I'm proud of myself today.

(cw mentions of parental abuse and discussions of trauma)

I've been in this fandom for a long time, almost since I could legally have an account on here. There's a person on here that I used to follow when I was younger. at the time I was being abused by my parents and going through a lot of other shit in my life and Loki was something that comforted and validated me.

I felt a tremendous amount of doubt and insecurity about loving him. I didn't on a basic level know it wasn't morally wrong because he was a villain. I was intensely vulnerable and didn't know I was being abused and was looking for any validation I could find. her blog was, to me then, one of my safe spaces. the scarce few I had. She didn't think it was wrong for people to love him, and she clearly loved him very much herself. She spoke of many of his feelings like they mattered. validated things I had hardly seen elsewhere. She was a good curator of fandom posts too. I would go to her blog sometimes when I needed comfort in my anger and hurt from my abuse, and on at least one occasion feeling like that was a safe space stopped me from self harming. I thought for years that I literally in some ways owed her my life.

she also reblogged misinformation about abuse on multiple occasions. I ate it up and it made me feel more depressed and self destructive. She woobified Frigga to a ridiculous extent and refused to acnowledge any responsibility that she had in the things they shouldn't have done that it made me internalise problematic shit about my own mom (whose relationship with my own father and acting as a sort of peacemaker while also doing her own bad stuff mirrors Odin and Frigga very much) that I am still having to carefully detangle from me like glass shards. I nearly realised I was a survivor years earlier than I did because of how I was relating my own trauma to Loki and beginning to understand it, or at least that it existed, and it was what I saw on her blog, the assertions that what he went through wasn't abuse, the denial of certain areas of abuse, that sent me crying and thinking that I couldn't be one, and that I was wrong for wanting to know that he was a survivor too.

Her knowledge of psychology and the terms she used was clearly stuck in some past decade and she said multiple ableist and nonsensical things re loki's mental health. She said that Loki did what he did in the first movie because of psychosis which. just. absolutely not. She shared things that pathologised Odin instead of criticising him properly and without ableism.

I just. I was so afraid that nobody would ever care about what I went through or listen to me or respect me as someone who loves Loki and had bad luck in finding better people that I clung to her far longer than I should have, or should have had to, and I had a very hard time realising that while I saw her as someone who could be a safe space, she wasn't that, and in a lot of ways hurt me and made things worse for me. She validated his anger and pain while obscuring and lying about some of what hurt him and in turn made me think harder that what was being done to me was okay, because ~they were trying~, as if that should have been enough to protect me from what they were doing (it wasn't).

I know I'm a survivor now. I know Loki is too. I have met and talked with and befriended so many lovely people here. I feel safe in the fandom now in a way I literally never thought I would and I am so happy and greatful for that. (she was not the only problem, nor my only source of trauma within fandom, but she was a gigantic part of it)

She's never interacted with me on here. I have no idea if she even knows I exist. for multiple years I couldn't even bear to look her up to block her because there was a part of my brain screaming that that was too harsh, that I should be greatful to her, that I owed her that.

I blocked her today.

II'm still struggling to know, in the whole of me, that she and her feelings are not my responsibility. I cared about her so desperately for so long and part of me still does. But I do not owe her access to me when even seeing her username makes my entire body tense up, when she, a full grown adult, put me as a child in more danger that I was already in by not being careful not to spread misinfo about abuse and not be dismissive of it, when she gave me emotional wounds I will likely be dealing with long after she dies (she's quite a bit older than me), when I cannot even think of existing in the same space as her without feeling short of breath.

I do not owe her that. and I owe myself the peace and safety of knowing I never have to interact with her again.

Here's to relaxing a little more after today.