect Howard to the level she can and where “sir” can at any point decide that they “took too long” to justify another round of violent hateful abuse.
It’s a no-win situation.
Panel 3: There are options for Ruth, but well, when you’re just trying to survive abuse, sometimes those aren’t worth the risks until you can get all your affairs in order. And sometimes the only thing you can do for a time is ride out the abuse knowing it is breaking you apart and fucking up your mental health. And it can be hard to even see them. This is how she’s been able to survive and protect Howard, so there’s going to need to be a lot to try and deviate from that moderately successful path (ignore the complete mental breakdown and massive suicidal ideation and PTSD).
And I can’t help but read Ruth’s response here in two ways. Both the defensiveness of “this is the only option I can see to protect both of us and this is how we’ve survived and you’re not actually having to live it” which is very true. Only the person being abused knows best the mental calculus at play and what are the options they have the spoons to work with. But also, a genuine question. She would love to know a magical solution if one exists, if Billie is seeing a way out that she hasn’t already worked with. Because she is desperate to escape.
But sadly Billie has the learned survival skills for neglect, an entirely different animal of abuse altogether.
Panel 4: This is a better piece of advice than Billie or Ruth fully know. Spite is powerful, especially for breaking away from an abuser and being willing to take the big risks to do so. I know to escape my uncle and dad, I needed spite and just a sense of being done losing things because of them in order to take the risk of homelessness that very nearly happened. And that was how my ex escaped her mom, finally getting to a point of spite and rock-bottom where she was tired of how that abuse was destroying everything she loved.
Spite can cut through that rational part of your brain that says “keep your head down, do what you need to get by, survive” and take possibly fool-hardy risks. And it can cut through the gaslighting of an abuser and how much they try and convince you that your recognition of things as abuse is the real crime at play. Spite is what eventually is going to help Ruth rescue her brother once and for all someday and cut her grandpa fully out of her life.
She just needs to survive to a point where she can use it.
so when pandora opened her box of horrors the almost-last thing was hope. the absolute-last thing was spite, and she took it and kept it as a pet for ages and it’s why she never got kicked out of her own home
I mean, joking but not joking a bit, but hope being last in the box is kind of an underhanded joke in that hope would indeed thin to be unthinkingly nice and step back to let everyone else out first.
And to top it off, all this controlling and more-or-less-subtle threat bullshit “Sir” is doing is with Ruth fresh out from the suicide ward. She is extremely vulnerable, and all he can see is an opportunity to squeeze harder.
130 thoughts on “Gamble”
Emperor Daniel
It’s always a bet for two.
Yumi
I’m glad her eyes go back quickly; the first panel had me worried.
inqntrol
You can’t blame her, it must be very stressful tking to her abusive granfather.
TheAnonymousGuy
call child services…. get him to snap at you and have Billie film it. Bam bad gramps is out two grandkids.
Yumi
Or…he’s able to convince child services it’s not that big of a deal and proceeds to make life worse for Howard. Or child services does intervene and sends him…where? That seems like something could be a legitimate and prohibitive fear for Ruth.
Shiro
Gramps appears to have a lot of money, and with that comes the ability to convince the right people that Everything Is Fine.
Cerberus
Child Services unfortunately do not have the resources or manpower or social support to do anything but intervene in the most extreme horrifying of cases. And those cases do desperately need their attention, because holy fuck.
But it means a high school kid with facial bruising from their parent isn’t even likely to get a real investigation outside a casual look-in that’ll trigger an even worse punishment when CPS moves on. Something like this where “sir” knows to only hurt them where it doesn’t show? Much harder to get the forces of good to take seriously.
And “sir” knows this. And is exploiting this. Because like a lot of abusers, he enjoys dancing on the line of just enough to get away with it and then pushing on that line anyways just for fun.
Koms
So true.
Minder
Exactly. He is not acting with any intention at all to be caught or even to face consequences and has a laundry list of protections ready before anyone can even articulate the weird vibe they get if they have time from his granddaughter with the slack blank face.
Which is what makes Sir, funnily enough, vulnerable pretty much exclusively to the loose and craaazy cannons with nothing lose that Billie was half-joking to be. I think Billie is not aware of how little that was joking and that is a damn shame in some ways though very good for her and for Ruth and Howard in others. Because people like Sir even from Ruth’s mouth to our eyes have the power or the influence or SOMETHING that gets the Chloes downstairs to listen, and understand wrongly and move on. I think Sir was as near as one misplaced hand away from Billie actually going off on him, and considering she is powerful and presumably enraged? And, unlike nearly every other physically combative person in this strip, has a history like of demonstrated, aggressive bullying of ‘weaker’ people with the muscle memory to step backward, shut her brain off at a moment’s notice to the suffering of others, and fucking do horrible things to them and fucking laugh at them if she feels like doing it?
