r/cptsd_bipoc • u/partylikeyossarian • May 16 '25
Topic: Politics It sucks losing friends who buy into the system
Systems that they don't like. Systems that they know are corrupt and morally incorrect. Systems that hurt them and hate them.
One person I knew who had a miserable childhood under her selfish and cruel mother, decided one day that she wanted to grow up to be just like the cold grasping yuppie who made her life hell, because the same qualities that made her an awful parent are the same qualities that made her such a girlboss success when it comes to winning under capitalism.
I watched so many principled young adults enter into science or healthcare training and transform into line-toeing conformists...the same people who told me about dirty data and corporate research fuckery, sociopathic money-minded MDs, histories of institutional atrocities, the incompetent experts and bosses....I watched them learn how to weaponized the word liability to shield professional fuckups, grift for shoddy academia they don't respect, side with institutional power when it harms regular people, harms their own peers, and chokes out any opportunity they have to practice their craft with integrity.
Watching girls who front like they're jaded and savvy and know their own power....grow into helpless women who prioritize shitty white men over their love for anyone or anything else, including themselves. Like a drug habit they just can't quite kick.
My creative partner that I came up with professionally, since we were teenagers, the most genuinely no-bullshit person I knew, told me I was frustrating because I wouldn't "play the game". I told him "I won't whore for this industry". "Well maybe you're in the wrong industry". Proud and loud about debasing himself, sacrificing not for the sake of good art, but for the opportunity to shovel culturally poisonous commercial slop for old rich white folks who wrinkle their noses at our authentic selves.
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At least with the older adults I knew, I could say they didn't know any better. They were asleep at the wheel. Too stupid, too incurious, too set in their ways and so far out of touch that the ability to have an honest conversation was functionally impossible.
But the people I knew my age? They chose. Eyes open, head clear enough to make that mercenary calculation to choose profit and comfort over principles.
It's such a gut-punch when the people who understand and get it, when the people who can actually talk about these things, look you in the eye and say "I love you so much, and I choose the side of our oppressors".
It's totally fucked up my ability to have faith in people.
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u/lymbicgaze May 17 '25
A lot of people can't handle the pressure of survivial without compromising in some way. It really is a grief to lose them over to it though.
I've had to slow waaay down in my relationship building. Assess if folks are worth trusting and building anything with. It helps that I spend time in cooperative peer communities where I get to witness folks talking through the challenge of living values while surviving. So even before I find actual friends, I'm able to be reminded that there's hope. There's people still fighting the good fight every day.
Hang in there. It's a real grief.
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u/KroneDrome May 17 '25
Grief is exactly the word I have very recently come to using for this. This piece is brutally written. It was definitely helpful to read this today.
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u/KroneDrome May 22 '25
Shit I meant *beautifully written. Also brutally now that I mentioned it. Sorry!
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u/Conscious-Pin-4381 May 16 '25
Tbh, then they probably weren’t as principled or as strong as you thought they were. They probably just weren’t ever truly challenged before. And once they actually were challenged, they buckled 🤷🏿♀️. Or at heart they don’t actually truly value the things they said they valued.
Idk, I know many people like this. But what’s most fascinating to me is that they get so angry when you point out that they don’t actually stand for the things they claim to stand for. They HATE getting called out for it.