Yesterday was sadness. Today it’s bitterness.
A lot of people have failed me in my life. So much so that it’s more or less what I expect of people as a default.
Trusting that people will be there for me is very hard as a result.
Here’s some examples of why.
My family failed me. Profoundly. And deeply.
They were supposed to be the people who cared about me the most. Who were willing to protect me, comfort me, talk to me, make me feel wanted and valued and appreciated. To give me a sense of belonging. To make me feel loved.
Instead, they made me feel like an unwanted and vexing burden whose sole job was to minimize evidence of my existence so they could get as close as possible to completely forgetting they had ever been cursed with my existence.
Nobody ever actually said that, of course. Then they would have to recognize their own shittiness and take responsibility for it.
They just treated me that way.
More specifically, my siblings failed me. They never made room for me at the metaphorical table. Never gave me an equal share of the resources. Never treated me like an equal. Never wanted to spend time with me.
Never let me in.
My father failed me in so many ways. By failing to hold his temper or be patient, leaving me terrified of him for most of my early years. By therefore completely failing to be a mentor, a role model, a protector, or a teacher to me.
In other words, by failing to be a father at all.
He failed me most profoundly by leaving me alone in a shower stall at his gym to get raped by a stranger. Who the fuck leave a naked four year old alone in a public place?
And like…why?
And my mother failed me worst of all because she did it while still seeming like the same warm, caring person I had known as a child.
But when she went back to work, she abandoned me to be raised by a babysitter. She had been such a wonderful mother for me before then. Kind, affectionate, loving, caring, full of sunshine and hugs and idiomatic French.
Then all that ended. I guess I wasn’t cute enough any more. She went back to work and the warm and loving center of my personal universe went cold.
And as time went by, she withdrew even further from me. Still acting like the same lovely person as before, but profoundly absent where it counted, Emotionally.
And I think that’s what hurt me the most. It’s like the sun stayed in the sky but stopped providing any warmth at all.
She left me with effective no parents at all. She was always at work, or too tired after work to be there for me, or too busy with housework, or too depressed in general to be there for me at all.
So I was deeply and cruelly alone from a very young age and that really hurt me.
It was so much easier when I could just blame everything on the rape.
More after the break,
The bitterness continues
That takes care of my family. Let’s move on to the rest.
Quite obviously, my schools failed me. ESPECIALLY Parkside Elementary School on 100 Summer Street in Summerside, Prince Edward Island.
They failed me in two major ways.
The obvious one is that they completely failed to shield me from bullying. They all knew how I was treated on the playground. They knew why I kept trying to hide in the school instead of playing with the other kids at recess. They knew why I spent lunch time in the library, the one room in the school that ALWAYS had a teacher in it and where there were so many books to read.
They either knew and accepted it, or knew and ignored it. Forgot all about it because I was a low status kid who therefore didn’t matter.
But the other way they failed me was by not having any idea how to handle a super smart kid like me. And because they didn’t know what to do with me, they ignored me, and that made me feel like it was all my fault. That there was something wrong with me and I was being punished for it by being ignored by the teachers to be beaten up by my fellow students and be bored out of my mind during class.
Sure, they could have asked around, maybe invited a specialist or two in, consulted with their colleagues in other schools, maybe even brought it up with the school board.
But there was no way to them that I was worth even one percent of that effort. Work harder in other to benefit from that smartass little fat slob who thinks it’s so much smarter than us? Get real.
I was, and am, way smarter than you, all my previous teachers. Traditionally, this leads to the child being singled out and praised for their academic brilliance and put on a fast track to success because people wanted to see me thrive.
You chose a different path You threw me to the wolves of the playground then did your best to forget I existed, just like my family. You passively punished me for being an extremely good student and absolutely nothing to help my abilities grow.
Instead, I got the same education as everyone else. Which is like making a giant wear normal sized clothes. It didn’t fit!
You owed me an education that fit ME. But you preferred to neglect and ignore me.
It’s not my fault that I was smarter than all of you and that made you feel bad.
It’s not my fault that I was socially awkward. That I did not fit in with them. That’s the sort of problem you’re there to solve. Not use as an excuse to abandon me.
Like everyone else who was supposed to protect me from literally anything, you could not be bothered because to you, I was worth less than nothing.
And for that, you deserve an everlasting and permanent FUCK YOU.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.