I am now 26 years old, but I remember my story in detail “from now on”. Everything was pretty good until seventh grade: I felt quite part of the team, talked to my friends a lot, boys were starting to like me, and in general I liked myself. But then everything changed drastically.
It so happened that I had to study at home for the first semester of this most unhappy seventh grade, and this lost time was probably some very important stage in my classmates' growing up. When I returned to school after the winter break, I was surprised to find that I could no longer find a common language with them. Moreover, at that time I was far from being in my best shape: thin, exhausted, with a still childish figure, also overcome by a manic fear of getting sick again, feeling completely defenseless against the world and people. And my classmates quickly felt it. A new boy, Arthur, appeared in class that year and immediately began to set the tone for everything.
Once he said something prickly to me, and instead of remaining silent (as everyone did), I snapped back. It all started from that moment on. Everyone forgot that I had a first name; they started calling me only by my last name. They tried in every possible way to humiliate, both verbally and in action. They pushed me, put on steps, hid things, ripped a chair out from under me, rewarded me with dozens of the most sophisticated and ruthless characteristics. The epithet “scary” has become my constant for many years. People around me only perceived me as something disgusting, which is disgusting to even touch. And I can't say that I was so concerned about their opinion at first. I didn't care what I looked like, but the fact of constant humiliation, vulnerability, and physical insecurity was depressing me. The only thing that made the situation better was that I still had a best friend in class who didn't pay attention to the bestial attitude towards me. I loved her very much and cherished talking to her.
The bad thing was that at the age of thirteen I just hadn't had time to think about many of the problems and issues that were very important for a teenager, in particular those related to my appearance. I guess if I had my own opinion on this matter, it would be much more difficult to convince me that I'm a disgusting freak. And so they inspired me. Somewhere very deep, at the subconscious level, as a matter of course, the belief in one's own third rate has been suppressed. The fact is that the lives of ordinary, “fearless” people are not for me. That I'm just a failed experiment, some monstrous mistake of nature. Over time, by eighth grade, I got used to snapping and defiantly moved away from my classmates (with the exception of a few friends), but even when I fought back, I always had an inner conviction that those who humiliated me were right... and this is the only way I deserve to be treated.
But on the other hand, the mechanism of “psychological compensation” has gradually come into its own. Yes, the world of ordinary people, those around me, is not for me. But there are other worlds as well. So why don't I, for example, become famous? In eighth grade, I became quite interested in club music, and this prompted me to consider all my future prospects. According to my plans, I was supposed to miraculously become prettier over time (so much so that Arthur would admire me when he saw me! it's him!) , change your first and last name (also symptomatic), go to another country, become popular, rich, happy... And so on. And the life I was living at that time was seen as temporary and unreal. Just to endure it!..
At the same time, I seemed to be in trouble. On the surface, I really got really crazy (I guess I was making myself feel like an internal annoyance), and I also fell ill again. Moreover, the disease turned out to be much worse than in the past — I started to have serious skin problems. Demodex is a chronically burgundy nose from constant rashes that I got the hang of covering with a masking pencil, which, of course, also couldn't give me confidence. By the way, the problem was solved only in the summer after tenth grade — and getting rid of it was a real revival to a better and happier life for me.
By ninth grade, physical bullying had stopped, and verbal humiliation was also more rare. But my sense of self had already been formed, and my reputation had finally developed. Being sure that I would definitely see something pathetic and funny there, I even avoided looking at myself in the mirror. Imagine my surprise when, one day, having overcome myself and still looking into it, I saw something quite coherent and not even unpleasant in appearance. But “it only seemed to me”... They “know better from the outside”...
And then I fell in love for the first time. Passionately and completely unrequited at a boy from another school, chatting with him online. Despite my feelings, I've been afraid to show up in front of him for a long time. And when we started dating, his indifference to me was most easily explained in my usual way. At school, they still perceived me, organically adding new flaws in appearance to previous insults. Once I jokingly asked a young man who sympathized with me to kiss me, and he replied, “That's too much.” Of course, how can I even be nice to anyone?!.. Sometimes I was eager to leave proudly, forget and think about my feelings, just live in my own world without going out to a place where, apparently, they deservedly strive to click on the nose!.. And how I was then drawn back to life, to people, to hope, to love... And how I wanted my “ugliness” to be overlooked once!..
A very characteristic feature was that every time I thought I was getting any prettier, I immediately wanted to run to my classmates so that their stigma could finally be removed. Another equally characteristic feature is that when talking to people, I always tried to look at myself through their eyes and understand how they see me. At the same time, I've always been haunted by the feeling that everyone understands that I'm scary and haven't even stood by anyone else, but for some reason they just put up with me, and adequate communication between us takes place only because they understand my special situation and accept it, not for a minute, but not forgetting about it. And sometimes I hated them all for it.
