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Nov. 18th, 2009 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreI had another post here first but it was mostly distraction from the thing that's actually important because oh god, what if you noticed it, then I would have to hide. It was a hiding kind of post, really. But I'm going to write this post instead, I think.
Today, the children's librarian complimented me in conversation with a patron - she told him that I "have a quick mind". I was completely taken aback. Not because I think I'm not smart or good at my job - I know that I am those things. But because there is a part of my brain that regularly and automatically assumes that the people around me don't like me, think I'm uninteresting and annoying, and would pretty much rather I go away.
I am aware that that's the crazy part of my brain. I even pretty much know where it comes from - it's mostly middle school, and the bracketing years of elementary and high school, during which I knew some people who fucked me up pretty good in a bunch of ways. Not really their fault, I suppose. Middle school is a pretty dreadful time for everyone, I think. I have mostly forgiven them, I think, and I hope that the people I hurt during that time have forgiven me.
Still, the results linger. Simple things that other people take for granted are very difficult for me. Writing an email to a friend? Agony. What if I'm bothering them? What if this is the thing that makes them hate me? Using the telephone for the same purpose? Impossible. Hell, I hate using the telephone at all, for any person. I am probably bothering the pizza delivery guy, you know. It's occasionally difficult for me to post fannish stuff on my own damned blog, to reply to comments. It's really ridiculous but there is that little voice in the back of my brain always saying, "Shut up, shut up, this is the thing you get wrong."
...It is probably pretty damn obvious that I had what I guess I could call an emotionally abusive friendship during that period, right? Yeah. I was a shy and practically friendless little geek girl and she was a much stronger personality that I followed around. Some days, she was my best friend who loved me. Other days, she made fun of me behind my back and in front of my face, stole my things, and generally made my life hell. This went on for years. Once, she hit me. What had I done on the bad days? I was never sure. Looking back, I think I was probably somewhat annoyingly clingy - after all, I had no other friends. And I was a weirdo who talked to myself and listened to musical theater and read The Phantom of the Opera and Carmilla when I was nine and didn't really know how to interact with other people. That doesn't make what she did right - if she didn't like me, she should have told me and stopped being my friend. A clean break would probably have been better for both of us. Probably, I should have broken it off myself. But I wasn't that strong and sometimes, maybe, she did like me. There were enough of the good days to keep me around, certain that this time, I would get it right. I would be what she wanted and she would stay my friend. It never worked.
She dropped me pretty completely by the end of middle school and in high school, I met my first really truly actually good friend. (That would be you,faechild_jax. Hi! I love you and I miss you!) I was still in the same classes with my old friend, though. We went to the same church and everything. By junior year, she was nicer to me, in a vague "we were friends when we were young but now we don't really know each other" sort of way. Then I moved to Washington. She friended me a while ago on Facebook. We don't talk. I am a name she knows, a vaguely familiar face, a memory. I wonder what it is she remembers.
I don't talk about her much, at all.
The result is that I can't read people properly or, perhaps, that I don't know how to trust the things I do read. Someone says that they like me, they like having me around, they think what I have to say is intelligent and interesting and fun? Sure, they say that now. Tomorrow, next week, half an hour from now, it may be a different story. Someone may say that they find my babble entertaining but really, they think I am vacuous, trivial, boring. They are waiting until they can get me to leave. People will exploit my vulnerabilities, once they find them out. Thus, it's better to curl inward, say nothing, don't tell secrets. This is what she taught me. She made me, in part, what I am.
(There are other things too, that I trace pretty directly to that middle school period. My slight paranoia - there is a part of me that is convinced that groups of people laughing in my vicinity are always laughing at me. (Paranoia is awfully self-centered, isn't it?) My distrust of groups of certain kinds of teenaged girl. Never mind that I'm now at least ten years older than them, that they have no bearing on my life now at all. Those aren't due to the person mentioned above but rather to general bullying. Ah, the life of the awkward geek girl.)
Please don't take this post as a cry for reassurance. I'm pretty much aware that none the crazy that my brain tells me is true. (And, well, if it is, I certainly don't want confirmation.) I like myself, generally, and I know that I'm person who is worth knowing. Just, sometimes, this stuff comes up and I feel like I need to deal with it. Writing it out helps me look at it. And it's probably good for me to make myself post it, because that's hard too and it's something that I should deal with.
I am working on it. I am posting this, for one thing, and leaving the comments open, though, okay, it is under a cut. I am talking about my problems without some sort of self-deprecating disclaimer.* I talk to people, sometimes. I comment on blogs, sometimes. I go to choir. I go to church. I joined a non-fannish writing exchange and maybe next year I really will take the plunge and sign up for Yuletide. I use the phone when I have to. There are people that I love and I believe, most of the time, almost all the time, that they love me.
It comes and goes. I have brave days. Maybe next time someone says something nice about me, it won't be such a surprise.
And now, I have spent almost an hour writing this post so I am going to go think about something else for a while.
*And, oh, but that's hard, because in the relative scale of things my problems are not that bad and I go about my daily life like an almost normal person most of the time and what the hell right do I have to complain just because I need to write a goddamned script so I remember to breathe when I order a pizza? No right at all, Sara, not even on your own lj, now shut up and sit down. You see that this is a problem.
