#also I think I genuinely frightened my parents by talking openly about my mental health with them bc now my mom is visiting me on Tuesday | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hillarykylie · 5 years

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I’m just so incredibly frustrated and upset with everyone in my life and I’m so glad Tumblr is a safe platform where I can genuinely be expressive of my mental health and how I’ve been feeling, because it’s been a while.

I struggle with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and within the Disorder, there are 4 sub-categories - one of which I identify as ‘Quiet’ BPD which is a little dissimilar to the general conception of what BPD is.

I’ve also been diagnosed with Depression and Generalized Anxiety Disorder since the age of 12 and have been on medication for about 7 months.

I struggle on and off with Atypical Anorexia and have recently been diagnosed with Body Dysmorphic Disorder.

To begin with, life has been one huge emotionally tumultuous ride for me. The trauma that my childhood has cursed me with has done nothing but collateral damage in my life now.

Growing up, I was the only child who spent the bulk of my time being alone. I was socially awkward and failed to assimilate with my peers in school and was bullied for being unable to fit in.

I was sent away at the age of 9 all the way up till 12 to the hands of an abuser - whom I’ve forgiven as of today. I hate to blame this on my parents because I know they truly meant well at that point of time and wanted the best for me, but the emotional and mental scars this whole torment has left on me has been carthatic and unimaginable.

It’s eroded my self-worth and perception of myself over the last few years, and the fact that I never truly talked about this openly to anyone has led to a lot of pent-up anger and resentment and unresolved trauma to accumulate within me.

I love my mom, I know she loves me to death and till this day she cries over her decision of sending me away. The main reason she’d sent me away was because both my parents were busy building their business empires when I was younger and was unable to commit to me. growing up in a strict Asian household who pride themselves on elitism and academics, she believed that I’d flourish academically and be more well-behaved under the guardianship of someone who supposedly had the resources to nurture me when my mom couldn’t.

Not only was I a victim of physical abuse, being hit, slapped and pinched over the trivialest of reasons - all pertaining to academics by the way - such as not being able to grasp a maths formula / doing badly in a test and witnessing my childhood friend at the time getting beaten and slapped and caned and yelled at under the same roof as me on a daily basis and bearing the brunt of emotional abuse (getting told that I was never good enough, I was never smart enough, that I’ll never be academically successful, that I was useless) and being consistently compared to other children slowly tore away my self-esteem and happiness.

My guardian had a rigid routine that we had to adhere to, and most of it revolved around relentless studying and tutoring by her. There were hardly any breaks and not performing up to par academically would risk facing disciplinary action by her. Neither her child (my friend) Nor me were rebellious. We were obedient, compliant and hard-working. We had to lock ourselves up in the room and face long, tedious hours of studying and cramming, as young as at 9 and 10 years old, and had to face the constant prospect of my abuser exploding out of the blue.

I remember feeling an overwhelming apprehension, anxiety, fear, inadequacy as a child and I grew up feeling helpless and restricted in this mental and physical chokehold. I would hide in the toilets for a little longer and outside the house as I was deathly afraid to thrust myself back into a war-zone. It was a daily cycle of praying that I’d make it through the day without crumbling. Some days were bearable, other days were not. I had to witness how my friend got beaten, slapped and pinched by my abuser over yet again, the silliest of reasons and the constant chaos and mayhem in the house made me incredibly fearful. I was under constant pressure to be on my best performance, but I was still victim to being hit, pinched and yelled at - all because I didn’t understand a math formula or an algebraic equation. I’d subsequently be called “stupid” and “dumb” and every other degrading labels you could think of, that I slowly started to believe that the labels defined who I was. 3 years of such abuse being drilled relentlessly in you, a 9 year old child, just imagine.

As a child, you internalise everything that you’ve been told, and this unfortunately sticks with you throughout adolescence and adulthood.

At that point of time, I was so incredibly young that I had no idea that the physical and emotional abuse I endured wasn’t ‘NORMAL’, until years later when I finally got into therapy. I had no clue that this was almost illegal and unlawful.