A few years later, already at university, my friend and I attended the course “The life and work of F. Dostoyevsky”. When it came to the main ideas of Notes from Underground, she said in perplexity: “I don't understand how you can hate someone who feels sorry for you?” But how did I understand that! If they regret it, then you are so insignificant that you deserve nothing but pity. This means that they see your inferiority and (think in a Christian way) accept you, at a time when you especially want to be a full-fledged person and live a full life!
In tenth grade, it became difficult for me to be in school again. Arthur, of course, grew up and stopped bothering me, but there was a worthy replacement for him: another classmate of mine named Zhenya. He became a unique expression of what I thought was the same general attitude of the class towards me at the time, constantly publicly reminding me of my ugliness. And once he said out loud that I was a “mistake of nature” (I remember it because it completely coincided with my worldview). Now it was much more difficult to endure like this — I loved it, I wanted to look attractive at least in front of someone else's eyes! In addition, it soon became clear that this same Zhenya knew such an important young man for me. And from that moment on, I tried hard to hide the fact of our conversation, because if Zhenya found out, I would tell him what a “nonentity” I was, and they could both laugh at me! It was simply impossible to bear it... My best friend (still the same as in seventh grade) tried to protect me and sympathized with me, and for that, for the reasons described above, she got it from me. At that moment, I was more vulnerable than ever before and was constantly experiencing burning loneliness — even though I was desperate to even the smallest opportunity to hear good things about myself. She made unnecessary acquaintances with guys, tried to fall in love with someone I thought liked me. But as a result, I got even deeper into sadness and the belief that I would never be happy as usual.
In the winter of the tenth grade, there were again, one after another, several serious illnesses. I spend the entire third quarter at home. And I can say that my condition is finally breaking down. I remember that moment very well: I was sitting on the floor, once again whimpering plaintively because of a domestic mess, felt sorry for myself frantically, when suddenly a completely new thought lit up my mind, which was completely changing: “Why don't I have character at all! Well, do you think unrequited love is a reason to kill yourself? There are so many more serious troubles in life! No, I'm not going to let them all triumph over me! I will try to be happy!” And I started trying. I began to accustom myself to work hard and hard, started reading classics and trying to think about what I was reading. And most importantly, first of all, I started to try to find reasons to be happy. To think that I have someone to talk to online. The fact that old friends come to see me from time to time and I can't make them leave is finally about the fact that spring is coming and most of my life is ahead. And yet... by that time I had a friend, Sveta, whom it was easy and pleasant to talk to, because she saw me as an equal! She called my humiliating classmates “ignorant idiots.” All these efforts were not in vain: by the time I returned to school, I was completely calm and gladly gave warmth to people close to me, glad that they were sincerely attracted to me. And the painful feelings for my first love from another school began to wane. And I believed in an imminent miracle...
And a miracle happened. In the middle of tenth grade spring, I met an amazing young man. He was strikingly similar to me in his temperament, character, interests, reactions to the world and people, problems, and his romantic mood. And most importantly, he immediately found me beautiful and fell in love after a while. It was good for us, it was bright together. The most important thing for me in our relationship was that he was the only one who could fall in love with me and didn't see me as a “nothing”! I was convinced that this was the exception rather than the rule itself, so cooling it down was a disaster for me. What a broken heart it is! I just went back to hell, and after a fleeting joy it was especially hard, even unbearable. It was scary to even think that happiness would never happen again!..
And more importantly, until the very end, I was afraid to combine the worlds of school and extracurricular. At the same time, I saw the school world as a place where people see “who I really am”, and the extracurricular world as a place where I puff up, pull the wool over my eyes, and create a deceptive impression of myself. And as soon as my dear people get close to my classmates, they will immediately “see the light” and change their attitude towards me. And after that, of course, I'll lose them!
In eleventh grade, I finally started the path of development that I am still on today. First, I came to the conclusion that flaws can and should be presented as advantages and this is not a hoax — there simply are no “really” ones and it all depends on perception! Second, I began to develop original philosophical and life beliefs that have since become my inner center of gravity, goal, process, and even meaning. And thirdly, what has been maturing in me for quite some time has finally come to understand as paramount and irreplaceable: poetry. Imagining myself inside this world I created, I realized that I simply did not need anything but it, that all my needs could be fulfilled right here. And it was at this stage that poetry — my “psychological compensation” — reached its peak, and one might even say, it shredded a whole segment of my life.
After all, I still felt that I was nothing to everyone around me. They despise me, they think I'm the last thing. Well, everything that was happening suddenly became clear and began to be explained in an amazing way using the “poet and crowd” model. And then there he read Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov's theory about “higher” and “lower” people... After all, everything agrees — they (people who are shallow and rude) have always despised and persecuted me (which is already writing quite well). So that means what this is all about!..
