Pupaphobia 2024 / Gumi SV / CoF

[Chromaticity of Fear] [Part 2] [Pupaphobia] [Losing control] ------ × . trigger warnings for abuse, internalized self-hatred, hopelessness, and light mentions of drug use . × × . if you are sensitive to the above topics, feel free to skip the story below . × ----------------------------------------------------- . {.⋅ ♡ ⋅.} "It's every day with this shit. I wake up and I'm shaking and afraid, I feel sick all the time. I can barely get up off of my bed, nevermind going to school. I'm sick. I'm legitimately sick. I don't know how much more of this I can take, I need to fucking escape. I'm so angry, and I'm sick, and he'll just call me a selfish piece of shit for it. I need to go to bed soon anyway, but I don't want to. I'm so scared of waking up tomorrow and having to face another day of this. I can only take so much." ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ "I talked with my girlfriend. A lot. We had a lot to talk about... She'll give me the money, I'm buying a plane ticket this Saturday, and he'll be none the wiser I'm going to do it. I'm actually going to do it. I'm going to escape, and I'll live with her Knowing the bastard, he won't even notice his little play thing is gone. Much less care enough to look I've been waiting for this moment for years ... Why do I feel so scared?" ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ “I should be happy right now, but I’m not. I’ve dreamt of this day for ages, but I’m scared. I’m so, so scared. I got to my girlfriend’s place and she was crying, and hugging me, and the whole time I couldn’t even recognize her as even being real. Nevermind being able to fake a smile. Months of planning, and talking, and making living arrangements, and I still feel so scared. I should be so happy. Is there something wrong with me? Am I broken in some way? Is this never going away? What if he was right this whole time? What if what I had was as good as it’s ever going to get? What if he really was doing the best for me, and I was just too selfish, too incompetent, too cruel to understand? I’m getting so caught up with the ‘what if’s, I’m getting dizzy Maybe I just wasn’t made for happiness Maybe I should’ve just made peace with that reality instead of doing any of this… … Maybe I’m getting too ahead of myself. It’s only been a couple days.” ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ “I’m feeling weirdly home-sick. I never thought I’d ever say that. And it’s not just the park I liked to frequent, or the boba shop I’d get milk tea at, or my old highschool’s bleachers I’d sneak under to get high at, I miss my old room, and I miss my old stuffed toys, and the brand of ramen my girlfriend doesn’t keep stocked in the pantry. And…I miss my abuser. I miss the fear he’d incite in me almost as much as I miss the couple of good times we had together. I miss the shows we’d watch together as much as I miss the hole he put into the drywall when he tried to hurt me. I think there is something deeply wrong with me. I miss feeling controlled. It’s weird, but I think it’s my destiny. I think I’m someone’s property, and nothing more. I would be ok with that if it meant never having to feel so aimless and confused again.” ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ “I talked to my girlfriend some more. We talked for a good couple of hours, actually. She says that this is common with survivors of abuse, to doubt and even miss the abuse they went through. Humans are creatures of habit, we don’t like change, even an objectively good one like this. Any change from the status quo is going to be challenged by the emotional parts of our brain. … My girlfriend gave me the number for a good support group for this sort of thing. She said she loves helping me, but can’t handle all the emotional stress and that I should seek help from professionals, which I understand completely. I think I’ll give it a dial sometime in the week.” ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ “My therapist told me something interesting the other day, he says that there’s no such thing as destiny, that the purpose of our lives can only be determined by ourselves and ourselves alone. I’ve…never really considered that perspective before. I think I’ve gotten used to being at the mercy of someone else for so long, I can’t possibly fathom a life where I’m not exploited in some way for someone else’s benefit. Where I don’t feel like I live to serve or be taken advantage of. It’s scary, confronting the fact that your hurt has painted your worldview so deeply. But if that really is true, that I can choose to make of my life whatever I want, then I would like to… hm… Maybe I still need some time to figure it out.”