I couldn’t escape from the situation then and I remember telling my parents about what I had to go through. I didn’t tell them in precise detail about the horrific abuse that I endured, as I couldn’t muster enough courage to tell them everything. I yearned desperately for my parents to salvage me from such a precarious and emotionally jeopardising situation, for them to save me and hug me and tell me everything that I’d put up with so far was awful and undeserving, but for some reason, I ended up being invalidated and accused of lying by my very own parents.

Not only was I falsely accused of fabricating about being hit, my dad thought I was conjuring up these “lies” because I was lazy and that didn’t want to do well in school. He then proceeded to discipline me by forcing me to kneel down and caned me, despite my desperate attempts to convince both my parents that I wasn’t lying and that I needed help. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong, and I felt like I was being punished for something I hadn’t done. I continued to address the issue several times throughout the 3 years, only to be trivialised and disregarded again and again. Instead of raising concerns and being empathetic, my dad proceeded to admonish me for not fairing exceptionally in school, and begun comparing me to other children, telling me that I should be more “like” them and to quit being lazy and a compulsive “liar”, and to stop making up excuses to be away from my abuser.

I felt stifled, disappointed and let down. I was broken when my mom continued not doing anything and enabled my abuser to continue abusing me. For 3 years, I was stuck in this inescapable loop of emotional, mental and physical torment and I was made to feel as though everything was my fault, and that I deserved to be treated this poorly.

Not to mention - the Singapore education system is one of the harshest and strictest systems in the World. There’s colossal emphasis placed on academics, even at a young age, and failing to produce adequate academic results would result in ostracisation and physical discipline from our parents.

That, compounded by the pressures of school, a chaotic upbringing and environment, gradually affected me in the worst ways possible.

I remember shedding tears and crying hysterically when I was younger, whilst I was being hit, seeing my friend being beaten and caned right in front of my eyes was as equally disturbing, gut-wrenching and frightening. It’s as though we never knew when she would erupt, things were so unpredictable that I was walking on eggshells throughout the 3 years. I never knew when a beating would herald, or when the torrent of emotional abuse would strike me.

I would pray and beg for my mom to fetch me and save me from the chaos, and felt betrayed and abandoned each time she chose not to do so. I felt unprotected, unsafe and misunderstood. I begun to believe that I was a liar, after my parents’ countless dismissals of what I was going through. I felt like a mistake, a burden, and didn’t understand why I was so unfairly subjected to being forsaken, abandoned and dismissed and abused.

I didn’t know if it was appropriate to cry or be emotionally afflicted about this. For years, I’d genuinely regarded physical discipline (hitting, slapping, on pinching) on children as something that was allegedly intrinsic and normal to society, as well as hurling hurtful, injurious insults, only to realise years later that none of it should be condoned and how I was in fact - a victim of abuse.

I started cultivating self destructive behaviours at the age of 11 and 12, and had to be sent to the Psychologists. When I begun self-harming as an outlet to express my innate anger and frustration, I received even more abuse. The only person who truly cared about me and was concerned for my well-being was one of my teachers, whom I’ll never forget till this day and who has changed my life dramatically ever since. I didn’t intend for my scars to be discovered by anyone around me, and was destroyed when my parents accused me of being “naive”, “impressionable” and trying to follow a fashion trend by cutting. I’d thought that with self-harming, they’d realise just how much pain I was in and rescue me, but unfortunately this wasn’t the case back then. What’s worse, my abuser noticed that I’d been self-harming and started yelling at me and being exasperated and unnecessarily incensed. I was confused by how people around me were acting. Nothing I do seemed to work.

They say the experiences in your childhood paves the way for how you view yourself later in life, and I cannot agree more. This whole ordeal has truly shaken me to the core, and has definitely played an integral part to all my mental issues now. 3 years of my precious childhood was robbed away from me and instead of receiving the love and care that I deserved, at my most emotionally vulnerable, I was cruelly invalidated, shunned away, dismissed and disregarded like a drop of a hat. 3 years of being told I was never good enough, never smart enough, that I’ll never make it, 3 years of witnessing instability, Disorder and mayhem in the household, an emotionally unstable and unpredictable Guardian, 3 years of being physically tortured by someone who wasn’t my biological parent.

Not only has my childhood made me feel utterly worthless and unloveable, this negative belief system has festered in me and till this day, I still harbour and carry such destructive thoughts about myself, which’s certainly done irrefutable damage on my adolescent years, such as leading me to seek out validation and “love” through toxic, malignant relationships due to my abnormally low self-esteem and not feeling loved as a child.

