the playbook: low-key abusive & highly invasive. 🙏📖😌🕊️
(survivor edition: when they don’t want to fight on the facts, so they gaslight your tone instead)
omg.
so—
let’s be
really
serious,
for a goddamn second.
i’m gonna say this once,
in english,
jersey,
and whatever fucking dialect
exists between
“i survived” and
“i’m not shutting the fuck up”:
you cannot criminalize my fucking tone. ✨🕊️
…
that’s the whole thesis.
the whole entry.
the whole goddamn fight.
listen.
i’m not the threat in this story.
i’m the unwilling narrator
of the shit that already happened.
and in every line,
i’m telling
the ugly,
unfortunate fucking truth—
no.
i didn’t pick this role.
i didn’t volunteer for the plot twist.
i just survived long enough to describe it.
because what i’m not doing?
i’m not lying—
i’m not embellishing.
i’m not dramatizing.
i’m just telling the truth in
the only language
fucking trauma leaves behind.
does it sound brutal?
ok but…
you do realize,
i lived the actual violence.
not metaphorical.
not poetic.
literal.
terrible.
skull crushing,
that ”i’m definitely going to die.”
type of violence.
i lived the aftermath.
the fallout nobody wants to talk about.
the panic.
the debt.
the days where
i was alive but
barely fucking functional.
because it’s real:
i lived the paperwork hell.
the ER visits.
the bruises
that didn’t match any
“he said / she said” bullshit.
the police reports.
the restraining orders.
i lived the financial fucking crater, too.
saying that out loud?
none of this makes me dangerous.
none of this makes me unstable.
none of this makes me the villain.
it just makes me
the actual witness
who didn’t die.
and if i curse
while writing about it?
congrats,
that’s called being a human being,
not misconduct.
—
✦ exhibit a: tone-policing is the abused girl gag order
this is how it goes every time:
i talk about what happened to me →
someone with no rebuttal to the actual events →
tries to reprimand me for sounding “angry.”
no shit i’m angry.
i got strangled pregnant and bankrupt while everyone pretended that was normal.
and now suddenly the scandal is…
my vocabulary?
“she used the f-word!”
yeah, babe, you know what else happened?
actual fucking trauma.
i’m not gonna narrate that
like a linkedin webinar.
—
✦ exhibit b: when they can’t fight the facts, they fight the vibe
this is the part
that is the most weaponized:
nobody says “that didn’t happen.”
nobody says “that’s not what the documents show.”
nobody says “her timeline is wrong.”
nah.
nope.
they say:
“she’s harsh.”
“she’s vulgar.”
“she curses.”
“she sounds emotional.”
wow thank you for the literary critique, guys.
meanwhile the documented shit
i survived
is right there in filings,
police reports,
medical records,
and emails.
but you know…
let’s cry about a trauma blog post.
—
✦ exhibit c: trauma writing is not misconduct
i’m writing about my own life.
my own experiences.
my own emotions.
my own lived fucking pain.
i’m not threatening anybody.
i’m not telling anyone to go do anything.
i’m not stalking.
i’m not harassing.
i have
zero idea—
what any of y’all
are over there actually doing.
(but you are glued to my every move)
i’m literally just…
describing what happened to me.
in my own words.
with my own nj accent.
with my own real anger.
with my own freedom of speech.
if you get offended
by how i phrase my survival?
while i’m fighting for my life???
then maybe don’t read
a dv survivor’s burn book.
easy fix.
—
✦ exhibit d: my tone is not your jurisdiction
just because
i survived in
four fucking languages—
rage,
grief,
sarcasm,
and dark fucking humor—
doesn’t make
my testimony any less valid.
my tone is not evidence of wrongdoing.
my tone is evidence that i’m not dead.
damn dude.
nobody gets to tell me “say it softer”
after the shit i’ve endured.
i talk how i talk
because i’m from new jersey
and because trauma rewired my throat
to stop begging and start naming.
you don’t get to steal my voice
just because
you’re uncomfortable with the sound.
—
✦ exhibit e: you cannot punish a survivor for having a personality
if the worst thing i’ve done
is curse while describing a documented timeline
of abuse,
abandonment,
actual fraud,
financial fallout,
and a whole insurance clown show
that left me drowning—
then i’m actually doing remarkably fucking well.
sorry i don’t
write like the PR department
of my own suffering.
sorry i don’t
sugarcoat the stuff
that almost killed me.
(no actually)
sorry i use dark humor as my fucking life raft.
tone-policing a dv survivor
is not professionalism.
it’s oppression
and it’s fucked up.
—
✦ closing statement
you can disagree with me.
you can litigate me.
you can hate my delivery.
but you cannot tell me
that surviving violence requires
a “no cursing” clause.
my tone isn’t the crime.
my tone is the evidence
that i made it out.
and nobody—
not an abuser,
not his orbit,
not their lawyers,
not a school,
not a defendant,
not a stranger—
gets to rewrite the sound of my survival.
amen.
