![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
As a child I took many blows. When I was very young, I fought back, but that only increased the intensity of the resistance arrayed against me.
No one ever bothered to explain to me why this resistance existed. I was intelligent and questioning and logical. I believed that the truth should be respected. I didn't understand ego issues and such complications of interpersonal human life.
When people said "put yourself in their shoes" my response was "if other people treated me the way I treat them, I'd be very happy with that"
Thus I learned that the golden rule was actually a dodge. What they really meant was "treat others the way we want to be treated"
By not internalizing the 1984-esque lesson that reality was whatever the group at large said it was, I ended up "improperly socialized". Of course, the answer everyone came up with was to keep throwing me back into the middle of the battlefield.
After a while, my desire to keep fighting broke. I realized that no one who had any power to help me was actually on my side. But I also did not want to become like my tormentors (never admit, never accept). So I built a shell to hide in. Because I was still pretty intelligent and questioning and logical, I built a very elaborate, durable shell. As people found their way in, I built new defenses to keep them out. In doing so I never was desensitized actually. I never became really resilient. I just had a very tough shell to go hide in when things got bad.
I imagined that college would be my release. I dreamed of transitioning there, of finding like minded people who were intelligent, questioning and logical, without the baggage of resentment and aggression and spooky ghost ideas implanted on them by society at large. So I popped out of my shell, ran around in the cool fresh air. And I was stabbed, over and over (oh look, fresh meat, no scar tissue!). The horror of that experience nearly destroyed me. I've never suffered so much in my life. I had dissociative episodes, where there was no personality there at all, just a sort of script running basic functions.
No one ever bothered to explain to me why this resistance existed. I was intelligent and questioning and logical. I believed that the truth should be respected. I didn't understand ego issues and such complications of interpersonal human life.
When people said "put yourself in their shoes" my response was "if other people treated me the way I treat them, I'd be very happy with that"
Thus I learned that the golden rule was actually a dodge. What they really meant was "treat others the way we want to be treated"
By not internalizing the 1984-esque lesson that reality was whatever the group at large said it was, I ended up "improperly socialized". Of course, the answer everyone came up with was to keep throwing me back into the middle of the battlefield.
After a while, my desire to keep fighting broke. I realized that no one who had any power to help me was actually on my side. But I also did not want to become like my tormentors (never admit, never accept). So I built a shell to hide in. Because I was still pretty intelligent and questioning and logical, I built a very elaborate, durable shell. As people found their way in, I built new defenses to keep them out. In doing so I never was desensitized actually. I never became really resilient. I just had a very tough shell to go hide in when things got bad.
I imagined that college would be my release. I dreamed of transitioning there, of finding like minded people who were intelligent, questioning and logical, without the baggage of resentment and aggression and spooky ghost ideas implanted on them by society at large. So I popped out of my shell, ran around in the cool fresh air. And I was stabbed, over and over (oh look, fresh meat, no scar tissue!). The horror of that experience nearly destroyed me. I've never suffered so much in my life. I had dissociative episodes, where there was no personality there at all, just a sort of script running basic functions.
