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I should have gone through with my invasive thoughts I should have killed you both in your sleep.
Lion was hurting. Everything hurt. It felt like he was drowning. No one was helping him. No one cared. In the back of his mind, he knew what this was. He knew it was another episode. He knew it would pass. But he shouldn’t have to go through this.
He blamed Jäger. Not in a serious way; he didn’t think the weird German man really knew what was going on with him, what was fundamentally wrong with him. But it wasn’t an entirely lighthearted blaming either; there was some reason Jäger sent him those videos. Jäger may be awkward, may not be able to pick up on certain social things, but he was highly intelligent, and learned things for the sake of learning. That apparently included child development psychology.
The first video was about gaslighting. A victim’s reality, experiences and feelings were invalidated constantly. Common phrases include “ you’re overreacting ” and “ I never said that .”
“ You’re always so stupid !”
“ If you really loved me... ”
Each phrase triggered a lurching in his gut, a need to punch something, genuine anger that bubbled forth from his gut and infected every nerve, burrowed deep into the marrow of his bones.
Another video was about the most damaging things that a parent could say to their child.
They hated him. They always hated him. They hated that he was himself, and not a clone of his sister.
Why can’t you be more like your sister?
Sophie could do no wrong. She entered the world on sunbeams and rainbows, his mother even saying how she was an easy pregnancy, and an easy birth. He himself caused his mother so much pain; he was a large baby, even in the womb, and kicked and writhed and even bruised her bladder. He hadn’t even been born and he already was a problem child.
You’re the reason we didn’t have another child.
If he wasn’t hated he wasn’t worthy of their love. It had been worse… indifference, perhaps? Annoyance, maybe, but not as him as a person, but as an object, an item they possessed that -for one reason or another- they weren’t allowed to simply discard..
You’re stupid.
He made so many mistakes as a kid, and if they weren’t mistakes, they were failures. Failures to live up to expectations,to act a certain way, to accomplish something, even to follow an unwritten rule.
He cleaned his room without being asked? His sister never let her room get so dirty in the first place. He washed the dishes while the family was out shopping? The least he could have done was vacuum and do the laundry too. He got good marks in school? His sister did better. He wanted to study for a test? Sophie did her studying at school, so they could spend time together as a family.
If you really loved us…
He was around eleven when he realized, really realized and processed, that Sophie herself didn’t live up to the standards their parents projected on her. Instead, she was just not punished. She was still perfect even when she wasn’t.
And he was always wrong even when he was right.
So he stopped listening, he stopped caring, he stopped trying to be good. He could never be good.
Then he began hurting everyone around him for real.