An open thread for personal stuff, continuing from here.
As usual for these threads: no trolls, no MRAs, no I’m-not-really-an-MRA-buts, don’t be mean.
Categories
We Hunted The MammothBucking the Backlash
We Hunted The Mammoth
If little MrGrump came home bleeding and bandaged, I’d probably be too busy paying MrGrump’s bail to do anything very proactive. (MrGrump is very protective) Also, your parents were jerks.
cloudiah, congrats on the job offer!
Everyone else, I’ve no advice (and what’s been offered already is better than what I’d have anyway) so adding to the kitty hugs here.
Also holy fuckballs, guys, I feel like God came down and showed me the world’s bonus level or something.
See, part of what always drove me so crazy was that our family did not match any of the abuse dynamics I read about in the books. Now I finally know why! It’s because our family doesn’t follow those dynamics; they follow INCEST dynamics to a fucking T.
It’s like… holy fuckshit, there’s our family’s whole messed up machine, laid out plain and simple on the fucking page! Sweet mama pajama!
Bullying about my size was a good part of why I wanted to kill myself in high school. I really thought I’d be dead, I really wanted to be dead, I was angry at myself for not offing myself.
This whole life thing has been totally unexpected.
Congrats Cloudiah! Just had another interview today myself after the last one didn’t pan out so fingers crossed.
Re: bullying
Yeah … I am going to back up the “ignore it isn’t good advice” statements. If you have backup (from other kids or the teachers), maybe then it is OK, but otherwise, that advice isn’t so helpful. I went to a bad primary school for bullying and the teachers told my parents that I got bullied as I reacted, but given that both responding to another child and ignoring another child as well as trying to get away when being attacked counted as reaction …
One thing I found that helped me, although it helped me later, was a story told by one of my friend’s girlfriends. She was also bullied in primary school, had few friends and got attacked in front of teachers. So, one day someone had a go at her in class and she lost her temper and took all the chairs and threw them out the window. Anyway, her parents were called in, and the teacher said “she should think about what she had done” and she was like *grin snigger snigger*. I don’t think that actually throwing chairs out of windows is a particularly good plan. However, the idea that tiny, barely able to speak, mouse-like me did have power in a situation where I could see no way out, made me feel a lot less helpless. In addition, all the classrooms were on the first floor, and the event, as would be seen from outside, of a pile of tiny chairs sequentially being tossed into the flowerbed was something I found hilarious.
More practically, if the teachers or students help, then that is good, however, if they don’t, it turned out there were a couple of other kids in my situation in different years and they got much better outcomes by moving school than I did by staying. I think my situation was pretty bad, but even for that case there are things that can be done.
@LBT
I hope that your no nightmares plan works.
I always thought I was nuts, too…I repressed a lot, and minimized what I did remember.
Nope, not organic MI, synthetic.
One weird little hallmark of incest families is supposed to be that there is usually almost no affectionate touching. I think after I was about 4 or 5 I pretty much wasn’t cuddled anymore, I don’t remember that being something my mom did.
I think my dad hated me for existing and requiring any effort from him.
RE: blahlistic
Our family touched us a little after those ages… but yeah, it definitely got pretty cold as time went on. Though since the incest came from the extended family, I always figured it was because our mother was triggered by the thought of doing anything that might possibly cause incest to happen again…
But then again, she sent us off with him, so I guess that wasn’t TOO big a concern.
*hugs* to marinerachel. I know that feel. Maybe try a new social thing you’ve never done before? It won’t make the pain go away, but it might be a welcome distraction. Pain does need to be dealt with, but not 24/7. For me it was going to a bar (a relatively quiet one, me being an introvert and all), but it could probably be anything really. Like, maybe you could set aside one evening of the week to do that, something for you, something where there’s people, something you could look forward to as a way to wind down.
More hugs for LBT. Hopefully these memories take less time to pop. I’m really sorry there’s that many more. 🙁
And, of course, hugs to anyone I missed who may want them. You guys are all good people and don’t deserve this shit in your lives, and certainly don’t deserve to believe you do.
I don’t really know what else to say except I hope it all works out. In the meantime, I can only offer: http://faunafabula.tumblr.com/ a whole crapload of strange and interesting aminals!
And in my own news: sister now messages me every time our mom’s anti-vaxxer friend posts a new link or video on her page. My sister doesn’t respond to that lady at all, and I just dump facts on her posts. Think Ima win this one, which is awesome for my niece/nephew to be.
My grandmother’s going through radiation for breast cancer right now, after having had a partial mastectomy. So that’s not awesome, but thankfully they caught it really early and she’s mostly okay. Tired, though, and still working as a professor, as well as in the University’s administration. She just got over a bunch of eye problems not too long ago, so this really came at a shitty time. And my grampa, bless him, he tries, but he’s really not the best person to go to for comfort, but he’s trying to help in every way he knows how.
