u/asfierceaslions

I've left a comment about this recently, but feel compelled to talk about it on its own. There has never been a piece of art that gave me as much excessive comfort as what Mike made with this show. A little background, but I grew up in this house in the middle of nowhere on a road where people died ALL the time, both murders and excessive car wrecks, and I actually can't give too much info on this because I recently discovered that my encouraging locals to talk about the creepy stuff that happened on that road has given Google enough info to immediately reveal the location, and a lot of people have been murdered up there and the families prefers it not get brought up. My personal deal was having a very abusive mother who managed to convince us that our father was actually the issue, and who intentionally wedged all us siblings apart. We have all been navigating adulthood very caring of each other but very very splintered.

We ALL have a very funny and telling relationship with this show, including my evil mother, who imagines herself as Hugh, which is hilarious, but I digress. We all make the pilgrimage to our cursed childhood home about once a year, something we were all secretly doing and didn't know the others do, like we have each thought it the scene of a crime that might reveal more truth if we just keep going. I took my dog with me once, and when we hit my house and notorious multi murder house beside it, he stood up in the passenger's seat, hackles raised and anxiously panting until we got to what people call the "good" end of that road. It's unnerving if you're the eldest skeptic always on the hunt for "proof" of more to have your dog betray you like that.

I will rewatch this show every time something really hard happens in my life, and it helps EVERY SINGLE TIME. Doesn't matter what the thing is. Two nights ago, something very triggering happened, and it sunk me into a severe funk all day yesterday, and I have already been dealing with an unmanaged autoimmune arthritis flare while I wait to see a specialist. I was in the pits. I felt like I had been hit by a truck. I had been couch rotting for about an hour, unable to just DO anything, and my partner got up and turned the TV on. I saw her type "hi" on Netflix and when I say that I saw THAT, knew what she was doing, immediately heard the opening notes and monologue of the show in my head before she even started it, and started feeling immediate relief. We finished the first episode, and the tightness that had been making it hard for me to sleep had already dissipated. I actually got a good night's sleep, and woke up to some of that "triggered body ache" already dissipating. I'm probably going to go home and finish watching.

I just find it so impressive that I, someone who does not spook easy, found the show very, very unnerving while I was watching the first time, partly because it tread so much familiar ground in mine and my siblings' lives, and partly because I think it's genuinely a good spook- but only the first time. I haven't been able to feel it as anything but a life affirming "it'll be okay" since then, and did even as finishing that first watch. It always makes me feel like the nightmare nonsense inside me is a little calmer, but Rose Red and The Haunting were also childhood repeaters I could never drop, and Hill House feels like the eventual full fruition of what I loved best in those, a massive conversation itself for another time.

Before this, The Babadook was my comfort horror, and I still adore it, but I don't know that there will ever again be a piece of art that does for me what this show does. I feel lighter today, and yesterday I was in an utter panic about how much I did not want to keep going at all, and it feels so silly to have a TV show affect so much, but good art really is the best medicine so often, and all the best help I have ever gotten has been having a piece of art that helps contextualize and sort my feelings, especially as an autistic woman that struggles with that. Any of y'all have that with Hill House, or anything else? Unfortunately, Steven Universe was a go to calmer as a teen, and it also still works, though less effective than Hill House lol.

This is, in part, because of a post here earlier. It is also because I have been navigating a renewed relationship with my father, who is having to reckon with the fact that my mother NEVER had a single issue lying to us about him, painting him as a monster, and his insistence on "not speaking ill of the mother of his children" when she had no issue doing the same ultimately made him useless in protecting us, on top of there being absolutely NO narrative to counteract hers. If he had spoken at ANY point, any of his kids might have seen that our mother was an abusive monster sooner than adulthood, and he might have actually been able to do something about it. Even if we'd thought him a liar, there would have been something to reckon with, something to chew on, and a person who is evil and abusive to you is not someone who magically ditches those traits where their kids are concerned, so we can ditch that lie now.

