This post is pretty hard to follow because there's a lot to think about so my thoughts are not organised and laid out all over the table: sorry in advance. I also write this post very much like I would in French, so some ideas I want to convey may be lost in translation.
So I am hypersensitive and a premature child. I live in a somewhat defavorized area (not sure how to word this in english). My earlier life, in college (which, in the french school system, is from 11 to 14) has mostly revolved around an odd sentiment, probably bred from the abuse and bullying I was being the target of at school: the idea that, to survive, it is okay to live only for yourself and to take advantage of others when you want. (After all, most of the other kids lived by this idea, so why wouldn't I?) Because of this, naturally there were two classes of people: the abusers, which had free reign over most and were effectively separate from the rest, and the abused. But even within the abused (which I was part of because I wasn't physically strong at the time), there's the same sentiment: each seeked to separate themselves from those who were 'worse' than them, even if they themselves were the victim of abuse. This led to a school environnement where nobody really tried to seek friendship, other than either for being praised, or for manipulation. Because I was new to this kind of environnement at the time, I got in a lot of manipulative 'friendships' which doens't help self esteem. There were very little people who understood the futility of this (and were very mature): I met three people like that, who I still am friends with to this day.
Unfortunately, although those two friends helped me a lot, my toxic relationships also damaged me a lot (although I've recovered from them now). One of those was a group of LoL players which I joined: there your worth was decided by which rank you reached. (LoL is an online game with a ranking system.) In a way it seemed 'fair', just be good and you will be appreciated. I lost a year of my life this way playing LoL and quit shortly after I finished college. It was very dumb, because LoL is a game which, instead of respecting the player, treats the player like a piece of shit. Each game of LoL is a random team of five versus another team, and lasts 20 to 40 minutes: each match is ranked and whether you win or lose determines if you climb in your ranking or sink down. But because of the team nature, often some people felt the only reason they lost was because of their teammates, etc, and you would have a lot of people telling you you're a piece of shit, and insulting you, going back to the school environnement. Yet because I was seeking appreciation in school, I continued to play.. Sometimes the games went longer than expected, and I delayed eating by several minutes. If I gave up the game to eat, I often felt very bad; the game punished you severly for quitting (you couldn't play again for a while and lost extra points if I recall correctly.) And of course, because of playing a lot, I didn't work a lot (although I still got good grades because I'm premature and don't have to work 'as much'). So this game undermines your self-worth a lot, up to the point where you think your existence is linked to it. In a way it was a little ironic: once I got out of the six-to-eight long farce that was school, I went to the computer and subjected myself to more torture in order to be able to feel better about myself, and maybe be less alone tommorow.
Ironically, when I was in college, in this state, I didn't fall into depression and want to kill myself: even worse, I felt it was all fair. There was this idea, that it was just the natural way of life, and that if you worked hard you would then deserve to be well treated, to be not abused anymore. Unfortunately I didn't have anyone to pull me out of this mindset.. I didn't have to worry about my abuse because I was just a "temporarily embarassed millionaire", and I would show them all when all my slavery and unending loyalty to the system well deserved hard work would pay off and I would have the right to treat people like shit and take advantage of them because I survived through former abuse, and then probably indoctrinate my children with that ideology. In the college where I was we all mostly knew most that we learned was really useless for later, so there was even more of an incentive to just do what you want.
But to go back to toxic relationships, another one I had was with a girl who sat next to me in a certain class. Here women were mostly treated as objects of social status. Naturally, I wanted to get a girlfriend, and there was no better targets than the one next to me, who was pretty cute. When I look back, there was quite a lot of implied discussion about porn (although I didn't really "get the hint" in most cases, I still understood some). So to survive in college, a vague interest in porn and sexuality was required, because then we could tell ourselves that life is actually super exciting and everything is great, when in reality it's mostly bleak and we wouldn't even get close to doing what was in the exciting displays of porn. I think my 'love" of the girl that sat next to me also came from that. (I didn't watch porn at the time, and still don't; but the descriptions alone and the vague idea of having sexual relations with someone made it, even for an 'abused' like me who was denied of most things, exciting.) I didn't have any idea how to approach her, so my best idea, as someone forced into being shy, was to exchange papers starting discussions while we were in class (because I couldn't approach her otherwhise).
