What I Can't Really Forget

Kathryn

http://www.angelfire.comoz/victimofthebully/index.html

It was in the hospital that I began to see hope for me. I was in a controlled environment where I was safe from violence. This was the best period in my life since I was a toddler. After time, I began to learn that this sense of being safe as an very small child was mainly wishful thinking. I learned from psychiatrists that I also suffered abuse from my mother. This abuse was both physical and worst of all, mental. It seems adults sense things unconsciously; my mother sensed an early rejection of her, on my part, and a strong preference for my father. For this reason, I suffered a double trauma, the rejection of my advances towards my father and the resentment of my mother. Later, this was replayed out in life as boys rejected what were unconscious advances, on my part, by becoming physically violent towards me, bulling me when actually I wanted their admiration and love. This all came out of the psychoanalytically oriented theories of the later 1960s, but what I learned did seem to make perfect sense. I wanted the love of my father, he rejected me, as I wanted the love of boys who beat me, at the same time my mother condoned both actions. As time went on, I went through many transitions, one being becoming more an adult and the other being more secure in my sense of femaleness. What I could not contend with was the pathology of my condition itself. I could not accept myself as a normal maturing woman. As I entered adulthood, I looked at my condition as a horrible disease, which, fortunately, I could conceal, I became someone with a present, but without a past. I don't believe I choose to be different. I never wanted to be part of any alternative lifestyle. All I wanted is to be normal and ordinary. I am only really sure of one thing, I wanted to be protected and allowed to be by myself most of the time, without fear of people. I felt I had the right to live, and for me, living meant being someone safe, someone people would like and like to look at. I was once unsure as to why I was so often tortured so much for so many years because of the way I looked, or the way I acted? I later realized that it was both, I acted like a female child. I do know I started out a nice person, I was a nice person, but today, I am someone who has more anger inside myself than anyone I have ever known! So how do I control this anger? I try to stay clear of any place, or event where people can react to me spontaneously. I am fortunate in one way, I have a great capacity for tolerating being alone. As a child, I was a voracious reader; I was able to entertain myself, having a natural tendency towards introvertion, I fould it easy to occupy myself with learning. I went to college, then though graduate school three times. I never made close friends, but was usually admired by other students for my academic ability, therefore, in college, I was received well. My motto has always been, the less a person knows about me, the more they will like me; I could say, I have had many associations, but few friends. It seems funny, persons who get to know me, usually like me? One reason might be it is always their effort which brings about the closeness. I never make efforts to become close to anyone, mainly because I fear they will pry into my past, that dark abyss, the pit of hell I try to forget. Personal issues trigger, in me a fear greater than I believe I can relate through text. I'm not someone who wants any confrontation about any personal issue, therefore, persons find me difficult to bond with. This issue about bonding is another aspect of my mental illness brought about by being bullied in childhood. Anything personal is a threat to my sense of self. What I have done, which has worked well in the past is reinvent myself to such a degree that I am never questioned about being different. I lived an extremely conservative lifestyle. This is partly because I really am a traditionalist, but it is more because being traditional is safe. I just played it safe and took the good with the bad. Just what is the good? The good is being able to get by as someone who is treated as sane, when one has severe emotional problems; it is having other persons, usually men, help you because you are willing to be subservient. In order to function relatively well I always needed outside support to run interference, between myself and the stress the outside world produces. For this reason, I usually subjugated myself to persons, so they would, in exchange, act as a go-between myself and the outside world. I always relied on men, not just to change my car tires, or fix a leaky faucet, but to make calls for me, to find hired repair workers, to talk to the tax office, always being there so I would not have to speak. For most of my adult life, I have remained voiceless, and my weakened identity guarded by stronger persons, that is, persons with greater ego strength. Recently I became very sick with hepatitis C. My mate passed on and being a very dependent personality, I was afraid to attempt the treatment in my present living environment. My home was away from a small town where my only friend moved away. This led me into a new direction in my life, I met someone who was willing to save me from what seemed certain doom, but this person knew about my old issues long since burried. I moved to a different part of the country close to her in a very large city. I also began to see doctors and soon was on my way to receiving the treatment for hepatitis C. Everything changed, I am now in a very small apartment, afraid to go outside, as I always have been, as I never was able to adjust to the anxiety to being about in the would, even in a small town, let alone, a large city. My phobia is the result of my fear over exposure, to anyone not perceiving me as normal. For me being female used to mean being normal, yet being normal, which was the original motive, in my case, has long been replaced with the fear of exposure. It has therefore, become more a concern to be caught failing at being normal than it is to be abnormal. The answer is not actually a choice, but an eventuality.