Jealousy, turning saints into the sea Swimming through sick lullabies, choking on your alibis
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Some of this was inspired by Emily Artful being so transparent about her past, especially with this last video she released last night. It's something that I have been ruminating on for a while, and it's something that I have spoken on before.
I've always lived by the maxim, "you can't run away from trouble, there's no place that far," and it has served me well. I am not a perfect person, and don't always have the "correct" takes on everything (which is laughable, honestly, because who gets to quantify what is correct? People are exhausting.) I am not always a peach to deal with. I've talked about this all before. (I mean, I am still not quite over some of these people MAKING UP entire reasons they disliked me, based on things that literally never happened, but that's another story for another day!)
It wasn't until recently that I realized: many these people who were so cruel to me, especially the ones who were my "friends," were jealous of me. Holy shit, that IS a revelation.
Now, I recognize that this is a very Leo thing to say, but the more and more I thought about it, the more I realize that this is true. They were try-hard, wannabe Pick Mes with PickMeItis (a term I coined in middle school) before the concept came into the popular sphere. (Mostly I called people with PickMeItis those who were teachers' pets and who had to tell everyone how good they were at everything every waking moment of every day). (I have since tried to stop using Pick Me so that it is not confused with AAVE, and I try to be incredibly mindful of my language and not appropriating). For someone who was wholly unremarkable, they were constantly dying to be noticed. I just remember how they were just dying to be unique and special so badly, and it was so grating. Only the sad thing was, there was absolutely nothing remarkable about them. As many intersections as they tried to collect to check off to make them unique and special, none of those made them either of those things; it just made them annoying.
I did not and do not see myself as exceptional. I am just a wacky little Brer Rabbit-y Candide-y type figure who haphazardly stumbles through life, and it just somehow happens to all work out. But what I can say about myself is that I DO apply myself, and try to do my best, which has quite naturally lent into to developing and refining skills.
They never made anything artistically that wasn't cliché or juvenile.
In a way, even though these people were unspeakably cruel and what they did to me was unconscionable even in the context of being teenagers, I ultimately feel sorry for them.
Some TW-ery stuff below:
First let me be clear, right here, right now, even though I had absolutely no control over my body, my mind, and my actions, I did the things I did and I take responsibility for them. But if you really want to begrudge a mentally ill child who was literally being tortured and then gaslit, go right on the fuck ahead I suppose!
Let me paint a picture of my life circa 2002-2005.
I was stalked by my biological father for my entire elementary, middle school and high school life, after spending much of my early life dealing with the break-ins, very real kidnapping attempts, drive-by torments, etc. I still deal with the severe PTSD of every sound keeping me up at night. People crashing around in the kitchen whilst I am sleeping instantly wakes me up into an uncontrollable panic. I started high school with a stalker I was, and am, very much still afraid of, all of which is very documented in police, school, and custody records.
My grandfather, who had been my father for all intents and purposes, died of a cruel illness he developed from having worked in a factory for most of his adult life (poverty is so great, let me tell you).
I was completely sexually re-traumatized by someone I was dating, who went on to cheat on me with my then best friend, and I was just supposed to deal with it. My friends (many of whom were the ones exhibiting the Mean Girl, jealous, frenemy behaviours), whom I had known way longer than this person, and whom I had introduced this person to, were fully content in annexing me from my own friend group (like the mean elephants in Dumbo or something).
I found out that the adults around me knew what had happened to me as a child, and had chosen to do nothing.
Needless to say, I popped off (as one does). It was the perfect cocktail. You throw into mix that a friend of mine had died by suicide my last year in middle school. I find out this is most likely due to his depression medication.
Let's talk about depression medications. I was getting no actual help. I could not get an appropriate diagnosis, and in the early 2000's, the trend was to give psych meds as a bandaid solution fix-all, many of which were killing people (many of which are now off of the market, for these very reasons). The meds that were on the market when I was a teenager killed about 5 people that I knew. I was being misdiagnosed, given what I am sure were the wrong medications, not being treated for other things because they would not diagnose or treat a minor with borderline personality disorder and didn't know what caused it. They gave young people psych meds in order to coerce them to behave, but not actually treat what was causing their problems. And if your problems were and are not biochemical, meds can be fundamentally useless.
Let me just say right here, right now, if I hadn't taken myself off of my psych meds, and I hadn't photocopied the check list of diagnosis criteria myself and held myself accountable bullet point by bullet point, I would be dead today.
Now, today, of course, we know that borderline personality disorder is caused directly by trauma (I feel like that is a no brainer, but whatever). The jury is still out on what I have, because my PTSD I was diagnosed with at 6 years old has since been refined to C-PTSD, and there is so much overlap between C-PTSD and BPD. They still do not know what I have. The revolving door meds they tried to pump into my severely underweight disorderd eating little body in gratuitous doses are now mostly off the market, and/ or no longer given to children.
But when I say that I was out of control, I was literally out of control. As in, taking my meds, going to school, and completely blacking out whilst being there.
I do deeply apologize to people whom I may have hurt by saying things or doing things that were inappropriate.
I will not, however, commit to an apology to those who provoked and took advantage of my mental health issues, and then tried to pass themselves off as victims.
If you're going to tell the truth, tell the whole truth. Tell them about the razor blades in my locker, but tell them about how you put them there. Tell them how I was bad with boundaries, but also tell them that you made the boundaries fuzzy on purpose. Tell them I was ungrateful for your "help," but also tell them that it was all about you and you playing the hero and the "glory" that comes with that. Tell them I was inappropriate, but also tell them you were inappropriate first, that you started it. You purposely provoked someone whom you knew was mentally unwell, weaponized my mental illness against me, and then played victim. And then you let me think that everything was fine after I apologized, when it wasn't.
Let me repeat, I was bad at boundaries, because I didn't know what they were.
And, again, I am so sorry if I had been bad with boundaries towards you. Bad boundaries is actually a Hallmark of being sexually abused. But once a boundary had been established (which was another part of the problem), that was it, I understood and respected it.
What happened to me at the hands of people who were supposed to be my "friends" was unconscionable and cruel, even by the standards of being teenagers, because it was so maliciously calculated.
Ultimately, it's taken me 17 years to realize much of this happened because you were jealous of me. You were jealous that someone whom you deemed inferior to you, whom your parents wouldn't let you hang out with outside of school because of who my father was, the poor girl in the tattered clothes and the drunk Indian as a father, did everything you wanted to be known for, and did it better than you. No money could buy what I had. It's why you copied everything that I did.
The jealous Mean Girl frenemy shit followed me well into college. I remember being absolutely destroyed by my friends (people I thought were my friends) not being nice to me, and what I now understand to have been and still be jealousy.
Instead of working on your own shit and being inspired to do better and improve your own skills, your own talents, your own fashion sense, your own what the fuck ever, you chose to hate me for it. These people straight up made up things I had done in order to villainize me.
And, let me say again, especially in mid-2000's, I recognize ways I could have not been the best friend, or may have said things or done things that were imperfect or not the best. You can dislike me for those missteps. You don't get to turn me into a villain for shit that never happened when there is so much I did do, now that's just fuckin' stupid, my dude.
I don't get jealous of others because I focus on my own shit. I hurt people by accident, they do it on purpose. But all the jealousy in the world towards one poor, messed up lil Indian is never going to make you any better at anything.
Just sayin'.