In better news! I have a job interview this Thursday! 😀 Wish me luck!
RE: Alex
I’m glad your sister seems to be coming around! That’s such a relief to hear.
Alex, best wishes to your grandmother for successful treatment and a speedy recovery. And best of luck to you in the job interview, as well as on debunking vaccine misinformation!
Good luck on all three, Alex!
Hugs to anyone who needs them! And, thanks, everyone for your input on my little problem.
Hugs, marinerachel. We’ll be in Vancouver on Saturday, email me if you’d like to grab a coffee.
Congrats on the job offer cloudiah.
Hugs to anyone else who’d like one.
OK, I was just in my version of hell. Went for drinks to celebrate a friend’s birthday, and one of her friend’s husbands was the biggest, most boorish jackasses I’ve been around in a while. Just fucking crude, and FSM knows I’m no shrinking violet, so if I think you’re rude, crude and socially unacceptable, you probably are.
The kicker (and there were comments before this gem that were worse, but this was more public) was when the waiter asked his wife if she’d like a double vodka cran and jackhole butted in all, “Yes, she would, I’d like to have sex with my wife tonight.” Everyone but me and Mr. HK laughed, I’m sure I looked like there was a toad next me. Because there was. Then not long after he tried to pat my arm–why this motherfucker thought we were at the touching phase of our relationship, I don’t know. I excused myself and we left not long after.
I’m sure he thinks I’m a giant rhymes-with-witch, but he was actually seeing me on my best behavior. I wanted to give him some words but friend’s birthday so I didn’t. I guess I’ll have to ask if this couple will be on any more outings, because I won’t subject myself to that guy again.
I thanked Mr. HK for not being at all like that dude when we got home.
Ugh, hellkell, how gross.
And contrapangloss, I wanted to say that I went through a period in seventh grade where I skipped eating lunch to avoid bullying too. Also to avoid the other kids seeing me eat by myself. I would go to the library, and food wasn’t allowed in the library.
hellkell, how revolting.
@hellkell,
Ew! What a douchenozzle.
Thanks for listening. I can’t exactly vent about this IRL, however if my friend were to ask me why I so quiet tonight, I would tell her that this dude has “bad news” written all over him.
Hi, all! I’m sorry for all the suckage being experienced, and woot! for all the goodness happening. What a world.
I’m a little over scheduled at the moment, so I’m not really keeping up with any of the threads, but I do try to keep up with this one.
@grumpyoldnurse, several years ago, when I was shop-stewarding, we had some pretty toxic workplace bullying we were dealing with, and I found out that a) the only people who get bullies are other bullies, and b) most people are completely baffled by them, and don’t really know what to do.
There are bunches and oodles of resources available, and probably a half-dozen anti-bullying organizations on the first page of a google search on “anti-bullying resources canada”. Which, yay that there are resources, but I don’t know that the situation is getting better. Kids are getting bullied, and the bullies grow up to bully their co-workers. I suspect, like most social transformations, the solution is a long slog of education, behaviour-correctiond, rinse and repeat.
I was bullied for the first half of Grade 9 by a bunch of Mean Girls (™). It was painful and awkward, and it didn’t stop until they went to a different school (I think they’d been held back from Grade 10 for some reason?). I was baffled then, and I honestly don’t know what I’d do differently if I was plunked into the same situation today.
@LBT, it sounds like you’ve got that euphoria when you make the discovery that makes everything Make Sense! It’s a shitty thing to find out, and your family is horrible, but what a relief to be able to Name the shit.
In conclusion, here is a laughing puppy. I think it’s laughing. It made me happy, anyway.
*eyes the barrel of hugs for a minute then dives in*
Thanks for the nice comments people. I think I’m coming out of this bad phase. I hope the rest of you are too.
So, I scooped the lace curtains up onto the record cabinet, to get them out of the way while I cleaned behind it.
Guess where Miss Maddie is now. Go on, guess, I dare you.
kitty hugs
Silly thing to whine about:
I’ll be so glad when our state’s senate election is over.
One of the candidates has taken over youtube. Seriously. He has these these attack adds that play almost every time I try to load a video. And you CAN’T skip them. I tried streaming song a day playlists, and got 8 of his adds in a row! One for each video.
I actually cheered when I got an add that wasn’t his. Usually I hate adds, but it was like “Yay! Add for XMEN on DVD! I don’t really like Days of Future Past, but THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR NOT BEING AN ATTACK ADD!!!!”
Yeah, Dude. Not voting for you. Quit it.
#USianproblems whine over.