the real yeti
Greenlighter
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2011
- Messages
- 31
For fourteen years I have been the target of relentless violence and abuse, subjected to some of the most cold and ruthless forms of behavior achievable by someone who can't even legally buy a pack of cigarettes. I was treated like scum, like a rat, like a useless fucking piece of trash with redeeming qualities similar to those of ebola. The very first days of my schooling brought with them the beginning of a long period of involuntary social isolation and anxiety that in some forms continues to live with me to this day.
In elementary school, a small group of classmates bullied me in every way imaginable. They unrelentingly antagonized me, pushed me around, treated me like a sack of shit. I was called names like "dork", "weenie", "stupid", and "retard", none of which are particularly offensive now but to an elementary school student they have a similar affect to a fucking boot heel to the face. These kids, these useless fucks, who were much more popular than me, forced me to be a social fucking outcast, a god damn pariah, all for nothing but their own fucked-up amusement. If I think hard enough, I can still feel their fists and their boots pummeling my curled-up body and hear their shrieks of joy echoing off the walls of the school and the snowy playground equipment. To this day, I feel nothing but burning, almost violent hatred for these people.
In middle school, after my family moved across the country, the physical abuse mostly halted, although I can still recall a handful of incidents that took place in that fucking gymnasium locker room. The verbal abuse, however, increased dramatically. Again, a new group of bored, talentless jocks, with their fucking football obsessions and macho fucking attitudes, (yeah, you're so tough when you're in fucking middle school) decided it would be fun to pick on the new kid. "Dork" turned into "ass wipe", "weenie" turned into "nerd", "stupid" turned into "prick", and "retard" turned into "shit head". Slowly, however, I learned to get back at the fuckers. I learned to be sneaky, careful with my retaliation, and drew as little attention to myself as possible. When the bastards took my snack money, I snuck to their lockless lockers (Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?) and stole their whole fucking lunchbox. They pushed me down, so I hid a stink bomb in their backpacks. Payback sure was fucking sweet. My loneliness was countered by the satisfaction I got from watching my revenge work in my favor.
High school brought another two and a half years of shitshow hallway war, an isolated I against a group of popular and well-liked kids who I despised fucking passion. Their abuse had isolated me among my few-dozen student class, driven me away from most of my peers as a result of the near-impossibility of a mutual friendship with any of my tormentors; I wasn't exactly what you might call a social butterfly. When I changed schools halfway through junior year, I escaped further abuse at the cost of social isolation in a high school with fewer than sixty students. Eleven years of brutal abuse had taken their toll, though, and I began developing severe social anxiety issues, later diagnosed as General Anxiety Disorder.
Are you fucking kidding me? For fuck's sake, these god damn assholes gave me a fucking anxiety disorder that's only getting fucking worse as time passes. As a result of their torment I'm now severely socially anxious and astronomically hypercritical and self-conscious. It's fucking ridiculous. I can't even send a god damn text message to one of my female friends without whipping up a shit storm of anxiety about whether or not it's creepy. I've been entirely convinced that I'm an ugly, awkward, tactless, uninteresting geek with fewer distinguishing features than a blank sheet of paper. I'm not socially incompetent, but I feel like I am, which is nearly as bad. It's fucking crippling and almost impossible to fix. They've deprived me of some of the most important social skills one can have, they've taken a toll on me that is almost impossible to put into words. And I will not shed one tear at their funerals. They can eat shit and fucking die.
But guess what. I'm in college now. I'm a freshman at a great school in a big city. I've got a clean slate. I can be whoever I want to be. For the first time in my life, all nineteen years of it, I'm in a place where people are actually interested in who I am, in getting to know me better as a person. People finally care about me because they take an interest in my unique combination of talents, traits, and views that define my personhood. I'm treated like a human, not some fucking lab rat, expendable and valueless.
Sure, my anxiety jerks me around. But fuck it, I refuse to let it control me. I did that before and it made me miserable. I'm in control of my own destiny, not some imbalance in brain activity or a useless fucking degenerate prick with zero grasp on the reality of his incompetence. I'm going to beat this anxiety disorder. I've got a clonazepam prescription to stop its progression and I'll use my willpower to kick the living shit out of it. I'm my own fucking person and I'm a god damn man, and my emotional scars won't stand in my way any longer.
As miserable as I once was, and as troubled as I sometimes still am, I think I'll get the last laugh out of this whole ass-backwards scenario. I wear my scars like the rings on a pimp. They no longer hinder me, they only remind me what I'm capable of withstanding. My scars highlight what my strengths are, show me what I can do better than anyone else around me, and allow me to take advantage of my personal characteristics like I never would have been able to before. And they've taught me one irreplaceable lesson:
You're not defined by the situations you've been placed in, good or bad, but by what you make of them. Letting life, fate, your peers, or whatever else the force may be whip you around like a ragdoll will very rarely result in a positive outcome. My life is my own, and nobody else can define where I go next, only me. My destiny is a byproduct of my own conscious actions.
Even as I sit here in the wee hours of the morning, writing this admittedly verbose piece, I think I can feel myself getting better. Even writing about it like this, hoping someone will reply, helps me grasp at what I can do to help myself out of this state. In all honesty, this is the first time I've really talked at any length about this, at least in the past year or so. Thank you, Bluelight, for giving me an effective release and a great body of support.