I don’t want Billie to punch Sir in the face or have him in a position of finally being threatened down the way he threatened Ruth, just as Robin has finally been thrown out to the wolves of the media in full consequence of every shitty thing she did and pretended not to know. Nossir, no Sir, not me.
Murgatroyd
Ruth’s over 18, so unless things are very different in Indiana than in the state where I went to college in the early 2010s, child services can’t do anything. I worked in student affairs part-time and came into contact with a student suffering from severe depression related to abuse at the hands of their parents. The student wanted to withdraw from the school to get psychiatric treatment, and the school facilitated their return home to their abusive parents. A video of Sir abusing Howard miiiight potentially do something, although as others have said, it’s unlikely that meaningful action would result – and Ruth isn’t gonna provoke her grandfather to abuse her brother just for a slight chance that it might potentially help, but would more likely lead to more abuse.
Nono
Howard: the anti-Spite.
Stephen Bierce
Have you heard about the Lonesome Loser?
Beaten by the Queen of Hearts every time…
zoelogical
how dare u get that song in my head
curse u little river band!!!!!
Stephen Bierce
Be glad it’s not “We Two”. That one can also apply. 😐
Shiro
Re: alt text: But what’s wrong with the pair he has now, did they finally wear out?
Cholma
Ruth kept one, didn’t she?
TheGrammarLegionary
Take a look at the wall in panel 2. She kept both, and had them mounted. As a warning. To other shoes.
thejeff
So she starts with shoes and works her way up the leg to femurs? Makes sense.
Shiro
But seriously. I’m hoping this means deescalation, and Clint leaving means Ruth and Billie will at least get a temporary reprieve, but I’m sensing another shoe high, high in the air, ready to drop and loud and hard…
thejeff
Maybe that’s Walky’s shoe. Why he needs the new pair.
Tan
“Finally”?
He just got them less than a month ago.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/target-2/
Schpoonman
It’s been three-and-a-half years IRL. Comic time does fucky things to our senses.
Passchendaele
And pain is always something of high stakes; those who say otherwise have never lost. Even if Sir is being a crap, Ruth is keeping her younger brother safe, and that endears me more to her. May Howard eventually escape Cliff’s clutches and leave the old man harmless. ‹3
Passchendaele
Also, I’m 100% curious to know what’s on the plaque under what I think are Walky’s shoes (yes, I can’t read alt-text at the moment) on the wall. Maybe something like, beyond the femur, her second-greatest prize, worthy of being mounted on the wall of the murder cave(tm)?
Pat
Now that you pointed out the plaque I am suddenly aware of how extremely high the ceiling is.
Kamino Neko
Re: Alt text: … Is…is Walky going to make shoes out of Howard?
Keulan
Did Howard finally get a chance to see Game of Thrones?
Bagge
That’s the real drama here. DID HOWARD SEE BOOBIES?
Remmington Steele
It would be nice for the hostage to get some enjoyment occasionally:(
Gesc
Ruth is obviously playing the long game.
The long, tortuous, harmful long game that will hopefully save her and her brother. Eventually. At least Howie. With luck.
Allso, is it just the art evolution or billie has… grown as of late? I only mention it because it’s kind of glaringly obvious to me just now.
Minder
Actually if I had to guess it seems like she’s lost weight, because that’s typically a reason that boobs seem large or small in comparison because in reality the ratio of the waist that they’re attached to is what actually matters.
Minder
And I don’t think her losing weight would be unintentional or a bad thing, either, because it’s a symptom of the kind of depression she’s going through and why Ruth was so far under by a few weeks in that a couple of beers would make her tipsy enough to talk nonsense after skipping meals.
Gesc
That’s a sound theory and now that you mention it, Billie seems to have more of a waist here.
Intriguing.
Peter Sadlon
I wasn’t particularly fond of of Ruthless at first but the more we learn of her the more relatable, and despite her issues likeable she get. The fact she actually seems to have some real integrity under the surface makes me like and feel for her all the more.
Halpful
oh boy. you used *that* word. (I’ll put the explanation link in the next comment because moderation)
Halpful
http://www.itswalky.com/comic/act-with-integrity/
Halpful
…oh, maybe links don’t automatically go to moderation here? 🙂
Cerberus
If you use two or more links in a comment, it goes into auto-moderation to prevent spam attacks and link barrages.
