Abuse doesn't always look like yelling or hitting or even anything we see as hurtful; abuse can be backwards comments like "you're pretty when you're thin", abuse can be quiet and vicious and insidious like, "i'm the only one who gets you" "if anyone else knew about this they'd be horrified but i love you for it" "your friends don't understand you like i do and they never will"
abuse works because you don't realize it at first, if ever. abuse works because it trains you, slowly. it makes you compromise on things. it sets you a step back by an inch, because if you go too quick, you'll realize what's happening. it's being the frog in water, but the water tells you that it's trying to make you better. and abuse works best when you're mentally ill. it runs off of it. it takes the negative things you already feel and just amplifies all of it. how can it be abuse when you were already thinking all of it? it was your idea to begin with, it's just that someone confirmed it.
sometimes i still wonder if it actually happened or i imagined it. sometimes i realize in a flash what felt normal was actually abusive. something as small as being worried when someone isn't smiling. abuse rarely fits the way people want it to look, because abusers want you to think it's only bloody teeth and a right hook. this is how they get you. they say, oh you'd never be silly enough for that, and you think, of course, if my partner hit me, i'd leave. but then your partner, who you love more than anything, they say things like "i don't want you going out tonight" and at first it's fine. nobody ever wakes up letting someone hit them. it's just that you compromise. you let little things go until you're trained to let big things go until you're trained so well that you've let your own soul go. and you can't just pull back control. abuse works because you can wake up there, at the bottom of the hole - but there's just nowhere to go.
