I want to talk about something that happened to me many, many years ago, but that still affects me to this day.
I had no voice / wasn't allowed to speak up back then, and I still feel invalidated in my experience, by what some people assumed of me and labeled me as, which was based on stereotypes of modern pop-culture definitions of psychological disturbances and behaviors.
I want to talk about my time as a(n unknowingly) neurodivergent (autistic and ADHD) lesbian in highschool, in a country that used to be both homophobic and ignorant about mental health issues.
I was a teenager, aged 16.
I had already been through a fair amount of bullying in schools at this point in my life, because I acted and functioned differently from everyone else around me.
This had already rooted a deep sense of mistrust and social anxiety in me when trying to befriend people, as I was 100% experiencing developmental delays in relation to my social skills... partially also due to parental neglect / lack of proper parental (and professional) support / guidance.
I would also like to point out that our high school was sh*t when it came to mental health support. We did not have access to any professionals, and the only free, state-funded psychologists I was able to see outside of school ranged from creepy and downright incompetent, to mediocre at best.
Before I go into more detail about the situation I got myself into, I want to briefly introduce what my autism entails and how it makes me come across.
I have a form of right-brain autism where I am both blessed and cursed with an overly active, vivid imagination, which, at times, has been the source of great suffering due to some delusions and dissociative states it induced in me. The same right-brain autism also caused any and all of the emotions I ever experienced (and still experience to this day) to be 100 times more intense than normal (or at least, it felt like that back then, as I had no way to control them or manifest them in a healthy way).
Additionally, this made me somewhat good at arts and drawing, but to a limited degree, since I only possess a type of semi-eidetic memory (not fully photographic), where I can easily map out 3D spaces, images, environments and sometimes even people to an accurate degree in my own head (hence also why I never get / got lost), but I digress...
...The most unhealthy coping mechanism I had, directly resulting from this braintype, was this dissociative state where I retreated into my own head and imagination, as it was the only place where I felt like I could be myself, and express myself safely without facing any kind of judgement.
It was originally a response to trauma that led me to retreat a lot into this inner world, but it soon turned into an addiction of sorts (especially after I figured out I could trigger it by listening to music I enjoyed) whenever I felt (sensory- emotionally or mentally) overwhelmed by situations that were completely out of my control, irrepairable / unfixable or that I simply did not know how to react to, or handle.
Alongside this, I had a high degree of social ineptitude, and a speech and expression-related disability that would make me say things in a completely wrong way whenever I reacted emotionally and didn't carefully pay attention to every word I said or wrote. It has (in the past) caused many misunderstandings, as well as made me lose friendships, since people always interpreted what I was trying to say in the worst possible way.
...
With this long preface out of the way, here is what happened: I fell head-over-heels for a classmate of mine in my second year of highschool.
It was my first time ever developing feelings that strong for someone, and believe me, if falling in love is devastating for regular, neurotypical people- for me it was an absolutely crushing and unnerving experience, like being hit by a freight train or truck at full speed, but in the emotional sense.
The trigger (reason I fell for her) was a bit of a foreign Freudian root (but I am not going to go into that right now). Something I figured out only during- and after my failed marriage, about 5-6 years ago (from the date of this post, more or less).
So, what happened that ended up traumatizing me and this girl I fell for (as far as I have gathered, from the way she reacted) all those years ago?
It's complicated.
I was labeled a stalker, a creep, a weirdo, among many other derogatory labels and assumptions. I was called a manipulator, a liar, a psychopath and an attention seeker (/ seeking wh*ore), and was even ganged up on by a bunch of her friends once. The latter was in response to an actual suicide attempt of mine (yes, I was that depressed and desperately needed help), which I was not ever intending on letting her know about... and had inadvertetly been told to her by an —at the time— online friend, who wanted to stop me from going through with it.
And where did this start?
With me confessing my feelings to her.
I wish I never f*cking did. I wish I just kept it to myself and kept my distance. It would have saved me so much pain.
That alone (confessing to her) may have already given both me, and her, some sort of anxious breakdown or half a panic attack, as we both did not react well (she went to cry in a bathroom stall, and I just sat in a corner, trying to disappear).
I just felt wrong and horrible for the entirety of the ordeal. There were classmates watching this all go down. It was downright embarrassing, and I had obviously not thought it through, since I simply had the urge to get this out and off my chest, as it had been driving me insane- keeping it all bottled up inside (I genuinely thought I was going to implode due to the intensity of the darn feelings).
Regardless of my reasons for confessing... I tried to take several steps back, and since I already had her reject me then and there, I apologised and asked if we could just be friends instead.