Willis usually approves them in the morning though. And one link comments go through automatically which is why I only try to have one link unless I’m doing a comprehensive rundown of a character.
Torra
act with integrity
no regrets
Rukduk
Final panel reaction: Aaaawwww. That’s…that’s sweet. Ruth’s trying her best to be a good sister and…yeah I’m on the verge of tears because my heart feels very warm from this right now. And for all her flaws, Ruth has always tried to be a good big sister.
Second panel reaction: Ooowww. As much as Howard can be silly/naive/dumb sometimes, I still like the little guy. And…well ooff but I’d be lying if I said this panel didn’t hit me hard in the feels.
Final thoughts: I want to reach in and hug both of these two.
Minder
Ah, spite. A good and remarkably cherished friend of mine for all its nasty little reputation, and one friend that’s held my hand through some shitty times this year and been my saving grace when I was at least smart enough not to put myself intentionally in a place where I was anyone’s consequential determiner. Besides myself and the actual people deciding directly above me, of course. Spite let me be finally mean and being mean was the first step to acknowledging I was suffering so much for so little that I realized it wasn’t just depression caused by life and hell but overexplosion of that from non-presenting autism that never got detected.
It goddamn sucks when you are stuck not even being able to cling to spite out of fear, though, and especially more so when you’re at the awful point where that fear has no longer been applied to your own self.
zoelogical
spite is one of those things that can help you defend yourself
and yet also like. completely poison you at the same time
Minder
I don’t like to think I’m poisoned for being spiteful. Petty, sometimes, mean or rude or acting in ways that aren’t good for my own health which is when a coping mechanism becomes such a danger. But I don’t think being spiteful is somehow making me worse a person except when it’s in detriment to my own health or I’m so unaware of it (and I have been before) that I don’t stop and consider carefully enough before I pick my targets.
I mean, being vindictive and blunt and uncaring at times works quite a lot better sometimes on people who are actually going to pause for that moment of self-doubt (like I do) when someone makes an attack. I know it works because sometimes used in the right way, picking your targets, spite can be as much of a statement and a last impression as a defense. If I was more aggressive and vindictive in real life as I was in forums where I’m able to carefully pick and barb my arguments, I would not be at the point where I allow other people’s comfort to fucking kill me and keep killing me to the point it became a disability. Spite is doing more good now than when I was young when it was the only coping mechanism I had instead of a coping mechanism I learned to use as a defense strategically because I’m more likely to be compassionate to even myself if I can blame a target like outside forces or “my brain” for all my misery.
Idk if I can accept yet that spite is comparable to poison, except in the most obvious sense that in the sense there’s still technically benzene in our drinking water. Where my ASD might have been ‘high-functioning’ it’s now a disability because I was too afraid of being directly angry and even now I can’t express direct anger unless there’s some part of it that’s driven, by necessity, that I get satisfaction from winning and all arguments I make are ones I’m goaded into partially by my old friend spite.
zoelogical
ehhhhh more like:
while spite gives you the strength to keep going, it also keeps you bitter. it’s a preservative, but one with a limited use. i mean, it essentially is the refusal to stop being angry, which is powerful and important!! there are things that deserve to never be forgotten, to always be angry at. there is a level of which spite allows you to stand up for yourself.
but it’s also not something you can build a positive on, i think. like if you spend your life on the things that you hate you don’t get to spend it as much on the things that you love, which are fundamentally more important and valuable. and while it helps you preserve what you love, it’s useful; when it starts taking away from what you love, it’s not.
but also like i’m kind of thinking socially/professionally here about how, like, not focusing on the positives can wreck yr ability to connect with people and present as someone who’s made the best of their life
Minder
People telling me to focus on the positives, in a situation I was perceiving a hundred times more traumatically than they thought I had a right to be, got me so sick I yanked out half the hair on my head and stayed locked in my room for two years to get some peace and quiet.
Positive meant deluding myself into thinking I was and had to be capable of the same things as everyone else. Fighting back was only a first step in realizing, yes, my pain is real, and I do in fact deserve fucking accommodations to survive professionally and live independently if I am in fact able to do that at all and I hope that I can. And that is not a battle that ends unfortunately with the all-consuming relief of something, anything that would serve as a diagnosis. Until the world is perfect I don’t think it’s ever not going to be a reality that I can let go of spite or not keep it close by as a good reminder, because falling into older habits is easier when they’re self-destructive but what is actually killing me is outside stimuli and not anything I did first.