Fast forward - I didn’t know what to feel when my parents finally decided to believe me and was infuriated with my abuser YEARS later and when my mom came crying and apologising to me when she found out all along I’d been speaking the truth as a child.

I still don’t know how to react to this day. I’m confused, hurt and frazzled. I’ve chosen to forgive my abuser and my parents, especially my mom, but what I still don’t understand, and will never understand, is why I had to go through such torment as a child, when I should be loved, nurtured and cared for in the right way.

I spent most of my childhood feeling left-out and alone, fearful and distrustful of people and apprehensive whenever I’m asked to open up.

What hurts me even more is that despite everything I’ve gone through and endured during my nascent childhood and adolescent years (not exclusive to this incident of abuse), there are still people around me who claim to “love” me yet emotionally invalidate me in the most calluous ways possible.

“But you’re rich, your family’s wealthy. You have a nice house, you go to a prestigious University, what the hell do you even have to be traumatised about?”

Not only do they think I’m undeserving of love and support, they assume that growing up for me was peppered with endless merriment, laughter and joy, just because I hail from an admittedly “well-to-do” family, I must be handed with everything in a silver spoon in life and that I do not know jackshit about “real” struggles and that I must be a “spoilt brat”, when I’m nothing but the direct opposite. And it doesn’t help that I’m a high functioning person who is still performing adequately in all aspects of my life despite my barrage of unresolved trauma and mental illnesses - people who meet me for the first time have absolutely no idea about my history or past.

Really? You think years of childhood neglect, emotional, physical, mental abuse, taunting and ostracisation, growing up in an emotionally threatening environment, witnessing violence, chaos, volatility, losing a loved one can be cured with money?

Don’t get me wrong - I’m empathetic towards those who live in poverty and I make an effort to help people in need. I’m grateful to be financially blessed, but my parents being wealthy has absolutely no correlation to my well-being at all. My progress often gets discredited just because of my background, which is absolutely senseless and absurd.

Got A*AA for A Levels and apparently that wasn’t because of my hardwork, it was because I’m “rich”? You’ve got to be kidding me?

One thing stands clear and it is that I’m not a mooch or a leech who takes for granted my privileges and I certainly work my way up to the TOP myself, with my zealous work ethic and drive.

I feel misunderstood and maligned most of the time. I can’t even go about my day, expressing some form of discomfort or my sincere feelings without being undermined and treated as a joke. And I’m hardly ever the person who confides into someone or seeks help unless need be just because I’m so avoidant, paranoid and distrustful of people in general.

There are a lot more formidable things that I’ve gone through in my life which’s shaped me into who I am today, all of which has made the pain even more real, tangible and palpable and contributed to so much of my BPD and depression, which I’ll delve into at some point later.

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jillmckenzie1 · 6 years

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The Atrocity Exhibition

When Rick* and his wife Lisa checked the voicemail, there was nothing, only silence. Rick thought nothing of it, until getting a phone call later from his father-in-law. He said to Lisa, “I want you to talk to your mother.” Her mother had slurred speech, and she had no idea what day it was.

They rushed over, and took Lisa’s mother to the ER. The tentative diagnosis was that she’d had a stroke. While she recovered, Rick and Lisa took it upon themselves to clean up their parents’ home. They found evidence of sizable hoarding. A couch covered with junkmail. Stacks of VHS tapes. Empty bottles, magazines dating back to the year 2000. There was a certain kind of crazy-quilt logic to the organization of the detritus. Rick was just happy that the stacks of junk only reached three-and-a-half feet high.

The cleaning project was daunting, and not just from a physical perspective. Lisa recognized hoarding tendencies within the family. Was this her eventual fate? Due to a mysterious genetic alchemy, would she recede into her twilight years in a home jammed full of junk? Would she be found surrounded by mountains of trash as Fox News blared from a distant television somewhere in the house?

With the high-profile suicides this week of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, there’s been renewed talk about mental health. Inside that conversation are questions about conditions passed down by genes. Sometimes, the Venn Diagram of reality and entertainment intersect, and a movie is released at a moment that’s simply uncanny. I’m not sure I’d say Hereditary is the “right” movie, as such, but it captures those particular anxieties with nightmarish power.