You can guess how badly that went- since my feelings did not just magically disappear / go away from one day to another.
I should have really just gotten as far away from her as humanly possible, but I just ended up digging an even deeper grave for myself, as she had initially agreed to trying to be friends (she was trying to be nice).
My retarded, half-delusional brain secretly hoped, at times, that by befriending me, she would change her mind about me, and it didn't help that I went to ask for advice online anonymously, and people kept suggesting I keep pursuing / chasing after her, and that she would eventually say yes and give me a chance (they probably assumed I was a guy and it's f*cked up enough that this sort of thing is reinforced / normalized as a part of cis-het culture).
I would continue to embarrass myself in numerous ways throughout the year: from being overly friendly / nice, to stealing glances at her subconsciously (as an idiot in love would do) and I was working overtime in trying to make her happy. But I could soon tell that, instead of appeasing her, I was just making her more exhausted and anxious around me. I eventually figured out (how? I cannot really recall) that she was just wearing a "mask" when she was around me, so as to avoid hurting my feelings.
This hurt me even more, ironically enough, the moment I realized she was being disingenuous (I had this whole moral rule where I believed that people should always be honest no matter what), and that wasn't even remotely the worst of it.
I sincerely did not know / realize how my behaviour was coming off to her and to everyone observing the situation- I was genuinely oblivious to my environment, or the connotation of the things I was saying, doing, or thinking.
As a socially impaired, autistic individual, who grew up with 5 cats and few and in-between socialization attempts with peers my age, I tended to overshare. I loved her, therefore I trusted her and I ended up telling her about all my past trauma, about sexual assaults and other really personal stuff that happened when I was just a kid- things I really just needed to keep to myself.
Sharing all of that was another huge mistake- because it was later thrown back at me in the form of ammunition: I was accused by her friends- of manipulating and guilt-tripping her intentionally into pitying me, of all things- and this cr*p upset me more than I could ever hope to express through mere words.
Yes, I was misguided- yes, I was stupid, desperate and socially unaware, but when all this stuff came to a head, I just became increasingly more and more cripplingly depressed.
I never meant to put a mental / psychological and emotional strain on her. I never meant to let my feelings spill out like that. I never meant for anyone to get hurt... And I was just trying so hard to make things right, but the more I tried to "fix" them, the worse everything got.
The first, big, misunderstandings that occurred and led to the stalking accusations (later on) probably started when I (unknowingly) walked by her place a few times, and mentioned it in conversation. I had honestly no idea she even lived there- in that area of town, at first.
For context: I just liked walking around town at that age (aimlessly sometimes), because it helped me disconnect and dissociate from reality through my music-induced fantazising (the unhealthy coping mechanism / addiction mentioned further up).
For me, it meant that I got to explore places I had never been to before, while also spending time in my happy place- in my own head, for as long as I wanted.
In my young, naïve eyes, this was a win-win. A feel-good experience when everything else felt bad- but it didn't last.
Upon discovering that she lived in that area, the third time I took my usual walk around that part of town, I just became increasingly anxious whenever I was near the place. It felt wrong being anywhere in the proximity of that apartment complex subconsciously, and at the time, I didn't know why.
I was the kind of autistic idiot that- when facing a novel, intense emotion in a new situation (which may even have been dangerous), instead of listening to that emotion or bad gut feeling, I would try to prod at it- and try to understand it.
All I did, that one, third time, was look at the apartment complex'es entrance, walk a few steps in, then walk back, because the intensity of the dread and anxiety I was feeling were so big- they were screaming at me to turn back, which I did. I didn't ring any doorbells, or touch anything. I never, ever went back to that place.
I acted the same as a curious, but frigthened cat would, when exploring a new area, and I turned back and went away when things felt off.
But nevermind that. The damage was done. Mentioning I had been in the area a few times was enough to give her relentless paranoia and anxiety.
And that wasn't the worst of it.
She had already given me the silent (and avoidant) treatment a few times (which had sent me down a depressive hole that never seemed to have an end), but yeah... My absolutely 100% retarded and socially unaware self, still thought that it would be a good idea to try and explain myself through a multiple-pages-long apology and explanation letter*, which I stuffed in her locker because I was too socially anxious and terrified, at that point in time, to confront her in person (when she was already clearly mad at me).
