Ok so I get it.
It’s okay for me to talk about getting angry as a form of self-defense.
But it’s not okay for me to actually do it.
I don’t want to hear that “it wasn’t as bad as the examples in that text”. It was still ignorant and it still triggered me. Intent really doesn’t come into it because intent doesn’t make things hurt less.
I’ll tell you what though, recently, more often than not, my response to distress has been to drop all priorities except for self-preservation. That part is new, what isn’t new is that when I’m upset or triggered or whatever, that whole fight-or-flight thing goes on and I either get angry or I shut down… In the past I usually opted to shut down because invalidating and burying my own feelings is hobby of mine. (And half the time now I end up shutting down anyway because I’m just fucking good at it.) I found that, that has some negative side effects so now I get angry sometimes because anger is a valid response to being hurt. And holyjeez it’s actually really that simple. If you go through life and everyone is wearing combat boots and you’re barefoot and nobody fucking watches where they put their feet it’s not invalid to get angry.
So when I get mad it’s not actually about the greater good or making a good impression or coddling other people’s feelings. I don’t care about that. It’s self-preservation because worrying about offending the sensibilities of people who hurt me is something my brain has flagged as “dangerous” because, in the past, it has been. As far as I’m concerned, I can’t afford to put extra energy into not offending people when it’s taking all of the energy I have to respond at all. And as I said before, to me right now, angry response > no response.
And yeah. I’m not saying any of this because I want you to feel bad for me or some shit. I really could care less. I know I’ve been an asshole recently. Whatever. I’m just explaining.