Spite may be necessary for those infractions on my sanity that aren’t insidious enough or are imposed manipulatively enough that think I have no reason to fight what’s happening and have the moral high ground. A lot of the time I fight based on what’s vindictive and feel bad after word except that it turns out again and again that my first and spiteful assumption was RIGHT. I am not sure any of my focused interests are applicable to careers, and if they were, then my relationship with spite in fueling them might be different. But it’s a shitty world and spite’s better than outright malevolence because even good humans need an outlet for anger because staying positive is very, very good in my experience in preserving yourself at the expense of other people who desperately need or needed someone that’d get angry with them or at least hear “yeah, that’s fucked up” instead of saying that anger and grudges themselves were unhealthy.
I mean, I get it. I get why people think people fueled purely by spite might be more liable to harm than to do good. I get why people think Mike is a toxic and horrible person and interpret what I see as lashing out as getting joy from a power he’s taking away, or that I might one day be led to do the same.
But…we’re both reading this comic. This comic would not exist and certainly not be as prolific and well-researched and extensively openminded without a fucking heavy dose of authorial spite. Whether or not I ever benefit by using my seething rage as a tool in a profession that puts food on the table, I think it’s far far better that this comic exists sharing and taking full joy in the detractors it breeds in the act of giving a home to an audience that rarely gets that kind of vindication.
zoelogical
…i would never want to take away your rage, or your spite, or your need for either, or your drive for survival. i don’t…intend to pass judgment on any of those things here
i just honestly don’t know how to reconcile these two things: the need to acknowledge that bad things happen, and the need to make the best out of your situation. and maybe that’s something that can’t be reconciled but it feels like something that ought to add up and i can’t quite figure out why it doesn’t
all i know is that while getting angry empowers me, it also makes me miserable and exhausts me; but being positive doesn’t always satisfy, because it doesn’t let me feel my pain. and being positive doesn’t have to mean lying about your situation; sometimes it’s just accepting it for what it is and moving on however you can. but. i don’t know.
i mean there are plenty of things i hold on to anger about; i just also know my anger can be as likely to hurt as to heal, and i have to be careful with it
i just also know that being angry or upset or not one hundred percent happy about stuff seems to drive people away, and i guess especially people who want to live in a happy space. which is not exactly a bad goal, i guess, because it’s not like you can expect everyone to be your venting space
Minder
I know that anger can hurt and I’m not trying to de-legitimize your experiences either. For some people, in fact many people, rage is NOT healthy and even for someone like me that it’s incredibly useful for I still end up feeling that moment of self-doubt when the old fear kicks in and I get terrified I’ve hurt someone innocent (I have) or I’ve really and truly gone too far or my anger was wrong or not fueled at least under the right assumptions–and sometimes, I think being positive just means taking positive where you can.
Sometimes it’s winning internet points over saying you knew [x] fictional character would act [x] way or that someone’s argument about their behavior was wrong for 3000 word’s worth of reasons. It’s not exactly ideal, but it does drive people away, and for many that could and would be a bad thing and a negative direction of outcome for their life. But I’m someone that actually would benefit and gets something healthy by knowing how and what to do to drive people away that will let me still be happy I was right to make it a combative issue instead of accommodating them like I did irl until my emotions fried. And spite fuels internet arguments like this that make me very very very mindful of what I write because it has to be PERFECT because well-constructed arguments change minds, and that takes actual spite to fuel the effort of making an argument I will win or that will make someone reconsider their arguments. Or give me the exact thing I was missing I needed to turn around and research instead. Anger is…not easy, but it feels different depending on the context when it’s used. Spite is an anger that I rarely needing or having reason to be employed legitimately by the people who have resources to act for reasons far more directly selfish and self-serving. Trolling isn’t quite spite, momentary aggression is not quite spite, but it’s every bit a sharp little animal as you’ve described.
It’s not a friend I’d keep around without being very mindful of, and still not caring about, the fact that it’s as liable to bite me as anyone else. I know that. It’s in the calculus. I’d still rather get bitten on my own terms and decide how much of it I can take than let other people have the benefit of the doubt and abuse it because I got so good at letting them. I’m misanthropic. I try to be good. Spite is pretty nice.
Minder
And with all that said, as bad as I am at empathy I do sympathize with your position as well and I understand completely the fear or rather nihilistic catch-22 that anger itself cannot be a thing that fosters happiness or relationships that are positive except mainly through validation and solidarity–and yet embracing or being open to happiness can have results that are as bad or worse and we can’t have the comfort of removing the equation from the context of how different all this is for everyone that is capable of experiencing a full range of emotions and thought at all.
