I heart prey animal rage I love when characters are fucking insane with terror
every couple of months i put my life together and take it apart and put it back together because. well. what else
If you lived with abusive parents, it meant that the rules changed for you any moment. You could have been praised for something most of the time, then suddenly one day it brings a punishment instead. You could have been allowed to do certain things until one day you got tortured for doing it, and afterwards you couldn’t even know if it was alright to ever do it again. Some things were only allowed when parents were in forgiving mood, sometimes things you absolutely had to do, you knew you’d be punished if anyone saw you doing it, or if they found out.
You never knew what the consequences would be. You could be wildly overpunished for something as simple as failing to close a door, saying the wrong word, having a certain face expression. You would get blamed and punished for things you didn’t do. You would get punished for someone’s bad mood. You would get punished for existing next to someone who was angry and wanted a punching bag.
There was no consistency in your life, you had to live tiptoeing and hoping you would somehow do the right thing and avoid torture, the rules would change and twist and turn against you no matter what you would do, you developed a sixth sense to figure out when someone was irritated or upset, and you would still end up hurt and abused.
And you got told this is normal, this is just how life is, everyone has it like this. You don’t doubt it or see it as abuse, it’s just your every day, you can’t imagine living a life where you’re safe, where you don’t have to expect thousand horrible things to happen if you make a tiny mistake that you initially had no idea would even be a mistake.
Now think about that and tell me where your anxiety came from. What living like this continually would do to a person. Because once you lived like this, this mindset doesn’t go away, it’s what you’ve learned to live with, what you’ve been forced to live with if you didn’t want to be in pain every second of your life. How would you not panic and over analyze your every word? How would you not try to predict just what kind of horror could come from most mundane and common action? How would you not at least try to brace yourself for the next torture someone might have ready for you? Your senses are not wrong, they’re trained to do this, they’re experienced in trying to help you survive life in abuse.