Posted by HyperFocus on July 24, 2009, at 0:58:17
It is a long tale to try and explain some of the psychological abuse I lived through so don't dive in if you don't want to swim for too long. All through high school I was bullied extensively - not physically, but psychologically - which of course leaves no marks but is much more insidious. My grades were mediocre-to-poor and despite scoring highly on the SAT I did not apply to any Ivy League schools. I simply thought that I was no where near good enough to get accepted. I went to the local university like everyone else.
When I entered university I had very bad social anxiety and I was struggling with the effects of PTSD and my mental state was fragile because I did not know what was happening with me (the flashbacks seemed like hallucinations.) I was estranged from my family because I had a lot of internal anger and I guess they were the easiest target. But I began to blossom intellectually. Free for the time being from my tormentors, for three years I worked hard and my grades were very good and for the first time ever I feel an interest in what I was doing and a deep fascination and love for my studies. I entered into what would have been my last year in school and had my eyes set on grad school at Princeton.
But in that last year at university things became terminal. I was stupid and naive and was in love with a girl who had a boyfriend. I moved in with a person who was charming and attractive on the outside but turned out to be extremely vindictive and envious inside. I was doing my studies not because I wanted some position in the university, but because I loved what I did. This apparently was a great transgression in my department. I asked a lot of questions. I started to use computers to eliminate some of the drudgery of the exercises I had - something that nobody else in the department seem to understand - and I became somewhat short and impatient with the grad students who were supervising us (and in theory helping us.)
Probably every day for the past 10 years I've asked myself why I had to be treated the way I was that last year. Obviously because of my experiences in high school I was vulnerable and left myself wide open to attack but something more has become evident to me recently. The year before I had won the highest university scholarship and and at the end of that year I had also gotten a faculty prize. I was also very close but platonic friends with a very attractive girl who used to visit me a lot in my apartment. Internally I was in pieces, only functioning at a moderate level, but externally people may have looked at me as if I had a lot.
And then it started. The person I lived with began abusing me - yelling at me and putting me down for minor things. She never liked to see me spending time with my friends or family. My female friend with her lowrise jeans seemed to aggravate her especially. She would be nice one minute, usually when she wanted me to study with her or do something for her, and the next minute slamming doors in my face. Of course she was totally different with everybody else, even with my own family members. This confused me greatly - clearly I was the one at fault. I didn't know at the time but apparently she was at the bottom of her med school class and in danger of failing. I also did not intially know that she had found out from my fam that I was suffering with mental illness and taking meds, something that was probably said by them out of concern for me, in the hope that my roommate could help (being a future doctor and all.) I can't recall exactly but it seemed that her behavior towards me changed for the worst around the time when one of my fam stayed overnight with me so we could go to the Faculty awards ceremony together. The mistake I made, which I regret to this day, is that I never told anyone how that I was living with this person who was abusing me literally every day. My PTSD skyrocketed although I didn't know this at the time. She was also very manipulative - after the first incident I was like screw her and pretty much ignored her, but she became very sweet and asked why I was so cold with her and why did I have to be so "moody." This would be repeated over and over again. Yes I'm smart about certain things but pretty dumb with everything else. Sometimes I wonder if I have some kind of autism.
The grad students who worked with the final-year students began grading my papers down, telling the lecturers that I was arrogant and thought I knew everything but really knew nothing. During a important presentation I saw them laughing and making faces at me, trying to throw me off. It didn't work though. But they continued in what they were doing. I don't really know the extent of what was said about me in the department. It seemed so childish to me. But my attendance and work began to decline drastically and of course this seemed to validate what they were saying about me.
I confessed my love to the girl. She blew me off of course, which was bad enough. Then I found out that she was telling everyone we knew that I had made a move on her - the way she elaborated it made it seem like I had try to force sexual advances on her. The people who she told this too were the same people who had bullied me in high school. It was the kind of nightmarish redux that was to great to be processed consciously - I had to bury it deep down because I really couldn't deal with.
These things were very damaging to me because in previous times if somebody said I was ugly or I had a weird haircut or I had cheap sneakers, it seemed to be something external to me. But this time the abuse was targeted towards my core being - the things that were important to me. So I dropped out and have spent the last ten years half unemployed / half working as a computer programmer way below my capabilities. I also tried resuming my studies but ended up in the same place. And everyday asking myself why. When it happens to you once you can say it's their fault. When it happens twice it can only be yours. Clearly something was deeply and fundamentally wrong with me and I was deserving of ridicule - this is what I believed.Ok I'm alive. I'm not dead so they didn't win. I don't have a degree and have very debilitating mental problems and I've been wandering in an emotional wasteland for 10 years. But Hemmingway wrote that you can be destroyed but not be defeated. I'm not defeated, thanks in no small part to the wonderful people here who talked me down when I was seriously suicidal after going back to university and failing again.
But I just wish I had said something to somebody. Talked to the lecturers that I was being victimized by the grad students in the department who had taking a dislike to me for whatever reason. Talked to my family or friends that the person I lived with had turned into some kind of monster who never let an opportunity go to put me down. Talked to somebody that the girl I had liked had somehow decided she was going to destroy my reputation.
So why did I stay silent? Couple of reasons. One is that honestly at the time it didn't seem like a big deal. At the time I never expereinced the pain I'm experiencing now so I just let it go. I could not know that these things would come to haunt me so much for so many years. I was also very ashamed of taking on what seemed like trivial things. I did not have a good relationship with my family at time - i felt I had no one to talk to. Or rather I did not know that I should talk to someone. And of course, I felt that these things were all my fault. I did not know how full of evil this world is and the lengths people will got to bring you down. These days reading accounts of psychological abuse and the traits of victims and the predators that feed on them really tears me up because it should have been so obvious to me. But it wan't. I have a huge amount of guilt about not telling anybody what was happening to me - it would have stopped right there.
Why I'm writing this now is thst tonight my younger brother and I had a long conversation that it seemed to me we have never ever had. Over the past few weeks things have been changing, slowly but noticeably. For the first time in a long time I feel like part of family and I realize the enourmous strength that this gives a person.
I don't want to offend any religious sentiments here, but I believe Judeo-Christainity is right when it expresses the primacy of a relationship with your parents - "honor your mother and father" Parents are are tasked by Nature to protect their children and are equipped with extremely powerful tools do so. My mother can feel things are not right with me from long distances away - nobody else in life will ever have that capability. If I had remained close to my family and shared my burdens would them I would be a lot happier today.
I have to find a way to let the past go. I have lost many years of my life but I still have many left. I have to forgive myself. I would like to believe what I went through was for a reason. Maybe if I had gone on to have a brilliant academic career I would have forsaken my family permanently. But being cast so low has made me realize many important truths about life and what is really important. Perhaps one day I shall be happy that my life turned out the way it did and I can forgive my abusers.
poster:HyperFocus
thread:908277
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20090714/msgs/908277.html