Anowan
Hey Minder and zoelogical, I just read that thread and I wanted to tell you something you already know : it’s okay to feel “bad” emotions that keep you alive. I know it sucks, I know the stigmata. I’ve been complimented for not being bitter despite my life, like having a defense mechanism is something rude to have. I wish you to get in a place you can feel safe enough to lower your defenses, even if it doesn’t feel good right now.
Mind a heart ? Here’s a heart if you like it : <3
zoelogical
I MEAN LIKE sometimes when you’re angry you’re miserable because the situation is miserable and you just. you know. caught on!!! in which case being aware of the misery is better than not being miserable, because it’s genuine to your situation and you can take active steps to decrease your misery.
and sometimes that means being angry!! sometimes that means blowing up. but like holding on to your anger post blowing up is definitely something that can be poisonous – but, i mean, it’s not like it’s easy to integrate something that painful into your experience. and sometimes going over and over something is what you need in order to process it, but i mean: processing it should be the end result. unless not ever having processed it is what you need in which case i don’t get to judge lmao
like: i am familiar and comfortable with certain levels of anger that you hold to survive, that you hold to remind yourself that this was not okay. i just can’t live there. like: i have ADHD! i am pissed as hell that this was a thing all my life and nobody realized it!! and this was a thing because studies on girls with ADHD are a lot more limited than studies on boys, and also my parents don’t entirely believe that mental issues are real issues that need assistance, and because i was usually able to perform well enough that it didn’t look like i had ADHD. and i didn’t even realize it until college, so, i guess there we go
but the work of living with ADHD is not accomplished by being angry at all the reasons why it’s so difficult to live with ADHD. because, i mean, at a point, those are just things that exist. and constantly getting angry at them is exhausting and also…counterproductive. one of the things that i really needed to realize in order to live with this successfully is that no one has their shit together, and that realization is kind of a work in progress!! you go from “no one has their shit together” in the sense that, ok, it’s okay when people screw up; to “no one has their shit together” in the sense that since nobody has their shit together, you don’t have to have your shit together one hundred percent of the time as long as you get your shit together when it counts. mostly.
…i mean like, also, i have a Stephanie Brown avatar in the year of our lord 2017. i know so much about holding grudges and maintaining anger. my feminist rage at what was done to her will probably never be quieted and it shouldn’t be because it should never have happened in the first place. but like the work of loving Stephanie Brown isn’t entirely based in her trauma. a good part of it is in her trauma and being angry about it and never forgetting it, but that’s not all about it. i don’t love her for what happened to her, i love her for who she is and who she can be. and that love is the more critical work, i think, because it seeds potential and growth. which are things any character needs in order to exist
i guess where i’m coming from is you can’t create from a position of anger, you can pretty much just destroy; and while destruction can be the impetus for creation (and is valuable and important!!) they can’t exist at the same time. dumbing of age doesn’t exist because it hates bad stuff; it exists because there’s a real and genuine love for these characters out there, and the desire to see what happens to them.
ergh i feel like i should apologize for overgeneralizing and being trite in the beginning of this, haha; we’ve talked enough that You Deserve More Work From Me i feel like. but i do super appreciate your questioning what i say and coming out with arguments and like. all that work you put into these posts!!
zoelogical
@anowan you are a sweetheart <3
Halpful
What Anowan said, and also, I feel like there are important puzzle pieces here that fit together if I can just remember a few pieces I’ve got … I need a real keyboard for this. And paper. BBS
Halpful
ok, here goes.
zoe: I might have found what’s not adding up. destruction and creation at the same time? … spoilers, steven universe season 2: Tnearg, orvat ehol naq fnccuver gbtrgure. that’s how you reconcile acknowledging the bad things while making the best of it. I think the end of the Mistborn trilogy might be a good metaphor too.
Maybe I need to give more context, so… Story time!
I usually think of my anger as a shield of thorns. It hurts me and it protects me, which sucks but is better than being defenseless. Several years ago, before I understood this, I joined a meditation group. The first part of it was tolerable, but they’d end with a passage from some meditation book, and I found these passages deeply uncomfortable, like, I-want-to-tear-my-skin-off levels of discomfort (I feel like I’m missing a word here). But they were about love and gratitude and compassion, and those are good things, right? So I spent quite a while wondering what the hell was wrong with me that they felt so wrong and horrible and unsafe and twisted.
