2 MUCH THINK 2 SLEEP

I’m approaching 40 – why in the ever living fuck should I care about Johnny Depp’s personal life? Nevermind finding myself angry about it?

The fuck?

I can draw a pretty direct connection between my consumption of social media and the degree to which I cared about the Heard-Depp lawsuit. The more time I spent on Facebook – the more I seemed to find myself ‘needing’ to have an opinion on the issue.

Prior to a recent increase in time on the website, I had only seen glimpses of the trial – the few bits that would end up circulating through Reuters, which thankfully did not seem to be much, especially in the areas of their pages that I tend to read.

But then, goddamn social media.

The fucking memes, the shitty hot-takes, and the mostly pro-Depp echo chamber, that seemed to think this was some kind of championing moment for men, at last acknowledging that “hey, we’re abused too…”

Fucking please.

There’s generations of boys abused by the church that could use that kind of support right now.

Personally, I’d prefer someone to lead that movement that doesn’t send ‘joking’ texts about raping their ex-wife’s corpse (on record from the trial – as is Paul Bettany who was on the receiving end of the texts).

This whole trial is a fucking nightmare. The relationship was clearly awful.

There is no goddamn winner.

And I’m not about to celebrate a successful 50 million dollar temper tantrum from a rich dude who degrades his partner in texts constantly – that’s abusive behaviour too.

So fuck your trauma Olympics, and fuck your moment to throw women under the bus because “well, men get abused too”.

Sure, that wasn’t up for debate – but when you hold up one abuser over the other as a victory, you’re setting a pretty fucking low bar for what we should be striving for.

Even if Amber Heard abused Johnny Depp, I still would not want to hang around a dude who says – “Let’s drown her before we burn her!!! I will f*** her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she is dead.” (If you don’t know what this is from, you maybe need to do more reading on the case)

That kind of dude is a walking red flag to me, and I want nothing to do with it.

And it seemed like a lot of women, and people with lived experience around abuse, that I saw sharing on their feeds – they saw those glowing red flags too.

But the tone seems different for them – because they are much more aware of how the people around them are shit talking the woman disproportionately in this situation. I didn’t really notice until I saw some women pointing it out…

And I shouldn’t have to say that! It shouldn’t be controversial, I shouldn’t be fucking upset that merely trying to point out the *fucking obvious red flag* in the room is there, gets people worked up to defend a famous rich white dude who sure as fuck does not need their help? And what’s worse, not only defend him, but to make sure they push her *down* – because why??

“oh, she lied”

Look me dead in the eye and tell me we got nothing but truth from the other side.

“she abused him, and it seems like she made up some of her allegations”

The texts that are on record as part of the trial are the words of an abusive man. The very language is abusive.

We’re never going to get the full truth of this relationship – and we’d be fools to think that’s what we got out of the trial. I feel pretty confident in saying we witnessed the trial of two people who were abusive to each other.

That’s all that needs to be said about it I think. Two people who were abusive to each other, that need to try and figure out how to move forward from here, and hopefully – to try and be better people.

Our opinions are worth fuck all. So it bothers me that I even have one – one that took this many stupid fucking words to articulate (and I skipped a lot), and I’m pissed off about other people’s opinions on something where none of us has any business judging the people that were in that toxic relationship – because we will never know the intimate details of people with that much money and power and influence. People who have made a living by telling us stories and getting us to believe them (or at least trying to get us to suspend disbelief).

If you believe Depp is a more talented actor, then could it not also be true he has the greater chance of deceiving you into buying his narrative?

Fuck both their stories, they both did harm – and I hope they both do better in the future.

Oh yeah, by the way, the trial was never about whether or not Heard abused Depp, it was a fucking defamation suit – over a Washington Post Op-Ed piece, that does not even name Depp, and was ghostwritten (ie. Amber Heard did not even write it).

What a fucking victory.