Yet I didn't know who I was dealing with: this girl was by far the most manipulative and unstable person I know (and still know as of today.) In fact, my plan to approach her, was actually the opposite! This is important because I thought the decisions I made were purely because of my own accord, but I realised much later it was her that baited me into it. In a way, there was a giant red flag at the start: why would a well off person in college talk to an abused, a loser like me? The answer was that she was playing with several other, easily influencable men at the same time; me, one of the three good friends I mentionned earlier, and a guy I started to know which was her 'boyfriend". I was really into it at first, thinking I'd struck real love: we even got out and went to the same bus stations, and lived not too far away, saving myself from the painful thing known as "having to put effort in" - I could just manipulate her to love me! My actions were very rash, because for the very first time I thought I was above someone. I'd been abused all this time, yet I had someone who loved me (or so I thought) and I could just use her as I wanted, dropping a hint of affection every so often - that was my perception of love, from catching others boasting and mistreating their girlfriends.
The girl in question, along with playing with three boys at the same time, had us mostly hooked the entire ride - except for my friend who got the whole picture halfway through. After that she tried to go out with him, and they were lovers for a whole four hours - before she spent an hour in class writing a letter of apology about how it's 'not gonna work out", presumably in the intent to hurt him a lot. When I asked what she was writing during class, she concealed it and lied about it - making me think this was maybe a strategy she was going to use against me later. She was also surprisingly good at keeping a straight face for fooling us. I was the one most affected by this of course - I went through all her hoops and jumps, and slowly lost the manipulative aspect; because I thought she really loved me. After a few months, I was completely struck, yet we had never even talked about liking each other, and nobody knew I even talked to her.. After this, it was time to hurt me: and I jumped through more bullshit, learned to dance her tango and put up with her ignorance about me one day, and sudden affection the other - because I think I loved her.
This culminated, through some dumb turn of events I can only describe as expert engineering, to me stealing her phone on a school trip - I had a pretty good plan, but made a fatal mistake. This was the culmination of manipluation: I took an action I thought I took of my own accord, to only realise she was expecting this all along. When I had stolen the phone and went back to the dorms, two hours later, she went to where I was and looked in my eyes. Without any more communication, like being led by strings, I took the phone out of where I had hidden it, and gave it to her. On talking with the teachers, I later asked how they found out: they said the girl rung the phone and found where it was - which was bullshit, because it never rang since I had it with me the entire time! So I had been set up. By far the most frustating thing was the straight face she kept - always playing with you, making me ready to do the dance for her next trick, making me feel like I had a chance at ever escaping the abyss of losers - a glimmering light that led the peasants to dance, and me to feel hope to be better than the others.
I was blamed by her after for stealing her phone: she did a single remark, knowing where my weakness lies, in a little irony in the train when nobody could hear, and it stung me for weeks. For me it was my fault, if I did this mistake I simply deserved it. And so this was the wierdest love I had for someone: a mix of raw hate, pure anger, combined with the tiring facade of love. We were in a hate relationship, coordinated by love on the surface, love that I sincerly believed in, yet I hated at the same time, and that she used to manipulate me. Never had I seen anything else than the straight face she kept to toy with me. I learned with some side invesigation that she used drugs often.
And at the end of college, I felt like a victory - but looking back, it was a big waste of four years. I learned nothing but how badly people can treat each other, and how there is no bottom to the trapdoor of misery: you can always go lower, so does it ever end? More than anything, the whole construct I had going on with myself, the lies I told myself to keep going, were not applicable. I wasted four years playing nothing more than a card game where I hold no cards, and play the gester to get some crumbs; led on and able to do anything for anyone because I knew I just would be superior to them one day.
By far the worst thing was that I was nice and hard working. In this dumb waste, I still believed hard in this meritocracy - isn't that the scariest thing? I worked really hard for no reason - I had nothing to keep me going, yet I kept going. Because my mom told me "you will get somewhere if you work hard". Because I believed in a better future if I spent my living hours dumbing myself down to repetitive learning. Nothing was of value, nothing mattered; work was dumb and repetitive - yet I kept going. Why?
I never admitted to myself that life was unfair, despite all that I was living through. It was all the nature of man, and I was ever so insane as to think of an alternative: although I didn't ever think as to another because I was fine with what was going on. After all, you just have to work harder if you want to be rewarded, right?
[Unfortunately my small story does not end here, but it's 1:30 and I'll type up the rest later..]