Eventually, I… well, I still wasn’t able to approach it with words back then, but I poked at the feelings, trying to feel what was so scary about it, and one of the images that came up a lot was Darth Ex. I was angry at him, not for what he did, but because I knew that without the anger I couldn’t keep myself safe from him. I wanted so much for him to be a safe person and he wasn’t and anger was the only thing keeping me from reaching out and getting hurt again. I couldn’t afford to feel compassion in his direction. When I realised that, I felt a lot less bad about my weird reactions. I held onto my shield.
Around the same time, I was starting to learn about boundaries. Learning that took time, and starting to build my own boundaries took a lot more time, but once I had a few boundaries, I discovered I didn’t need anger as much. I could put down the shield of thorns sometimes, because I’d built better defences, and the more boundaries I built the better it got. 🙂
That wasn’t the end of it, though. I forget how it started, but at some point anger was back and stirring up trouble. I didn’t want to be angry, didn’t see the point, but eventually I sat down and listened to it. By this point, it could actually use words a little, which makes things a lot easier. 🙂 So we talked, and talked some more, and I practised listening instead of suppressing it, and one day I grokked my anger, and something completely fucking unexpected happened. It transformed. It went from a shield of thorns, protective but destructive and dumb as
rocksrubies, to something constructive and empowering, something that spotted problems and then lent its power to an aspect better suited to finding solutions. 🙂 I’d read about this kind of anger, but didn’t think it existed in me, or ever would. 🙂The first time it happened, iirc, I got up and did some of my old martial arts forms, because what the anger needed was big, wide movements, it needed me to take up space and move and it felt really good to have that outlet that let me feel my feelings without the risk of hurting anything. (other people’s suggested outlets had been useless or worse. hitting pillows actually makes me *more* angry and frustrated and bitter.)
It’s not a stable transformation yet, but knowing from experience that it’s possible is, like, a lot more than half the battle. 🙂
So… I suspect/hope that this is related to other people’s bad meditation experience. maybe they’ve been pressured into the overly-positive BS when what they need is more like “it’s ok that it’s not ok”; when they need to feel and process those inconvenient emotions and not suppress or dismiss them; when they need to be able to defend themselves first, and only move on to compassion when it’s safe to do so.
Compassion is important. Boundaries are important. You need *both* to find balance, and you need the other defense mechanisms to survive long enough to get there. (and not having gotten there yet is not some horrible flaw. it’s normal. you’re allowed to enjoy your imperfect life and not spend every waking moment on self-improvement. 😉
Halpful
some other scattered thoughts:
* not sure if adhd or osdd-ish, but, I find it exhausting/impossible to hang onto an emotion. I’ll quite easily forget to be angry unless it’s so big it’s completely running my brain – and even then it can’t last once it’s burned all my spoons. I have the same problem with boundaries, but smaller. habits help.
* anger and such can push people away. so can excessive calm. it’s hard to know when you need to rein it in, and when you need to find someone more resilient to talk to. I suppose it can be both, too. partly knowing your audience and partly moderation. there’s a lot of grey in there that I’m still exploring – like, when I’m irrationally angry at something because it triggered a bunch of anxiety, is it reasonable for someone close to me to argue with my feelings? I know it’s not the fault of the trigger, but my feelings are still real, and it hurts to be told I should just not have those feelings. Is there a better way to express myself to get the support and comfort I want? Should I expect more effort from the other person to see my perspective, or should I just expect coldness or obligation-based gestures of comfort when I let the illogical emotional mess show? …huh, that got offtopic. I guess I don’t want to say that I’m being irrational when I’m being irrational, it feels like… like when Smoky Quartz wanted to show off the yo-yo. we’ve both got a bit of Sardonyx in us, maybe. and a bit much attachment to Truth for Truth’s sake at the expense of feelings. (no this isn’t meant to make sense to anyone but me at this point, I’m talking to myself….)
Minder
@zoelogical I’m…actually happiest when I’m angry now, if that makes sense? Because the freedom to feel what I’m feeling and having a reason is all I wanted for so long without even knowing that repressing that was making me so dead and tired. But I understand it obviously will not be that way for everyone, shouldn’t be that way, and for people in a better place or with differently working minds (even I had rage that hurt me in the past when again, I had to bite it down and was helpless to say anything or feel like I earned it) be only painful. I feel you on the anger at misdiagnosis because I did ‘have’ ADD until I found out the real reason I’ve been not paying attention to anything but the stuff I obsess over is, well, actually being low enough on the autism spectrum to pass for neurotypical time and again despite all the red flags now that people are finally sharing they had seen. And I do believe anger can create because anger is another type of energy and if you can combine it with love and good intentions then I think it can be used to do more than destroy even if destruction and dismantling and analyzing is my point of strength.
