Qualities That Keep You in a Sick System

[issendai]

The attention the sick systems post is getting is, ah, rather overwhelming. I'm so, so happy that y'all have found it useful in what clarifying what happened to you. I'm sad and astonished that so many people had the same experiences. When I wrote it I was thinking of a few extreme situations I've found myself in or watched friends flounder

Comments

[rain_dog]

Welp, those last few lines rang awfully true. When I think about my dad, and the shit he put me through, I think it was mostly because I was a good kid who did what she was told and didn't talk back.

Knew that kind of thing never did anybody any good.

[hobbit_cogs]

......ouch.

Well that explains a lot. *sigh*

[browngirl]

This was exactly what I was about to say (you too? I'm currently glaring at my Father's Day card, but it makes it easier to send it that it's the first communication I've had with them since the Mother's Day card), so I'll just say "Totally true and totally cosigned."

[issendai]

Absolutely. Breaking family loyalty and refusing self-sacrifice was how I got out of my parents' system. I stayed longer than I should have to help the people left behind, but then I realized that they were adults, they had power, and they made a choice not to use it to free themselves. So screw 'em.

I wish they'd escape. But if they had escape in them, they'd be long gone.

Disappointing and pissing off toxic people isn't a flaw, it's a necessity. As is occasionally ending the world. It's good to remind ourselves that there's the world we build up out of other people, and then there's the real world, and these two things are not the same.

[aetherbox]

*Siiiiiigh* Sad. Ugly. And in my experience, absolutely true.

[rovanda]

You've definitely hit the nail on the head - those are exactly the qualities that kept me in one of my former jobs for way, way too long.

People used to ask me why I stayed in such bad conditions for so long, and I never had an answer, so I'd joke that it was temporary insanity... These two posts at least help me understand it a bit better.