When your kid has a nasty other parent, and you, the decent person, decide that your best bet of handling that is to stay utterly silent about that person's actions and behaviors, or even to lie about what's actually happening, you let your kid have an inaccurate view of their other parent where it is literally dangerous to do so. If you KNOW the other parent is willing to alienate you and lie about you and whatever else, and you do absolutely NOTHING to manage that, you are also part of a wrongdoing in your child's life. It is not "alienation" to set normal, healthy expectations about a person you know better than your child does. It is not a misdeed, it is not wrong, it is not unfair. If someone wants you to speak well of them, they need to behave better, and if they can't do that, they don't want you to speak well of them that bad. If you want your kids to let you know when they're being harmed, you have to be willing to let them know you would even be OPEN to hearing such a thing, especially if you share custody. If you only ever inaccurately speak well of a deadbeat asshole, your kid is going to internalize that this is simply the lie we tell ourselves about this person and put up with mistreatment. They aren't going to take it to you, especially if you go out of your way to speak well of this person. In 20 years, when you find out things were worse than you thought, even, that is also yours to own because you did nothing to prevent it and you could have.

It drives me absolutely insane, and especially because, most of the time, women are doing this nonsense for men who do not deserve it and absolutely would not do the same for them and who pose an active threat if not labeled with the proper warnings, my personal life aside. I see it multiple times a week in the subs I am in. You spent your whole life pretending to your kid that their father was a person he isn't and now you're mad your kid believes their father to be a person he isn't? The call is coming from inside the house, babe. You carried a torch for someone who would willingly set you on fire and now you're shocked something's smoking. You had the right and the tools to make sure that did not happen, or that if it did, your child was properly prepared for it and prepackaged with expectations that are less likely to get them hurt or even just let down. I hate this "letting your kids" decide how they feel mindset when kids are capable of and willing to believe in the damn Easter Bunny. Your kids are most going to buy the story you tell them. They're buying a lie if you aren't doing something to correct that. Like, obviously, this does not have to look like the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in all its gory details, but no one is served by a good false reputation but the person in possession of it and they have NEVER once earned it. Everyone else becomes sitting ducks for the reputation to correct itself. Don't set your kid up to be hurt or taken advantage of or even just likely to be treated mildly shitty just because you feel squeamish about telling the truth, even if it's hard and uncomfortable, even if you've been manipulated by society into thinking it's "mean" to tell God's honest truth.

I'll admit, the first listen I was not sold, and I do see that now as it taking me a minute to calibrate internally when it first released so I could appreciate it properly. DF was an immediate love of mine. The day it released, I started it on repeat before going back to bed and and I was aware enough while listening asleep that multiple key moments pulled me fully awake just to enjoy them actively for a moment. I loved that album.

I find it wild how hard it is for me to listen to it now. I thought it was the peak of artistry when it released, and I could not fathom loving an album more, and now trying to listen to DF instead of ES when I have the Florence itch is comparable to the difference between expert, lithe fingers working next to frozen, unwieldly, almost numb fingers. It feels so much more clumsy. I love the album, and I have loved every album, but it stays shocking to me that each new release feels so much more expert than the last that going back is hard unless I am caught in a particular nostalgia or in the mood for a specific song. Especially given that it had to grow on me, I just feel shocked every time this comes up. Sometimes I even WANT to listen to DF and try it, only to be like..... eh, nah. Gotta get the most direct line to the purest source like some kind of addict.

I watched an interview recently where she essentially said she wasn't interested in reinventing herself all the time but instead preferred to lean harder and harder into what she already knows she is and perfecting it. It shows in a way I cannot compare to almost any other artists I actually keep up with. It makes me actively hungry for the next album, which feels like not appreciating what we have at this moment, but GOD, I want to see where she can possibly go from here and waiting sucks. I think so many "artists" chase being multifaceted and marketable to the most people instead of honing what they're best at and sharpening it into something that will cut like butter and she DOES and the difference in output is stunning for it. Anyway, been spinning it on repeat the last few days to increasing shock that it stays so satisfying despite my constantly gnawing at the marrow. Just. What an incredible gift to exist at the same time that this music is being made.