And I appreciate your POV and you taking the time to argue your points as well, even though I will hold onto my spite for now, and hope that one day I can start to broaden my motivations beyond it though I doubt it ever truly goes away and I may be not the same anymore without it for ultimately better or worse.
@Anowan TAKES ALL THE HEARTS, DISTRIBUTES, you are sweetheart
@Halpful I love the way you describe anger and how it’s gone for you from something that dug in and hurt so much because it was all you could really do to hold on, to get a handle and use it and feel control and empowerment in it. I don’t mean to imply with all this that I live my life in anger, that I’m upset every second of every day, but I have a chip on my shoulder and it’s ready in the better times to block me whenever something comes up that I otherwise would suffer through needlessly to protect someone that never would realize otherwise I could not sit there and take it. I like anger, but spite is the friend and the dangerous kind, and I keep them closer now than I did when they were my entire reason to live. They protected me and I protect my right to have them, because the people who want you not to be angry are not always doing so with bad intentions but most also are not always aware of specific things I can or can’t see in life and people because of how my mind works. And I think part of me must have been aware of that before I ever had the reason or a way to put it into words.
Halpful
*jedi hugs* 🙂
Halpful
heh, the song from SU s4e4 is still stuck in my head 🙂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rds7V5Sxu-4
zoelogical
@halpful: UNFORTUNATELY im not caught up with steven universe and i’ve never played Mistborn, rip. i can work with anger as a protective thing, though!! i mean like i can even say that i’ve experienced that, i guess. i feel like that’s different from spite, though? like spite can be very much about pettily cruel actions taken over a long period of time, and that’s damaging. it’s when you hold on to anger past any possible use or purpose, i think? or at least that’s the image i’ve gotten of it.
i mean like: there’s anger and spite for self defense, and then there’s anger and spite for anger and spite’s sake. because outrage addiction is, unfortunately, a very real thing, and that’s…a pretty harmful thing.
…so much of this is very gray territory and changes from place to place and person to person
@Minder: i can see how getting angry could be a happy and even meditative thing! like there is a certain kind of joy in methodically crushing something. there is a freeing quality in being able to be angry. and i mean like…ugh i’ve been too…excluding in all this? like. there are plenty of people who make things with anger, but i dont think that anger is the foundation. ergh. i’ve said this.
but like: analysis is its own kind of creation, in that you take what has been presented and create a reading, an interpretation, a combination between the original text and your own perspective. and it is important and valuable!
Halpful
There’s a game? i was referring to the books by Brandon Sanderson. I disagree with some of the things in later books but he’s very good at writing non-NT characters. Although it was Preservation and Ruin I was thinking of as parallels to Sapphire and Ruby here. (omg do get caught up on steven universe, it is so so good and so many important concepts are in there. including a hint of what constructive anger looks like)
Anyways… I think we should trust Minder’s judgement on whether they still need anger/spite in their situation. I mean, a part of me is also going “but what if we’re wroooong?!?” but I’m starting to see that sometimes that voice gets counterproductive. You can’t force someone to see your perspective, you can only explain it and hope, and I think you’ve explained well enough. 🙂
…I’m not getting the analysis comment, but I think that’s because the cider just hit me. (yes, just cider, low alcohol tolerance.) my brain’s off duty for a couple of hours now 🙂
miados
but only one pair. more than one pair is girly. right walky?
zoelogical
wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee love that experience when you put up with things you should never put up with so that other people won’t get hurt
and you start to get to the place of feeling like you deserve it because you are putting up with it because you’ve never really had an end goal and the now is eternity
and having Billie in this is…different because it is a completely different person who can see how Messed Up everything is and validate that while also shaking literally everything to the ground. all the preconceptions, missed values
Cerberus
Yup. That’s the exact hole my uncle got me into. Trying to protect my ex so going in to see him with no support or aftercare. And becoming more and more convinced I deserved the dehumanization and having to beg for my humanity to even be seen much less respected.