I'm sitting here, in front of my computer, and I haven't slept a wink tonight. As I look out the window, I notice the all-consuming blackness has weakened slightly; the darkest hours of the night are slowly but surely giving way to a glimmer of light. It'll still be quite a while until the light fully emerges, but the signal is there; it's coming.
The sun is shining every day.
In elementary school, a small group of classmates bullied me in every way imaginable. They unrelentingly antagonized me, pushed me around, treated me like a sack of shit. I was called names like "dork", "weenie", "stupid", and "retard", none of which are particularly offensive now but to an elementary school student they have a similar affect to a fucking boot heel to the face. These kids, these useless fucks, who were much more popular than me, forced me to be a social fucking outcast, a god damn pariah, all for nothing but their own fucked-up amusement. If I think hard enough, I can still feel their fists and their boots pummeling my curled-up body and hear their shrieks of joy echoing off the walls of the school and the snowy playground equipment. To this day, I feel nothing but burning, almost violent hatred for these people.
In middle school, after my family moved across the country, the physical abuse mostly halted, although I can still recall a handful of incidents that took place in that fucking gymnasium locker room. The verbal abuse, however, increased dramatically. Again, a new group of bored, talentless jocks, with their fucking football obsessions and macho fucking attitudes, (yeah, you're so tough when you're in fucking middle school) decided it would be fun to pick on the new kid. "Dork" turned into "ass wipe", "weenie" turned into "nerd", "stupid" turned into "prick", and "retard" turned into "shit head". Slowly, however, I learned to get back at the fuckers. I learned to be sneaky, careful with my retaliation, and drew as little attention to myself as possible. When the bastards took my snack money, I snuck to their lockless lockers (Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?) and stole their whole fucking lunchbox. They pushed me down, so I hid a stink bomb in their backpacks. Payback sure was fucking sweet. My loneliness was countered by the satisfaction I got from watching my revenge work in my favor.
High school brought another two and a half years of shitshow hallway war, an isolated I against a group of popular and well-liked kids who I despised fucking passion. Their abuse had isolated me among my few-dozen student class, driven me away from most of my peers as a result of the near-impossibility of a mutual friendship with any of my tormentors; I wasn't exactly what you might call a social butterfly. When I changed schools halfway through junior year, I escaped further abuse at the cost of social isolation in a high school with fewer than sixty students. Eleven years of brutal abuse had taken their toll, though, and I began developing severe social anxiety issues, later diagnosed as General Anxiety Disorder.
Are you fucking kidding me? For fuck's sake, these god damn assholes gave me a fucking anxiety disorder that's only getting fucking worse as time passes. As a result of their torment I'm now severely socially anxious and astronomically hypercritical and self-conscious. It's fucking ridiculous. I can't even send a god damn text message to one of my female friends without whipping up a shit storm of anxiety about whether or not it's creepy. I've been entirely convinced that I'm an ugly, awkward, tactless, uninteresting geek with fewer distinguishing features than a blank sheet of paper. I'm not socially incompetent, but I feel like I am, which is nearly as bad. It's fucking crippling and almost impossible to fix. They've deprived me of some of the most important social skills one can have, they've taken a toll on me that is almost impossible to put into words. And I will not shed one tear at their funerals. They can eat shit and fucking die.
But guess what. I'm in college now. I'm a freshman at a great school in a big city. I've got a clean slate. I can be whoever I want to be. For the first time in my life, all nineteen years of it, I'm in a place where people are actually interested in who I am, in getting to know me better as a person. People finally care about me because they take an interest in my unique combination of talents, traits, and views that define my personhood. I'm treated like a human, not some fucking lab rat, expendable and valueless.
Sure, my anxiety jerks me around. But fuck it, I refuse to let it control me. I did that before and it made me miserable. I'm in control of my own destiny, not some imbalance in brain activity or a useless fucking degenerate prick with zero grasp on the reality of his incompetence. I'm going to beat this anxiety disorder. I've got a clonazepam prescription to stop its progression and I'll use my willpower to kick the living shit out of it. I'm my own fucking person and I'm a god damn man, and my emotional scars won't stand in my way any longer.
As miserable as I once was, and as troubled as I sometimes still am, I think I'll get the last laugh out of this whole ass-backwards scenario. I wear my scars like the rings on a pimp. They no longer hinder me, they only remind me what I'm capable of withstanding. My scars highlight what my strengths are, show me what I can do better than anyone else around me, and allow me to take advantage of my personal characteristics like I never would have been able to before. And they've taught me one irreplaceable lesson:
You're not defined by the situations you've been placed in, good or bad, but by what you make of them. Letting life, fate, your peers, or whatever else the force may be whip you around like a ragdoll will very rarely result in a positive outcome. My life is my own, and nobody else can define where I go next, only me. My destiny is a byproduct of my own conscious actions.
Even as I sit here in the wee hours of the morning, writing this admittedly verbose piece, I think I can feel myself getting better. Even writing about it like this, hoping someone will reply, helps me grasp at what I can do to help myself out of this state. In all honesty, this is the first time I've really talked at any length about this, at least in the past year or so. Thank you, Bluelight, for giving me an effective release and a great body of support.
I'm sitting here, in front of my computer, and I haven't slept a wink tonight. As I look out the window, I notice the all-consuming blackness has weakened slightly; the darkest hours of the night are slowly but surely giving way to a glimmer of light. It'll still be quite a while until the light fully emerges, but the signal is there; it's coming.
The sun is shining every day.
