furiousgoldfish:

One thing I
realized much later after escaping, is how I was conditioned to always be
interested, engaged, and have visual and obvious reactions to whatever people
are saying to me. Being disinterested, reactionless, silent, cold, and
neglecting abuser’s need for attention is often highly punished, you are not
let be if you just sit there and say nothing if abusers expect you to say
something, or to react. They will call you out, insult you, attack you, guilt
you, provoke you, and even go as far as to physically force a reaction out of
you, they feel entitled to draw attention out of you even when you don’t feel
like giving it. They see you as a source of attention and they will not
tolerate your refusal to be one. If they can’t get a reaction of you easily,
they will hurt you and make you as miserable as possible, and then tell you
it’s all your fault, because you could have just paid attention to them
instead. So it becomes unsafe to not be alert, interested and show reactions to
everything they do or say.

But when you’re
not surrounded with abusers, it’s okay to not react at all. You can stick to
your own business and not care about what others want from you. You can fail to
engage in conversations you don’t care for, and nothing bad happens. If you
continually act disinterested, cold and detached, people will eventually
realize you don’t feel like talking to them, and will leave you be. Amount of
interest, warmth and reactions you’re showing to others is actually a very
powerful boundary. If you are forced to always act engaged and interested,
eager to make others feel heard and paid attention to, people will realize they
could ask a lot of you, and push you very far. They would, however, not do that
with a person who is cold, disinterested and overall mysterious with how to get
their attention. This other person is not read so easily, or pushed into guilt
for not doing everything they’re asked. It’s generally safer to not show
enthusiastic interest in people you’re not yet sure about weather they’re safe to
know you. And no, it’s not mean or rude to act disinterested when you actually
are disinterested. The rest of the world already acts like that. It’s being
honest to yourself when you give attention only to who and what actually
interests you.