12/19/2025
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1FyMbm3dwZ/
You learnt early that vulnerability was ammunition. Every time you shared something; a fear, a struggle, a moment of weakness, she'd store it away like evidence to be used later. When you needed support, she'd dismiss you. When you had a disagreement, suddenly that thing you confided months ago became proof of your instability, your ingratitude, your fundamental flaws. You weren't being supported through your struggles; you were being catalogued for future attacks. So you stopped talking. Not because you were fine, rather because silence was safer than giving her more weapons.
The "anything you say can and will be used against you" comparison is painfully accurate. Conversations with her felt like interrogations where honesty was a trap. You'd mention feeling overwhelmed and she'd later throw it back at you as evidence you couldn't handle responsibility. You'd admit to a mistake and she'd reference it for years as proof of your incompetence. You'd share something personal and she'd weaponise it in front of others to humiliate you. Every piece of yourself you offered became twisted into something that served her narrative about who you were; unstable, dramatic, problematic, ungrateful.
This conditioning doesn't disappear just because you've left her orbit. Now, even with safe people, sharing that you're struggling feels dangerous. Your nervous system is screaming that opening up will result in punishment, that vulnerability equals exposure, that people are just waiting for you to reveal weakness so they can exploit it. You'd rather suffer in silence than risk giving someone information they might use to harm you. It's not that you don't trust anyone, it's that she taught you that trust was consistently, systematically violated.
People who've never experienced this ask why you didn't reach out, why you isolated yourself, why you carried everything alone. They don't understand that reaching out when you're struggling wasn't an option that felt available. Every past attempt to seek support had been turned against you. You learnt that struggling was something to hide, not share. That needing help made you a burden. That your pain would either be dismissed or weaponised, never actually held with care.
Unlearning this means slowly testing whether safe people actually respond differently than she did. It means risking small vulnerabilities and watching what happens; do they support you or store it as ammunition? It's terrifying work because one betrayal could reinforce decades of conditioning. You're not wrong for being cautious. You're protecting yourself based on extensive evidence that sharing struggles has historically made things worse, not better.