*God forbid, I just remembered some of the contents of that apology and explanation letter. I partially understand why her friends thought I was trying to guilt-trip her. What happened around that time was that, since she seemed so uncomfortable with me having a crush on her, I had gotten with this one guy who seemed to be into me- partially out of pity for him on my end (that he had feelings for me when I didn't like him much, but I was in a similar situation so I idiotically decided to give him a chance, projection 101), and partially thinking this would get her to feel safe around me as a friend, and dispell any anxiety she felt- This sleazy scumbag ended up r*ping me. I don't remember the specifics of that apology, but I think I mentioned that to her- as a way to show that I cared about her comfort enough to do something that stupid (getting with someone I didn't know and didn't like, for which I paid the consequences for. It was my fault and nobody else's) and hoped this would also put an end to all of my classmates just kind of avoiding me (the grand majority of our class was made up of girls and I got avoided like the plague, hence homophobia).
There is also a faint memory of me leaving a red rose on top of that locker around Valentine's day (anonymously), but I could not place this event inside of the timeline of f*ckups I had done (or well- it's more the other way around. V-day is February, the rest is a blur) to save my life, as it has been far too long ago- and I cannot even remember if it was a real rose, cut and taken from my own garden (we had these beautiful, strongly scented / wonderful smelling wild roses that were growing at all times of the year where I lived, in a village far away from that town) or a paper one, drawn and colored by hand.
My intentions at the time were the following: I thought that an anonymous rose was going to make her happy because someone thought of her, and she did not need to know it was from me- (dumbest thing ever- hindshight is 20/20 as I eventually learnt why that would come off as creepy and stalkerish) and at first, it seemed to be the case (it seemed to work, until she found out it was from me and got justifiably pissed). I think I was just really that desperate to make her smile, at the time. To be the source of her happiness, just once.
I knew I would never get anything more than that from her at that point. I think by that time she had also gotten herself a boyfriend- a guy from our same class that I was on friendly terms with, prior to them getting together (yes, that felt like a huge backstab. He knew I liked her, and they made out in the hallway unabashedly in front of everyone). It was one of the many things that crushed me into tiny pieces, and contributed to driving me even further down the depression well.
I don't resent that guy anymore, but I did wish they would make their love escapades and make-out sessions a little less public / avoid putting on a show.
...
The last two f*ckups that come to mind, which completely turned me away from her- where I just wanted to be as far away from her as humanly possible / sink into the ground and disappear / leave planet Earth or this plane of existence altogether- involved a Facebook post that was meant to be a DM to my best friend from back then (I had this one girl that tolerated all of my social incompetence at the time, bless her), and the grief-related incident.
I'll explain these two as best as I can... I feel like I have already written enough to fill an essay at this point.
The Facebook incident was my incompetence and inability to use social media platforms due to a lack of understanding on how they worked. I was peer-pressured into signing up to Facebook by my classmates in middle school, but I already hated the platform and found it really counter-intuitive. The only reason I used it at all, was to vent to my best friend in highschool, whom I would usually mostly talk to in person (and I may have used it one time to look up a picture of my crush to challenge myself and see if I could draw her at all- since I was really bad at drawing humans and I had this weird belief that if you loved someone, they became impossible for you to draw right), or just interact with people's posts on my feed by liking and commenting on them (most of the time, pictures). The posts were usually from / made by people who added me as a friend (or whom I added from my class, etc.), my crush included.
Now that I think about it carefully, I may have made a panic post after one of my suicide attempts, which I mention later on in this post (the OD related one). But it's hard to tell since it's a fairly blurry memory.
But yeah, sorry for all the crossed out and bracketed text. I just meant to say that me using FB to DM my best friend back then, was mainly due to a period of time where we couldn't see each other much because she was both an extraverted, social party girl, and was in a different class with very separate / conflicting timetables compared to mine (we got separated in second year, while we were still in the same class in first year).
Basically, here is what I thought I was doing: I thought I was sending my best friend a bit of an absurd dream I had, where I was quite literally physically stuck between my crush and her boyfriend- in the dream it didn't seem like anything more than hugging (everybody had their clothes on), but I was joking around, to relieve some of the awkwardness and embarrasment it made me feel, because from a certain close-up angle it looked bad, so I ended up saying something like "it looked like a threesome" in the post- and this was just my idiotic teenage humor. I didn't really mean anything of the sort by it.
If only I had taken the time to read that the button I was about to press said "post", I could have saved myself another huge wave of shame / mortification / humiliation.
I also failed to recognize that my crush and her boyfriend were being automatically tagged- I thought that the blue highlight was some kind of innocuous auto-link thingie to their profiles inside of a DM, and that it had nothing to do with them being tagged / notified of this, and oh man- the backlash was immediate, and it was brutal.
I started getting horrible comments from the boyfriend, her friends, and even her too, probably- shaming me, demanding I take down the post and that it was uncalled for. I immediately deleted the post as soon as I realized it was a post and not a DM, but by that point, the thing had been up a while (a whole night or so), and the damage had been done. I eventually ended up deleting my entire Facebook account due to this and other, less than pleasant things that happened on there.
