I had a nervous breakdown some time ago...wow, it's been almost seven years. Figured out a lot of things about myself and my childhood, stuff that looked so normal to me on the surface and my therapists just looked at me and said in no uncertain terms that it was emotional abuse. I'm doing immeasurably better now, happier than I've ever been in my life, but I still keep digging up new things, crap I've been dragging around and didn't realize there was anything amiss with it.
I'm...well...this is paradoxically hard to admit, but I'm smart. Woo. Okay, I said it. I was really good in school, always the center of attention from my teachers, and I basically built my entire sense of self around this concept because it was the one thing I could reliably get praise for. I sucked at everything else: I was messy, lazy (or so I was told), selfish (so I was told), sucked at being athletic, sucked at being popular, sucked at being girly, sucked at being a good daughter, sucked at being with guys. But damn it, I was the SMART one, and I LIVED for that pat on the head from my teachers, for having A+'s all over the fridge, and every time I tried to stray from that little niche, I got slapped down. On the other hand, I was also taught that the worst sin a human being can commit is to be vain or want to be the center of attention. So I spent my entire childhood craving attention, but anytime I got it, I was supposed to immediately shrug it off and minimize it. Every achievement was a tightrope: be gracious, be perfect, and above all, remember that it means nothing or else you are an asshole.
After my breakdown, I left grad school and a high-pressure career in the sciences for a much more satisfying job where I get to stay home all day and write code. I love it. I've barely spoken to another human being beside my husband in all that time (he has the same job). I've healed a lot, tried to learn how to value just being
happy. But...sometimes it gets lonely. Both of us have been burned so many times by supposed "friends" and family members. There isn't one human being we can even reveal our religious beliefs to: my parents will lose their minds and my mother is in such poor health that it could seriously hurt her, and we could lose our jobs. We tried looking into local groups, but there's nothing for us. We're moving again, just across the state, but it's a more liberal area, so maybe we'll have better luck there.
I originally joined the BD forums to ask one question about a toy, lol, but it turned into something much bigger. I've learned so much, but on top of that, it's been like a gentle re-introduction to interacting with people: a safe way for me to reach out when I wanted to and CAREFULLY construct everything I wanted to say, and with the constant, comforting knowledge that I could delete my account and run away if things ever went bad. It's also made me realize that I still have a ways to go. Every bit of attention I get, I feel like it's some kind of drug that I'm addicted to: it's a major high, but it makes me feel guilty, like I'm "taking" without giving enough attention back to other people.
I hate social rules. No matter how much I "studied" them as a teenager, I still felt like it was a foreign language: I do one thing and think it's fine, and people act with horror. I see someone else do something I think is reprehensible, and everyone acts like it's nothing. I realize now a lot of it was just that I knew some really crappy people, but it's a hard feeling to shake, like I'm walking through a mine field that everyone else can see but I can't.
That was a whole lot of rambling, and I don't expect anyone to comment, but it felt really good to say it
Click to expand...