Today, the children's librarian complimented me in conversation with a patron - she told him that I "have a quick mind". I was completely taken aback. Not because I think I'm not smart or good at my job - I know that I am those things. But because there is a part of my brain that regularly and automatically assumes that the people around me don't like me, think I'm uninteresting and annoying, and would pretty much rather I go away.
I am aware that that's the crazy part of my brain. I even pretty much know where it comes from - it's mostly middle school, and the bracketing years of elementary and high school, during which I knew some people who fucked me up pretty good in a bunch of ways. Not really their fault, I suppose. Middle school is a pretty dreadful time for everyone, I think. I have mostly forgiven them, I think, and I hope that the people I hurt during that time have forgiven me.
Still, the results linger. Simple things that other people take for granted are very difficult for me. Writing an email to a friend? Agony. What if I'm bothering them? What if this is the thing that makes them hate me? Using the telephone for the same purpose? Impossible. Hell, I hate using the telephone at all, for any person. I am probably bothering the pizza delivery guy, you know. It's occasionally difficult for me to post fannish stuff on my own damned blog, to reply to comments. It's really ridiculous but there is that little voice in the back of my brain always saying, "Shut up, shut up, this is the thing you get wrong."
...It is probably pretty damn obvious that I had what I guess I could call an emotionally abusive friendship during that period, right? Yeah. I was a shy and practically friendless little geek girl and she was a much stronger personality that I followed around. Some days, she was my best friend who loved me. Other days, she made fun of me behind my back and in front of my face, stole my things, and generally made my life hell. This went on for years. Once, she hit me. What had I done on the bad days? I was never sure. Looking back, I think I was probably somewhat annoyingly clingy - after all, I had no other friends. And I was a weirdo who talked to myself and listened to musical theater and read The Phantom of the Opera and Carmilla when I was nine and didn't really know how to interact with other people. That doesn't make what she did right - if she didn't like me, she should have told me and stopped being my friend. A clean break would probably have been better for both of us. Probably, I should have broken it off myself. But I wasn't that strong and sometimes, maybe, she did like me. There were enough of the good days to keep me around, certain that this time, I would get it right. I would be what she wanted and she would stay my friend. It never worked.
She dropped me pretty completely by the end of middle school and in high school, I met my first really truly actually good friend. (That would be you,
faechild_jax. Hi! I love you and I miss you!) I was still in the same classes with my old friend, though. We went to the same church and everything. By junior year, she was nicer to me, in a vague "we were friends when we were young but now we don't really know each other" sort of way. Then I moved to Washington. She friended me a while ago on Facebook. We don't talk. I am a name she knows, a vaguely familiar face, a memory. I wonder what it is she remembers.I don't talk about her much, at all.
The result is that I can't read people properly or, perhaps, that I don't know how to trust the things I do read. Someone says that they like me, they like having me around, they think what I have to say is intelligent and interesting and fun? Sure, they say that now. Tomorrow, next week, half an hour from now, it may be a different story. Someone may say that they find my babble entertaining but really, they think I am vacuous, trivial, boring. They are waiting until they can get me to leave. People will exploit my vulnerabilities, once they find them out. Thus, it's better to curl inward, say nothing, don't tell secrets. This is what she taught me. She made me, in part, what I am.
(There are other things too, that I trace pretty directly to that middle school period. My slight paranoia - there is a part of me that is convinced that groups of people laughing in my vicinity are always laughing at me. (Paranoia is awfully self-centered, isn't it?) My distrust of groups of certain kinds of teenaged girl. Never mind that I'm now at least ten years older than them, that they have no bearing on my life now at all. Those aren't due to the person mentioned above but rather to general bullying. Ah, the life of the awkward geek girl.)
Please don't take this post as a cry for reassurance. I'm pretty much aware that none the crazy that my brain tells me is true. (And, well, if it is, I certainly don't want confirmation.) I like myself, generally, and I know that I'm person who is worth knowing. Just, sometimes, this stuff comes up and I feel like I need to deal with it. Writing it out helps me look at it. And it's probably good for me to make myself post it, because that's hard too and it's something that I should deal with.
I am working on it. I am posting this, for one thing, and leaving the comments open, though, okay, it is under a cut. I am talking about my problems without some sort of self-deprecating disclaimer.* I talk to people, sometimes. I comment on blogs, sometimes. I go to choir. I go to church. I joined a non-fannish writing exchange and maybe next year I really will take the plunge and sign up for Yuletide. I use the phone when I have to. There are people that I love and I believe, most of the time, almost all the time, that they love me.
It comes and goes. I have brave days. Maybe next time someone says something nice about me, it won't be such a surprise.
And now, I have spent almost an hour writing this post so I am going to go think about something else for a while.
*And, oh, but that's hard, because in the relative scale of things my problems are not that bad and I go about my daily life like an almost normal person most of the time and what the hell right do I have to complain just because I need to write a goddamned script so I remember to breathe when I order a pizza? No right at all, Sara, not even on your own lj, now shut up and sit down. You see that this is a problem.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-19 04:30 pm (UTC)