“I have been physically abused, and I believe all of this is emotional abuse. Ariel should ask herself, ‘has Ariel ever raised a hand to her mother? Has Ariel ever done anything she’s ashamed of to her mother?’”

When I was about 15, I dropped around 50lbs because of obvious-but-untreated depression and obvious-but-ignored abuse. One of my aunts said, “Now maybe you can get a boyfriend.”

This just gave me flashbacks to a floral pantsuit that my mother insisted on getting for me at a thrift store when I was 10-ish. I was in tears, and some random stranger told me that if I was her daughter she would fucking slap me.

I was forced to wear it to school a few times, but eventually I would throw such a fit…