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Sunday, 5. July 2015
Night of Revelations
ell, 00:42h
Note: This is an addition to the one directly below, so you should read that first.
I guess part of the problem always was that I've never actually talked with anyone about anything of it. I've always been a sort of go-to person for some people, when they wanted to talk about their boyfriends, or their respective problems with teachers or anything, but I've never talked about any of my real problems. After all whom should I've been talking to?
My mum always had enough problems for herself, and she was one you wanted to keep in a good mood, so when being asked everything was always fine.
My brother was one I confided in at least partially, but he is a rather relaxed kind, something I've always envied and tried to achieve myself, in which I at least partially succeeded, temporarily. However, layed back as he was, he'd also never understood my problems.
And so I've gotten so used to just swallowing everything up, never showing anything, and making an all-well face to the public, that by the time someone came around I'd actually talk to, I'd so gotten used to not-talking, that I went on playing the sturdy, self confident person I always wanted to be, my actual vulnerable self only showing when it was fed by defeat of some kind.
So here, I'll try to finally talk about something:
For once I've always been kind of an odd kid. In Kindergarden I already always played with the other odd kids. Ok, to be honest, I've been playing with just about everyone, but also people where even my most liberal-minded friends, and even sometimes myself looking back, said: "What are you doing with them?"
And from the beginning I've never been in any group. I've gotten around with just about anyone, and thus I've never really belonged anywhere. In some ways that surely is good, but over time I've often enough even been a loner among loners.
The reason: I am somehow strange. I've got a hard time catching up to others, socially. I guess I managed to hide that to the 'grown-ups' at least, but looking back I can't help but notice that I've grown more and more socially awkward. I don't know when it started, but by fifth grade I had become was going to be the punching ball in class, the last one to be picked in sports, and increasingly iritable.
Most of the time I just took those classmates as idiots, their pranks as childplay, and it all as uniportant, because they did it to each other as well, but there were a few, only two or three, who saw that I was the weak one in the herd, who singled me out and under whom I suffered. Not physically, mind you, for I am quite capable of fighting back on that level, but mentally. I suffered, and never told, never showed, playing strong and selfconfident as always, as if nothing happened at all, or I just didn't care.
And while indeed the rational part of me didn't care, there was another, sub-concious part, that did. As I couldn't get any acknowledgement from the others my age, I sought acknowledgement in good marks, talents and interest, and comfort in books and music. This is going so far, that today I often have a hard time dealing with direct criticism. While the rational part of me knows that it's right, that I did a mistake and that I can do it better, there's the irrational part, slowly growing stronger, turning things around, saying I should have know, I could have done it, but I'll never make it, never be good, repeating that over and over again, until it's shut down by a proof to the opposite. And while most of the time, I manage to ignore it, when things pile up, I suddenly break up in tears, sometimes because of a very minor thing, and although I know what's trigger I actually never know why, and I don't even want to, I want to be strong, but I can't because, in that situation at least, I am not, which only feeds the irrational part which has taken control over me then.
Another part is that I have a horribly hard time letting go of things. Although I know I can't go back there, and it was better to give it up, because things were already falling appart, I always long for the time when it all was allright. For the few things where I was actually part of something, knew that I accomplished something. I guess that goes in accordance with what I already described.
For a long time I've managed to get around with that. I've lied to myself, and most of all lied to everyone else, pretending that I was completely fine and only seldomely, involuntarily showing that I was not. But now that I suddenly got a little more stress on me than usual, my little pretense of strength is rapidly breaking down and my resilience, mental, emotional and physical, quickly fading. I guess if I ever want to deal with that problem, I should start now, and maybe talking about it here, is a first step.
I guess part of the problem always was that I've never actually talked with anyone about anything of it. I've always been a sort of go-to person for some people, when they wanted to talk about their boyfriends, or their respective problems with teachers or anything, but I've never talked about any of my real problems. After all whom should I've been talking to?
My mum always had enough problems for herself, and she was one you wanted to keep in a good mood, so when being asked everything was always fine.
My brother was one I confided in at least partially, but he is a rather relaxed kind, something I've always envied and tried to achieve myself, in which I at least partially succeeded, temporarily. However, layed back as he was, he'd also never understood my problems.
And so I've gotten so used to just swallowing everything up, never showing anything, and making an all-well face to the public, that by the time someone came around I'd actually talk to, I'd so gotten used to not-talking, that I went on playing the sturdy, self confident person I always wanted to be, my actual vulnerable self only showing when it was fed by defeat of some kind.
So here, I'll try to finally talk about something:
For once I've always been kind of an odd kid. In Kindergarden I already always played with the other odd kids. Ok, to be honest, I've been playing with just about everyone, but also people where even my most liberal-minded friends, and even sometimes myself looking back, said: "What are you doing with them?"