Moving on to the grief incident-
My depression was not just due to the daily hell that had become my highschool experience the unrequitted feelings I had to live with every day (as well as my subconscious almost constantly tormenting me with dreams featuring her). The one and only person who ever truly loved me in a healthy way also ended up in hospital- and soon passed away from cancer that same year: my maternal grandmother. She was the only ray of sunshine (if not as warm as the whole sun itself) that made me feel like I mattered, was loved and cared for. She would give the biggest, warmest of hugs, and would always put a smile on everyone's face. I still miss her dearly.
This void in my life, left by my grandmother's death, happened very closely —time frame wise— to something that my crush was (unbeknowst to me) experiencing as well. This was during one of the still alternating periods of time where I would mess up occasionally and try my best to fix things- I was still on relatively friendly terms with my crush when, all of a sudden, from one day to another, she started avoiding me and giving me the silent treatment again. It was so sudden and so unexpected that it really caught me off-guard and sent me spiraling into a flurry of anxiety and depression. I was so tired of it all. I just wanted to be socially competent and not embarrass myself at every other turn... I sincerely thought it was my fault, once again- that she wasn't talking to me anymore. That I had done something wrong, inapprorpiate, or unacceptable unknowingly.
There was a spectacular lack of communication in all this, as, if I had known what was going on, I was going to keep away and give her the space she needed to grieve, but essencially: her father, whom she had a really close relationship to, had died. This was told to me much much later, during the friends gang incident.
... Be as it may, this silent treatment of hers was the last straw of a series of bad events and things that happened to me, which pushed me further into my depression- making me feel worse than I had ever felt before in my life (to this day I have never experienced that sort of depressive low again).
I was already failing at school, with all of this emotional turmoil going on- and my narcissistic, neglectful father would just yell at me at home and make things worse. I just spent every other afternoon locked in my room... Which had turned into a depression cave. I was in too much pain, too exhausted, too self-hating and abandoned to myself to care anymore. I just wanted for the pain to stop. I couldn't- and did not want to continue living like this- through this literal hell on Earth, day in, day out. It was one of the worst low-points in my life.
I honestly just wrote a goodbye letter to my online friend (as I had sort of drifted away from my IRL best friend a bit), and thought that would be it. I was going to just slice my wrists open and let myself drain of all life, and then the pain would finally stop.
I know how messed up this sounds, but that's just how messed up I was... and felt. I had nothing to look forward to, no support system, no happy place left (my own head had turned into a place of festering darkness where I was just constantly ridiculed, taken advantage of, neglected or abandoned). And that's where the suicide attempt she learnt about came to be (where her friends ganged up on me afterwise)- Because menacingly reality-checking a broken, anxious, depressed, suicidal, desperate, neglected, autistic teen is the sound-of-mind thing to do, instead of getting help from adults to deal with the situation. You totally aren't going to trigger PTSD and trauma from being bullied early on in other schools, nooo... Sorry. The sarcasm here is some of the leftover bitterness I felt for those people. They expected- or rather demanded of me to act like a functional, not developmentally delayed adult, when none of us were adults to begin with.
Given everything, I don't directly blame them, but there were better ways to deal with the situation compared to what they did- or what the school did, which was exactly nothing.
I needed to stay away from my crush and everyone in that class from the get-go.
I should have been removed and placed into special care and on suicide watch, as well as forced to see a paid-for, competent mental health specialist.
My life would have gone much differently if only they had caught my autism early on. But none of that ever happened. I got encouraged by internet strangers to do the wrong things, driven to near insanity trying to find a balance between handling my feelings, my dumb subconscious and weird brain, and trying to survive in school, while also not making my crush uncomfortable- with little to no socialization skills to aid me whatsoever.
I probably did a lot more damage than I realized, between having to share the same girls' locker rooms when we were changing for P.E.- either at the school's swimming pool or one of the various gyms we visited... And letting my anger (and jealousy) out on her boyfriend during increasingly more violent dodgeball games. 🫠
I was a certified moron, who did not know how to human (I still don't know how to human, but I got better) or have a lid on her own emotions- didn't know what was socially appropriate and what wasn't until I made a fool of myself-
I never, ever want to see my former crush, nor her friends, ever again- unless it's to have an adult chat and have them show some remorse and apologize to me at least a little bit. I know I was a pain in the arse to deal with, and I do not deny all the damage I have done on my end. I acknowledge it and I apologized profusely for it so many times, but there simply wasn't anything I could do to go back in time and reverse it. Life isn't a videogame or simulation where you get several attempts at something. You usually just get one shot and then you are immediately judged.
