You were right...

To my mother, who never respected my emotional boundaries and saw to it to tear down my self-esteem bit by bit...

To my sisters, both much older, who have approached any successful moments in my life with resentment and meanness...

To my high school English teacher who, as I sat before her depressed, told me that I would never be good enough to be in her class...

To my undergraduate professor who didn't show me how to properly put together a conference paper and later told me he wanted to work with me because was interested in me physically...

To my step-father, who rubbed his hand up my thigh and kissed me on the back of my neck when I was 13...

To my first boss after college, who was paranoid, destructive, and sabotaging as I did her work for her with virtually no work experience of my own...

To my boss' boss who flirted with me then, when I pushed him away, berated me and ultimately sabotaged me in the office...

To a co-worker of mine, who spread rumors about me sleeping with people in the office...

To my co-worker in NYC who, with me sitting right next to her, told her boyfriend on the phone that "She's really pretty, but she doesn't have what it takes to be in television..."

To my Master's thesis adviser who, after wanting to help me turn my thesis into a book, ignored the project, flirted with me, while he committed his time to actually help a younger, more available student accomplish her goals...

To those runners up whose smaller actions merit general acknowledgment...



You're right.

I don't deserve to be happy, do I?

I don't deserve to have the things I work hard for.

All I'm made for is serving as a stay-at-home mom - in the private sphere, where women belong - to raise my husband's kids. That's all I'm good for, I suppose.

I know that hearing me give up on my goals would make you incredibly happy. You'd laugh at my expense, like you did before. You were able to so terribly harm the person you resented, or who wouldn't sleep with you, making her suffer to the point where self-doubt completely consumes any hope.

Well good for you! A job well done.

Men like you aren't pathetic philanderers and women like you aren't envious haters...

You're perfect, just the way you are. Like flowers budding from excrement.

I'm so glad I could be of service to you and could provide the sunlight you needed to press your weedy heads through the dirt.

But most importantly...

You were right. About everything. Why should I bother trying?

acceptance & encouragement.

One step, one step. Keep going.

So that would certainly be a good reason to bother. Beyond that, I would suggest to you that you need to look back at all these experiences and figure out if there were better ways for you to handle these situations. The world is full of rotters. The most successful people are those that learn to deal with them.

However I am a firm believer in that life's success comes from recognizing what we can control and dealing with that. Counting on others can be a risky proposition, as this scenerio shows.

You already know the two best pieces of advice ever given to me (one of your recent threads), but it took me quite a long while to truly understand and appreciate the value of those pieces of advice.

As I get older I have come to learn how useful advice like that can be.

Shit makes the flowers grow, Writer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlIOI3fDz5c

Everything you have accomplished so far you did by yourself.
Nobody gave you shit!You busted your ass and got as far as you did because you ARE good enough.
Dont let other people mind fuck you like that my friend.
I know you better than anyone here. I know how talented and smart you are.
And I dont believe for one moment that you believe any of this.
Don't give up my friend.
If you need an ear I'll be around later to talk to.
:hug: :pals:

We've all been through our own forms of hell. I've been knocked down more times than I care to remember, but I try to drag myself up and force myself to keep going, as we all must do, no matter how hard it may be. I always try to remember there are always people who've been through much worse. If you feel you're dealing with chronic major depression, you really should see your doctor because there is help out there for it.

Here are 2 poems I have laminated and on my desk to remind me to stay strong:



After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul.
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t
contracts and presents aren’t promises.

And you begin to accept your defeats with
your head up and your eyes wide open
with the grace of an adult, not the
grief of a child.
And you learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans.

After a while you learn that even sunshine
Burns if you get too much.

So plant your garden
And decorate your own soul
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers

And you learn that you really can endure
That you really are strong
And that you really do have worth. --Veronica A. Shoffstall




"I never saw a wild thing feel sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself."
— D.H. Lawrence

I'd forgotten about that, but in reading it just now, I remember seeing that at a time in my life when I really needed it. I had pretty much perfected the "woe is me" routine by my mid-teens. I was not happy with the way my life was going and had a endless supply of circumstances and people to blame.

It's a rather stark set of words, but I do remember it had an affect on me.

Feeling sorry for yourself is pretty useless. And resentments are a damned heavy thing to lug around.

You CAN fix it. You may want to talk with someone. You may want to take some time on your own to just think about things. But please don't continue to doubt yourself like this. It is the most destructive thing a person can do to themselves... to have a self-defeating attitude.

Please be good to you!

I'd like it if you read this. I tried to explain similar feelings in a previous post of mine:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x7758857

:hug:

but don't let the shits of the world make you give up on yourself. Don't let them defeat you.

I was sexually assaulted in a church, after months of unwanted, direct behavior lobbed at me. After the assault, I walked home from school on extra-curricular nights because I did not want to sit to one of the little whores that used to make one set of facial expressions, but after that incident turned into looks of hatred. (Gee, should I have let her friend do what she wanted?! What the hell was said of that incident, to say the least I did not deserve those looks... before or after that night of horror...)

I was molested, by two separate people, as a child and into my teen years. How much detail information do you like to read?

I was heckled, insulted, and more on a daily basis. By many. "God's joke" was one of MANY comments.

Bullies openly said to seek me out because "he never fights back".

"Peers" shoved me out of group projects. Yet even in 11th grade, I still felt alone and rejected because I had to do everything on my own.

I was framed, a lot of times. Hell, even one of the invites for my facebook page - one still in the invite queue is one who I think set me up for something I did not do...

The school district kept supporting these vermin. Time and again. I still don't know why I was never listened to or why my parents were always shot down. (Oh, what they said WOULD be implemented in school districts as needed, years later.)

Incidentally, not listening to mum and dad, the school bus bullying got so bad that they drove me to school. And there were years' worth of complaints about what other students were doing to me. Oh, it didn't start as bullying. It started with trickery, against me, and my naivety let it happen. To actually provoke a fight was unconscionable, and my parents told me to seek authority anyway. Should I have gone the 'boys will be boys" route and fight the fuckers? Oh, that's right, those who do go off to jail so the real; bullies can continue on.

Even in senior year, it was a nightmare.

When I got to college, with grades skyrocketing, I knew it was the ambient environment... but even when I asked my parents to go to another school district, they said the problems would still go on, but only made by other students. I will never know if they were right.

And even with improvements, supervisors have no clue why I'm afraid of certain personality types. Once again, how much information do they want to know? These supervisors have books on psychology too. So I will question their ability if they're only going to make comments and not do scary shit like ASK QUESTIONS. I've learned not to volunteer information... apart from right now, obviously...

Maybe rethugs are right; compassion is a mental illness. I still have loads of sympathy and empathy for people when I should be looking out for #1 only.


In short, for every emo post, there's a bigger emo. And I know there are emos much more emo-like than I would ever be.

In shorter, we've all come through a lot. You can quit or you can continue. It's up to you what you do.

At least you're married and have someone who loves you. You try being in my shoes for a day. Your life would NEVER be the same, have no doubts.

That's the best advice I ever got, at a low, low point. :pals:

that you are devoting to them.

there's some kind of payoff in everything, whether it's positive or negative.

life is profoundly short.

sometimes it's hard to not be a speed bump in the parking lot of life. but the people running over you don't even care or notice one way or the other.

they're more than likely living their lives free of regret.

i'm not saying that you should emulate them, but sometimes it's a good thing to be a little heartless. if you can't feel extremes of joy, why feel extremes of pain?

who can give up your future; they can't take that too, unless you let them. Those people are assholes. To hell with them.