Apropos of everything, when I was younger and would try and confide in well-meaning people about my home life, too many shut me down without listening. The most common response I got was “but he’s your parent! He’s got your best interest at heart. I’m sure he means well.”
They couldn’t fathom a parent treating a child in the ways I’d described, so they denied my reality. It was too painful to expand their daily world to accommodate abuse, and much easier to make me out as a girl who made herself suffer.
I’ve lived in split realities before, and seen cults of personality first hand. I’ve seen people double down on insane rationalizations as a way maintain proximity to power, protect their image of themselves as good people, and bolster their beliefs about the way the world works.
It is dangerous to pretend that everything is okay when it is not. It puts vulnerable, marginalized people at a further disadvantage. It is not alarmist to be upset at upsetting events, much like PTSD is normal reaction to abnormal events.
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