But I can't live my life Born in sin and holdin' it in Cause if we are goin' down Then I am goin' down in style

There is something that has been bothering me, about some of the things that I have previously said, both here, here, and on my other blog, and I want to clarify my meaning, because we live in a world that is committed to purposeful misinterpretation and misrepresentation. There are people who purposely seek to misunderstand you. I know that over-explaining yourself is a trauma response, but I also know that the internet wants you to grovel over things that they have postulated that they want to strong-arm into reality--or have just simply invented.

I did not want people to think I was saying "look what you made me do"--the way that narcissists and other abusers do. I did want to make it known, and to clarify, that what I did do was in direct response to the years of malicious harassment, bullying, name calling, physical violence, s3xual misconduct that all went unchecked for years. I was tormented, extensively, by people who would turn around and pretend they did not know what had happened or why I was so upset.

I am not trying to deflect. I am trying to contextualize. This is not DARVO.

I believe in telling the truth, but I also believe in telling the whole truth. Bad things had been done to me--for decades at this point, and I responded imperfectly as a mentally ill child on incompatible psych meds. I did not always behave and respond appropriately to things, but I was also dealing with people who were purposely weaponizing my unwellness, as well as my inability to understand boundaries (and purposely blurring them, knowing that I had great difficulty gauging them), and taking advantage of my socio-economic status, racial background, and familial history, knowing full well the optics would be in their favour. 

 I also want to make it clear that I was not going to take responsibility for other people's lies. 

I am sorry for people whom I hurt by accident,  or even quasi on purpose.  I will not apologize to people who took advantage of me as a mentally ill child.

So, for example, yes, I did write a threatening letter to one of my classmates,  a classmate who was supposed to have been my friend. I should have not done that, but I also have to give empathy to the younger version of me who was also dealing with this person falsely reporting me to school authority figures after dropping razor blades in my locker and saying that I had weapons. This all because this person had wanted to talk to me with the guidance counselor, which, to their credit would have been well-meaning--but it wasn't rooted in my well-being, it was rooted in them being seen as a hero. And when I was more annoyed than "grateful" "enough" for them having done that, they "punished" me for it. And I had, at one point, even apologized to this person, and they had allowed me to believe it was all fine again--but then would tell others, including school authority figures, that it was not.  (Edit: I believe it's also worth noting that this person then went on to repeatedly tell me to unalive myself, because I wasn't grateful enough for them taking me to the guidance counselor.  Charming shit.)

But these people won't tell you their part. They won't tell you they cut my hair and laughed at me while I bit myself. They won't tell you how they broke my school projects (such as destroying my haunted house or tearing up my art), physically beat me up, --you name it, they did it. But they will tell you how I was "crazy" or "mean" or how I blew up at them, and they couldn't imagine why.

The more I have thought about it, the more I realize that this probably had way less to do with me than either this person I wasn't "grateful" "enough" to or I ever realized, and it had more to do with that person and their own insecurities taking advantage of my socio-economic status, racial background, and familial history to lift themselves up. It might also be worth noting that this person was (and to an extent still is) a textbook Not Like Other Girls before awareness of this trope existed. This person was, and still is, to a good extent, desperate to be perceived as unique, special, different, and interesting---all the while being cruel to people who were actually different who posed a threat to their differentness charade. This person spent a lot of time copying things about me, traits they collected like a succubus decorator crab. Interesting things that were collected in their desperation to be perceived as unique, special, different, and interesting---all the while never leaving the safety of their privilege. 

This person had been in a one-sided silent competition with me for years I have only come to realize recently. This succubus decorator crab collected a lot of traits from me, not as camouflage, as actual decorator crabs do, but as Get Out-lite, one of  the Zygons, a soul-eater, displaying absolutely no compunction about lifting everything from art style to penmanship. (When I tell you that this shit has been SO WEIRD to look back on in retrospect....) And the other thing is--I am not a competitive person. I want everyone to win. I wanted to be the next CLAMP, but that is not how this friend group saw itself.

This is a small fraction of my academic awards and recognitions over the years.

From a very early age, my mother always made it  very clear to me that I would have to work exponentially harder than my peers for much less. I spent a good portion of my school experience  as a scholastic overachiever-- people wanted me to fail, and I wasn't going to give them that satisfaction. But I think a lot of the ire I received  from my peers was resentment, jealousy, and anger that I dared, I with my broken home and my mother being a "maid" (she was not a maid, but my classmates called her that), did better than them. How dare I.  

The reason I bring this up is because one of the most heinous things that was ever said about me,  complete fabrications that were, and I repeat, contemporarily proven false, was done so because I had won an award in art that one of them thought they should get over me, and they sought to fix my little red wagon. I guess. Even though it is untrue, it has haunted me for years. But they knew the optics would be in their favour, and they knew that I would probably not respond in a way that was controlled, but the truth was, and is, always in my favour.

It's also always been very interesting to me that the same people whose parents wouldn't let them hang out with me after school because of who my father was were the same people who later tried to say I lied about what happened to me at the hands of my father--so which is it? There are boxes of court documents that are sitting in my closets that say otherwise. 

I am not trying to make excuses for what happened. I am simply trying to contextualize it.

The reason I bring it up NOW, as an adult, 20 years later, is because if these people are capable of that level of sophisticated duplicity as children, imagine how they would be as adults. Only this time it wasn't going to be the art award they wanted and thought they should have over me, it would the career in the arts as an adult I worked hard for and they didn't. They never wanted to do the work, they just wanted to have it, and they have always been resentful of me because I always had to do the work.

As stated previously I do want to make it very, very clear--I want to apologize to the people whose lasting memories of me are of a mentally ill child being forced onto incompatible psych meds who was bad with boundaries, which lasted until I was about 20 years old. I am so sincerely and incredibly sorry that you had to experience me this way, or that you had to experience  inappropriate things I said or did. I am sorry that my lack of access to appropriate care hurt you. More than any of the damage i did to myself,  I am so sad that I had hurt others. And whilst, for the majority of that time frame, I had absolutely had no control over what was happening to me, I am still  physically responsible for what I did in this body. I am not a different person, I am physically the same person, even long after my brain has been allowed to heal and repair itself. And, again, the physically same person would like to apologize to people who need to hear it. I am not John Mulaney trying to say I was a "different person." I sincerely apologize to people whom I may have hurt--even if I had very little control, I still did it. 

But, again, I am not apologizing to people who expect me to take responsibility for their insecurities. Me getting an art award over you as a child because no one wanted to read your badly drawn weirdo Nahtzee yaoi is not my responsibility.

I actually don't want to talk about this again. No one asked for this. No one has demanded I answer to this (yet). But this has bothered me, and I felt as thought I would not feel right not talking about it. And, like, if you're going to weaponize shit I did, or didn't do, as a mentally ill child as an internet stranger, I literally do not know wtf to tell you. I am someone who more often than not over-apologizes, or pleads for forgiveness over things that are not my fault. Taking badness on myself was the way I survived my childhood. Being forced to answer and take responsibility to others' misdeeds, least of all misdeeds that were done to me and were treated as though they were a  reflection of some kind onto me was how I learned to navigate the world. But, in this case, in this instance, I am not taking responsibility to things I did not do anymore. 

I cannot change the past, but I can help create a kinder, and better future.