Residual Effects

To begin, let me own up to a personal problem of mine. Sometimes, when people do things that hurt me, I'm not able to talk to them about it. Not just in a, "Oh, I need space for awhile" kind of way. But, like, they've done something, and I've spent two days crying about it, and I'm trying to work up the courage to tell them, "I feel absolutely miserable when you do whatever shitty thing you did why did you even think that was an okay thing to do?" but, like, in a nicer and less placing-blame-y way. I'll even come up with the exact words that I want to say, and then, right before I say them, I choke up. See, I get afraid that if I talk to people about my pain, there will only be four possible outcomes, and only one of them is good. Like:

• They listen to me, understand, and make amends/don't do it in the future. 
• They don't listen to me and instead continue doing whatever they did that hurt me in the first place, thereby proving that they don't care about me.
• They listen to me, get upset, and then get more upset and more upset and more upset. Then I'm still sad, and now they're sad, and now I'm feeling guilty for being hurt in the first place, so the overall sadness has just increased by "a shit-ton" and the utilitarian perspective would accuse me of being a bad person. (The utilitarian perspective is that the "right" action is the action that ensures the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people.)
• They listen to me, understand, make temporary amends, but then actually just keep doing whatever it was that they did that hurt me in the first place, thereby proving that they don't care about me.

"That's crazy!" Thanks, but no thanks. I don't want your opinion. I just want to talk about what's on my mind, okay? Okay.

I'm not quite sure how long it's been an issue, but I think it's been approximately around "a long ass time." I've talked to a councilor about it, and tried to move past it and talk about things that hurt me to people who love me, but... Unfortunately, more often than not, my fears about talking to people about my problems are proven true. One of my "really good friends" (pffft) Freshman year, was constantly doing things that hurt me, and then I would talk to him about it, he would say, "Oh my goodness, I see just what you mean. I'm so sorry! I'll stop in the future!" And then continue doing what I asked him to stop doing. Another one of my "really good friends" (pffft), not too long ago, tried to control my life, and when I would talk to her about things that she was, probably unknowingly, doing that hurt me, she would accuse me of being a bad friend, or get so upset she had to leave the room. I ended up feeling so guilty about being hurt, that honestly I can't trust her, now, to tell her anything about my life.

That's really not what this is about, though. What this is about is a couple of memories that I still feel the residual effects of.

See, since I'm not really able to talk to people about my hurt, it just kind of stays there. And then, after I mostly move past it, it still comes back from time to time. There are a couple of memories I have from when I was younger--like, middle school/high school age--that made me feel really unloved and worthless, ugly and stupid, and entirely unlovable.

I don't really want to get into them right now--"Then why are you even writing this stupid blog post?"--because I'm already crying. No, that's not why I don't want to get into them. Honestly, the reason that I don't want to get into them is because I tried.

Throughout November, and maybe even late October, almost every Friday I was sucked back into this one terrible memory. And, it's not just the one memory. It's that this particular memory brings forth lots of other similar memories. So, about every Friday, I would get home from school, crawl into bed, and just cry until Saturday. I tried a couple of times to write about them, thinking that it might make me feel better.

But as soon as I published those blogs, I deleted them. See, I'm worried that the person who caused my hurt in those memories would read them, and then feel bad. Or maybe mad that I'm still not over something that happened in middle school. And, I mean, it's not like I let said person know that they hurt me whenever those movies occurred. But, since I love this person, I don't want them to feel any bad feelings.

I really need to step up my writing in the next blog post. It's hard to write "well" and "vaguely" at the same time.

So, anyway, I have these couple of memories that, when they come up, I just go right back to that time, and I start feeling that way again. And sometimes there are triggers to those memories--like, similar sorts of disappointment, or people ignoring me, or whatever. But, equally often, there are obscure triggers. Like Jaws. The movie, not body part. Or awards ceremonies.

The other day, for instance, I was talking to my brother during the news, and my dad asked us to be quiet. Which is something that makes complete sense. What sent me into my latest residual effect spiral of sadness wasn't, like, the unjustness of the situation. It's really, really, fair to want quiet from the peanut gallery when you're trying to watch something. But the situation almost identically mirrored my worst birthday ever.

And then it started bringing up all these other "people silencing and/or ignoring me" memories.

"You need to get over things that happened forever ago."
WHAT DID I SAY? I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR OPINION. I'M JUST TALKING HERE.

In all seriousness, don't give me your opinion because I 110% don't want to hear it. Also, I feel kind of bad about how gloomy this blog post was. So. I'll post, like, a short story next time.

Okay? Okay.