And from the beginning I've never been in any group. I've gotten around with just about anyone, and thus I've never really belonged anywhere. In some ways that surely is good, but over time I've often enough even been a loner among loners.
The reason: I am somehow strange. I've got a hard time catching up to others, socially. I guess I managed to hide that to the 'grown-ups' at least, but looking back I can't help but notice that I've grown more and more socially awkward. I don't know when it started, but by fifth grade I had become was going to be the punching ball in class, the last one to be picked in sports, and increasingly iritable.
Most of the time I just took those classmates as idiots, their pranks as childplay, and it all as uniportant, because they did it to each other as well, but there were a few, only two or three, who saw that I was the weak one in the herd, who singled me out and under whom I suffered. Not physically, mind you, for I am quite capable of fighting back on that level, but mentally. I suffered, and never told, never showed, playing strong and selfconfident as always, as if nothing happened at all, or I just didn't care.
And while indeed the rational part of me didn't care, there was another, sub-concious part, that did. As I couldn't get any acknowledgement from the others my age, I sought acknowledgement in good marks, talents and interest, and comfort in books and music. This is going so far, that today I often have a hard time dealing with direct criticism. While the rational part of me knows that it's right, that I did a mistake and that I can do it better, there's the irrational part, slowly growing stronger, turning things around, saying I should have know, I could have done it, but I'll never make it, never be good, repeating that over and over again, until it's shut down by a proof to the opposite. And while most of the time, I manage to ignore it, when things pile up, I suddenly break up in tears, sometimes because of a very minor thing, and although I know what's trigger I actually never know why, and I don't even want to, I want to be strong, but I can't because, in that situation at least, I am not, which only feeds the irrational part which has taken control over me then.
Another part is that I have a horribly hard time letting go of things. Although I know I can't go back there, and it was better to give it up, because things were already falling appart, I always long for the time when it all was allright. For the few things where I was actually part of something, knew that I accomplished something. I guess that goes in accordance with what I already described.
For a long time I've managed to get around with that. I've lied to myself, and most of all lied to everyone else, pretending that I was completely fine and only seldomely, involuntarily showing that I was not. But now that I suddenly got a little more stress on me than usual, my little pretense of strength is rapidly breaking down and my resilience, mental, emotional and physical, quickly fading. I guess if I ever want to deal with that problem, I should start now, and maybe talking about it here, is a first step.
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Missing My Folks
ell, 23:27h
It's true that most of the time you only truely know what you had when you don't have it anymore. And it's only now that I realize that in the last few years of school I actually had people. I've never been much of a groupy person, never really had a gang. Sure, in Elementary school I had the other kids of the village, there was always someone around somewhere, and when that slowly fell appart because everyone was going to different schools, I started to find other friends, but up until the very last years, I've never actually had something like 'my' people.
Never before I was constantly sitting around with the same guys in the brakes and not getting anoyed. For the first time we shared the same jokes, laughing about everything, without actually knowing why it was funny. But now...
They're actually still here. Not too far away, but somehow unreachable. And I notice that I am more and more out of the loop. Not getting all the jokes anymore. Never knowing what's actually going on. And only learning anything that's new when I stumble on it by accident, while for everyone else it actually is yesterdays news already.
And what's making matters worse, in over half a year, I haven't found anything like new people yet - because before I never knew how I actually needed them. While they have stolen themselves into my life they have become a main reason, if not sometimes the reason, why I was actually going to school. For days I was sometimes looking forward to sitting there in the breakes, chatting, laughing, but it's only now that I realize.
I, and surely also quite some others, have always seen myself as a strong person, independet, rather grown up for my age, intelligent, that sort of thing. I've always been the one who'd speak up, who'd just walk up to people and ask them for something. The one who'd ring the bell of the house with the grumpy old lady. But right now, I only see the facade of selfconfidence crumbling, to reveal the girl with the book in the corner, shy, silent and horribly socially awkward, stammering when speaking to a group and not talking to anyone otherwise. And I feel like I'm travelling back in time. Once again I am the kid in fifth class, sitting in a room full of other children, knowing no one, and not daring to speak to anyone. But now I'm not a kid anymore, who knows that, whatever will happen, live in school will just go on as usual, at least for the next few years, and it will play out nicely sowehow. Now I am nineteen years old, and supposed to take the first steps in the world of the grown ups, but now that for the first time I'm facing a real crisis, if you can call it that, I revert into the nine-year-old who's crying herself to sleep while downstairs the parents are fighting.