It’s a nasty spiral to get sucked into. And I feel so bad for Ruth who is in the midst of it, has internalized that self-hatred, and doesn’t see her way out yet.
zoelogical
haaa…I just, like, put up with so much shit because I needed a place to live and my younger siblings needed someone who could be emotionally stable around…and I don’t really regret the latter, exactly, but I feel kind of sick when I think about how much unnecessary fear I had to live in because my parents wanted to control us. because apparently parenting is all about controlling your children, or something.
and like i guess right now it’s more just like…this vicious tangle of people who are messes, and the actions that come out of their messes, and the behavior they expect to see. and like i can be as empathetic as i want but i’m still going to come out of interactions with them feeling like i’m crazy, and having to deny my own emotions, and being pressured to perform certain roles because they love me or whatever, and their love for me is always going to be more important than anything i might actually need or want. because the things i need and want are inconvenient.
idk i never felt like i was explicitly dehumanized more just like i didn’t exist, which is its own thing
but like the only thing that gets you out is therapy and leaving
Cerberus
Yup.
And *appropriate gesture of support* for what you went through.
zoelogical
i feel supported!!!
but god, ruth, she’s had to do this all alone for so long and now she doesn’t have to and I Feel For Her So Much
Cerberus
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1: Pin-prick eyes, short answer, “sir”. I’ve seen that face on loved ones interacting with parents on the phone before. I’ve been that face. It’s soul-crushing to live it, it’s heart-breaking to see it, because it’s a complete loss of fight to an abuser who already knows they’ve won and has the power they have. And they are so very good at taking away options or make it feel like the greatest mistake/cruelty to make a clean break. This hits especially hard because my gf recently had to let her dad back into her life for financial help to retain the place she’s using to hold firm against her mom. And he is very “sir”-like.
Panel 2: Ugh, “sir” is such a creepy power-tripping fuck. Like, everything needs to run perfectly on his time and when he’s completed his duties rearranging the pieces he considers Howie and Ruth to be, he immediately expects them to jump, no questions asked, both understanding the price for any lateness.
And it creates a situation like this, where Ruth is having to deputize “sir’s” bullshit just to try and protect Howard to the level she can and where “sir” can at any point decide that they “took too long” to justify another round of violent hateful abuse.
It’s a no-win situation.
Panel 3: There are options for Ruth, but well, when you’re just trying to survive abuse, sometimes those aren’t worth the risks until you can get all your affairs in order. And sometimes the only thing you can do for a time is ride out the abuse knowing it is breaking you apart and fucking up your mental health. And it can be hard to even see them. This is how she’s been able to survive and protect Howard, so there’s going to need to be a lot to try and deviate from that moderately successful path (ignore the complete mental breakdown and massive suicidal ideation and PTSD).
And I can’t help but read Ruth’s response here in two ways. Both the defensiveness of “this is the only option I can see to protect both of us and this is how we’ve survived and you’re not actually having to live it” which is very true. Only the person being abused knows best the mental calculus at play and what are the options they have the spoons to work with. But also, a genuine question. She would love to know a magical solution if one exists, if Billie is seeing a way out that she hasn’t already worked with. Because she is desperate to escape.
But sadly Billie has the learned survival skills for neglect, an entirely different animal of abuse altogether.
Panel 4: This is a better piece of advice than Billie or Ruth fully know. Spite is powerful, especially for breaking away from an abuser and being willing to take the big risks to do so. I know to escape my uncle and dad, I needed spite and just a sense of being done losing things because of them in order to take the risk of homelessness that very nearly happened. And that was how my ex escaped her mom, finally getting to a point of spite and rock-bottom where she was tired of how that abuse was destroying everything she loved.
Spite can cut through that rational part of your brain that says “keep your head down, do what you need to get by, survive” and take possibly fool-hardy risks. And it can cut through the gaslighting of an abuser and how much they try and convince you that your recognition of things as abuse is the real crime at play. Spite is what eventually is going to help Ruth rescue her brother once and for all someday and cut her grandpa fully out of her life.
She just needs to survive to a point where she can use it.
zoelogical
so when pandora opened her box of horrors the almost-last thing was hope. the absolute-last thing was spite, and she took it and kept it as a pet for ages and it’s why she never got kicked out of her own home
Minder
I mean, joking but not joking a bit, but hope being last in the box is kind of an underhanded joke in that hope would indeed thin to be unthinkingly nice and step back to let everyone else out first.
zoelogical
haha
the tiniest monster of them all
Bagge
And to top it off, all this controlling and more-or-less-subtle threat bullshit “Sir” is doing is with Ruth fresh out from the suicide ward. She is extremely vulnerable, and all he can see is an opportunity to squeeze harder.
I don’t like “Sir” very much.
Minder