Highschool turned out to be a flurry of trauma, drama and bad experiences for me. I attempted sucide thrice in that time span and self-harmed in many ways. Not gonna lie, I probably damaged my kidneys a little during one of those suicide attempts (slightly ODd on some food supplements, thinking they were a harder drug).
The sexual trauma from being r*ped also persisted throughout the early part of my adulthood and gave me mood swings and more PTSD. I finally got rid of it around the age of 24, give or take- so basically, during COVID-19, where everything slowed down (and I finally had the time I needed to process all of the repressed, horrible, traumatic sh*t I kept running away from).
But yeah... The aim of this vent post is not to victimize myself in any way, but rather to put my pent up, leftover trauma and feelings into written form and exorcize some demons from the past, so to speak.
I avoided, or tried to avoid my crush throughout the rest of highschool. I literally applied to- and took an exam to change classes, so that I wouldn't have to run into her every single day anymore (though we still bumped into each other in the hallways occasionally). My PTSD and fear of encountering her in the hallway back then was so strong that my attendance kept dropping and getting worse and worse throughout my third year of highschool, even though we were studying different things now.
The sad part is that, to this day, my subconscious just remains on high alert and scans for her presence in places where I had known her to be at, because it's STILL utterly TERRIFIED of bumping into her. I have so many bad associations and traumatic memories related to that person that my brain just identifies her as THREAT / DANGER. I genuinely react worse to the thought / chance of encountering her- than being stalked home by a guy meaning to harm me.
That's the level of psychological damage we are talking about.
To this day, it's the only unresolved trauma I have left.
How I know it still affects me?
Her father was from this seaside village, in a neighboring country (same nationality as my mother- she told me this when we were still friends), where a lot of the local women look rather similar to, or almost just like her. Small gene pool I guess. And while vacationing there at the beach (not by choice, some family friends my mother always wants to visit live there- t'is a smol world), this one girl walks up to our beach spot in my general direction and just as I turn my head, my subconscious sees a shadow of my old crush in this girl / woman's face and I freeze. I felt like someone had poured liquid nitrogen all over me, and I felt this chill- completely root me in place, passing through my body like being impaled with a spear. Hell, it was an undescribable sensation, of the bad kind. The third F of the Fight or Flight responses...? Freeze?
So yeah, f*ck it. I hope the universe keeps her far away from me, though given my luck, that probably won't be the case. I swear to God, if I bump into her anywhere near where I live right now, I am just going to turn 180° and start running in the other direction.
[Insert "why are you running?" Meme here]
Yeah, no, bYE-
---
I'm going to end this post on one, last note: there was something I was never quite able to explain.
During my self-imposed and forced phase of denial (that followed this ordeal, where I thought I was still bi instead of a lesbian because "I only had traumatizing experiences with men, therefore I would like it if the right person came along" -> load of cis-het, homophobic BS that people brainwashed me with), which took place during my last two years of highschool (third and fourth year), I had started dating this one friend of mine, who was compassionate enough to understand I wasn't a danger to anyone but myself, and knew that I was just a troubled teen that needed help.
He was relatively (or even fairly) good-looking, according to the average cis-het beauty standards (not like I cared, it was his kindness that had drawn me to him in a platonic way, since I cannot fall for men) and I think this may have been around the same time where my crush's boyfriend dumped her to be with another female classmate from that same class she was in-
Usually, she (my crush) would just put on a fake smile and wave when she walked past me outside of school (acknowledging my presence), or sometimes just blatantly ignore me (if she was in a bad mood), which was fine by me. But there was this one time where I was walking through the entrance gate that led into our high school, and I was holding hands with my "new boyfriend" (the friend I had started dating) and she was walking in the opposite direction, to leave the school grounds... When she spotted me. She just stared at me with such intense and fierce hatred in her eyes (???), scoffed, and then walked past us. It was so utterly weird...?! Like- was she jealous that I had a boyfriend (that I wasn't even able to love) and she just got dumped...? That's the only logical explanation I could find, because it didn't make any logical sense.
Why would you be jealous of seeing someone who had feelings for you, who you weren't even interested in, called a stalker and wanted gone so bad- date another person? Was she jealous I was with a handsome and generous guy?
I have absolutely no clue to this day, as to what the hell all of that was about.
I tried to put it out of my mind but the nonsensical behavior there stuck with me for quite a bit.
Random thing that resurfaced as a distant memory, while remembering everything else.
People are fekkin weird.
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