In school we learned that our capability of dealing with crisis and going out of them without permanent damage is called resilience and this is dependant on the people around us and the things that are important to us. Right now I only realize that I don't have the resilience I thought I had, and that although it's so important in our job. Sure, I have the choir and the riding lessons, but that's not what I need, not solely at least. It's getting making me high for a few hours, like morphine, taking the pain, but once that's over, I'm just right again, where I started. And the reason? Because it's lacking the people. There's no real looking forward to it, nothing that binds me there. No one I'm waiting the whole week to see and talk to. I could do that with anyone else, only the fact that I have no one else to do it with, is keeping me there.
And then of course, there's Liz. And Scotland. But that's still seeming to be so horribly unreal. And also, that will be ten days, and then they'll all go somewhere and I'll be back here, alone. The girl in the corner with the book. The one who doesn't go out alone, and who's got no one who'd take her.
Before you get all upset, this isn't anyones fault, it's just how it is. And I am still far from suicidal, or desperate, or anything in that direction. Ok, maybe I'm a little desperate, but I'm like that rather often, I've simply learned to hide it pretty well most of the time. This is only the realization of a porblem, or maybe the first step of talking about something I have already realized long ago, but never dared to speak about. And you know what they say, realization is the first step to a solution. However right now it doesn't quite feel like it, this is a problem I haven't solved in ten years. And right now it feels like it's growing worse, while this time fortune doesn't seem to intend to be favouring me again.
I guess some things come to you only once in live. And like lightening, a peanut doesn't seem to strike twice.
Never before I was constantly sitting around with the same guys in the brakes and not getting anoyed. For the first time we shared the same jokes, laughing about everything, without actually knowing why it was funny. But now...
They're actually still here. Not too far away, but somehow unreachable. And I notice that I am more and more out of the loop. Not getting all the jokes anymore. Never knowing what's actually going on. And only learning anything that's new when I stumble on it by accident, while for everyone else it actually is yesterdays news already.
And what's making matters worse, in over half a year, I haven't found anything like new people yet - because before I never knew how I actually needed them. While they have stolen themselves into my life they have become a main reason, if not sometimes the reason, why I was actually going to school. For days I was sometimes looking forward to sitting there in the breakes, chatting, laughing, but it's only now that I realize.
I, and surely also quite some others, have always seen myself as a strong person, independet, rather grown up for my age, intelligent, that sort of thing. I've always been the one who'd speak up, who'd just walk up to people and ask them for something. The one who'd ring the bell of the house with the grumpy old lady. But right now, I only see the facade of selfconfidence crumbling, to reveal the girl with the book in the corner, shy, silent and horribly socially awkward, stammering when speaking to a group and not talking to anyone otherwise. And I feel like I'm travelling back in time. Once again I am the kid in fifth class, sitting in a room full of other children, knowing no one, and not daring to speak to anyone. But now I'm not a kid anymore, who knows that, whatever will happen, live in school will just go on as usual, at least for the next few years, and it will play out nicely sowehow. Now I am nineteen years old, and supposed to take the first steps in the world of the grown ups, but now that for the first time I'm facing a real crisis, if you can call it that, I revert into the nine-year-old who's crying herself to sleep while downstairs the parents are fighting.
In school we learned that our capability of dealing with crisis and going out of them without permanent damage is called resilience and this is dependant on the people around us and the things that are important to us. Right now I only realize that I don't have the resilience I thought I had, and that although it's so important in our job. Sure, I have the choir and the riding lessons, but that's not what I need, not solely at least. It's getting making me high for a few hours, like morphine, taking the pain, but once that's over, I'm just right again, where I started. And the reason? Because it's lacking the people. There's no real looking forward to it, nothing that binds me there. No one I'm waiting the whole week to see and talk to. I could do that with anyone else, only the fact that I have no one else to do it with, is keeping me there.
And then of course, there's Liz. And Scotland. But that's still seeming to be so horribly unreal. And also, that will be ten days, and then they'll all go somewhere and I'll be back here, alone. The girl in the corner with the book. The one who doesn't go out alone, and who's got no one who'd take her.
Before you get all upset, this isn't anyones fault, it's just how it is. And I am still far from suicidal, or desperate, or anything in that direction. Ok, maybe I'm a little desperate, but I'm like that rather often, I've simply learned to hide it pretty well most of the time. This is only the realization of a porblem, or maybe the first step of talking about something I have already realized long ago, but never dared to speak about. And you know what they say, realization is the first step to a solution. However right now it doesn't quite feel like it, this is a problem I haven't solved in ten years. And right now it feels like it's growing worse, while this time fortune doesn't seem to intend to be favouring me again.
I guess some things come to you only once in live. And like lightening, a peanut doesn't seem to strike twice.
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