We’re introduced to Annie (Toni Collette), an artist who specializes in miniature dioramas that portray her past and her family. Her mother has just died. Their relationship was…well, let’s go with strained.

Strained seems to be the overriding theme within her family. Her husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) is a natural peacemaker, and almost completely ineffectual. He tries to comfort her. She lies, tells him she’s going to the movies, and instead heads to the basement of a church and a grief support group. This might be helpful if she wasn’t totally uncomfortable with displays of emotion, yet emotion seeps out of her like an awakening volcano.

The kids are not much better, I’m sorry to say. Their teenaged son Peter drifts through high school on a combination of sadness and weed. His younger sister Charlie? Hoo-boy. She wanders through the wooded area surrounding the house barefoot, constantly sleeps in a treehouse, and cuts the head off a dead bird in order to draw it. I’m all for artistic expression, but Charlie steamrollers over the line.

The family positively vibrates with tension. Do they love each other? Well, they seem to think so, but they’re a group of strong-willed people who can’t openly share and deal with their emotions, and they take passive-aggressive behavior to impressive heights. On top of all this psychodrama, there’s a feeling that something is watching them and waiting. From there…?

There are a few things for you to understand about Hereditary. It’s a horror movie, to be sure, but it’s an elevated and mature version of the genre. Think of it this way. Compare The Bourne Identity or Ronin to Rambo: First Blood Part II, where you have an action movie that is as careful with its themes as it is with its gunplay. Along similar lines, I’d compare Hereditary to Friday the 13th. There’s nothing wrong with a flick that has a bunch of jump scares and gnarly-looking critters. Understand, however, that this is not that movie.**

Second, there’s a few films in the horror genre that go beyond mere “BOOGA-BOOGA” and deliver an experience that’s genuinely disturbing and unpleasant. I’m talking about movies like The Exorcist or The Witch that effectively deliver feelings of almost existential dread. Director Ari Aster has been making shorts for the last few years, and I suspect he’s learned the lessons of boutique horror. This is his first feature, and his command of tone is astonishing. As things progress, we start to get the feeling that something awful could happen at any moment. When it does, it’s often a response to an emotional character beat. Composer Colin Stetson delivers an unsettling score that enhances the tension, and proves that natural sound can be just as frightening as a sting.***

Aster also wrote the screenplay, and he’s just as interested in delving into the cracked dynamic of the family as he is in cranking up the tension. He gives the movie lots of time to breathe so that we can get to know them. Even smarter, Aster knows how trauma can realistically seep into a person, and how it can cause people to lash out at each other, retreat to bed, or explode. This is one of the most violent films I’ve ever seen, and while it has its share of horrific imagery, it’s more due to intense emotional violence.

Since Aster knew exactly what kind of movie he was making, his cast did as well and delivered outstanding performances. Gabriel Byrne’s useless compassion is sad, and I hadn’t realized until now how much I missed seeing him in high profile movies. Character actor Ann Dowd is heartbreaking as Joan, Annie’s friend from the grief support group.

Toni Collette is the undisputed MVP here, and it’s no real surprise. She’s been acting for over two decades, and she’s so consistently good that I think people take her for granted. As Annie, her performance is astonishing. She whipsaws between brittle control, desperate love, and full hysteria. She goes through the cycle of grief believably, and when things start to get really bad, her responses are simultaneously huge and honest. This is one of the best performances of the year.

The last half hour of Hereditary is a nightmare, and some may think the ending comes out of nowhere. That’s not the case, as the impeccable craftsmanship of the film provides us with pieces that feel unrelated until we finally see the entire puzzle. As alarming as the movie’s supernatural aspects are, the real horror comes from the fear that no matter what you do, you can’t escape your genes.

*My friend “Rick” agreed to let me write about this experience, with the understanding that I wouldn’t use real names. Fine, but he originally wanted to be referred to as an “unnamed source.” Not gonna happen, Rick!

**I saw this film in a theater mostly filled with teens and couples in their early 20’s, looking for some scary Friday night fun. They had no idea what they were walking into.

***You can read more about Stetson’s process here.

from Blog https://ondenver.com/the-atrocity-exhibition/

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