From that moment on, I was almost completely convinced of my exclusivity, that there was definitely something incredible ahead of me. Otherwise, what did life prepare me for so subtly, why did it send me so many tests? “They literally pushed me out of the world of ordinary people, made it clear that everything about it is not for me, which means that I have to either die or take another world for myself.” And I took it back as best I could. I've written a lot — and a temporary failure has always seemed like a verdict or death to me, and this attitude persists even today. That's why I'm almost afraid of criticism and hardly publish (at least I could!). She rejected for herself what is characteristic of the “inferior” — love between a man and a woman in all its forms, physical comfort, attention to bodily needs.
The latter had a huge impact on my values: the desire to eat less and sleep less was replaced by caring for the body as an important mechanism only after another illness, which exhausted all nerves and strength. Disdain for love, and later more for its physical component, resulted in a feeling for a man who, for all his love, did not see me as a sexually attractive woman. And the rejection of physical comfort turned into quiet indifference to it — and this is probably the only thing that has benefited me so far!
And I also had a dislike for the “lower” that went beyond all limits. Now I myself was rejecting their world, despising it, snapping quite skillfully and stigmatizing my classmates. I was mad at them; I didn't want to give them a single reason to gloat and mock me. Therefore, my decision was to be great, study best at school, always look as good as possible, theatricalize my behavior even through frank posters, hone my appearance, be the best, the best at everything. (As I understand it now, it was a protective mechanism, but it would be better not to get yourself involved in this torture. Its grave consequences — painful perfectionism and excessive self-demands, which resulted in procrastination and very low productivity — are with me to this day.) Of course, my defiant behavior and my constantly emphasized individuality only increased the team's dislike for me. Seeing that words wouldn't take me anymore, my classmate Zhenya turned to physical pressure. And that's in twelfth grade! Of course, this made me very angry and humiliated. She saved herself with the dream of a university where she would “finally meet decent people”. She saved herself by going into a meditative vacuum. However, there was a very unpleasant aftertaste in my heart from Zhenya's phrase: “What talents can you have? Don't look at yourself in the mirror!” From time to time, there was an acute desire to get away from people forever, to become a kind of unrecognized desert genius. This is dualism! And at the same time, outside of school, there are friends and an understanding of my attractiveness, and even unrequited feelings for me. But “this is all a hoax! If they saw me at school, they would be disappointed right away”...
After graduation, a completely different life began. University, work, adequate, grown-up relationships between people, good friends, lots of interesting things to do and ideas that deserve a man's respect. It was a completely new life, and I was drawn into a whole trail of children's complexes and problems. First, my cult of genius burst miserably: I found myself just “not without abilities” that I needed to calmly and methodically develop. And with what pain it burst! how much effort and stress I had to put in to work out adequate installation situations! And I must say, there is still such disappointment inside... fatigue... burning out. Probably, this will stay with me either for a very long time, or until I completely lose sensitivity or, as psychologists say, until I completely burn out. Secondly, I still think that people around me perceive me as an unattractive woman. They will ask: “Why should you even care about the opinions of others, do you like yourself?” — I will answer: “Yes, I like it! For yourself and for others! And for the most part, I don't give a damn about the opinions of others, but when you start to have tender feelings for someone, and the “object” has not yet singled you out from the crowd, the question of my appearance and perception of it starts to wake up my soul again. I will say objectively — when you look at me in passing, I can't be called beautiful at all — but I can't be called ugly either! My appearance is difficult to understand — beyond traditional notions of ugliness and beauty. My main move “away from the complex” was to gradually realize the relativity of the beauty stereotype and then create something that is very much opposed to this stereotype, sweeps it away, makes it useless and pale. Why do I care about the undeniable beauty of the girls around me if they are half unable to interest, seduce or even enslave (I'm not boasting, I've got this... the cost of nurtured mental endurance, so to speak) men like me? We just have a different environment, that's all! People who like them are usually deeply uninteresting to me. And why do they even care what I look like?..
Overcoming the problem was the hardest thing to talk about in the last paragraph. At least it was very confusing. I guess I haven't been able to completely get rid of the terrible school ghosts, so there is no clear analysis of what is happening. I think the most important thing is to accept oneself as a multifaceted being with many wonderful qualities, to develop them in oneself, to present oneself to others as a complete person. And remember that an insistent desire to point out to you some of your seemingly “flaws” or “flaws” speaks primarily about the psychological problems of a person focused on your “shortcomings” and “flaws”, and not about your inferiority. You need to understand that such an emphasis cannot be the basis for a full-fledged relationship — in which case, do you really need them? But if you need them, then maybe the problem is not where you see it?.. .
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