if someone is mean to you

you don't have to be nice to them.

I think the reason my hearing is so sensitive is that all the mean things that have ever happened to me have been words, things people have said. Actually that's not totally true - there were some pranks in junior high school that were pretty cruel. But I've mostly blocked them out of my mind, too painful to remember.

What is different about me that I get picked on? I think my dad tried to beat it out of me (verbally, not physically) when I was little - the sensitivity. I didn't even know what was wrong with me - I just tried to hide, in my books because there wasn't anyplace that I could physically escape to - and block it out of my mind. Kind of a version of sticking your fingers in your ears and singing 'lalala'.

But it doesn't block it out. The cruel words echo in there, bounce around over and over again, hurtful, mean things that people (mostly men, but sometimes women) said.

Why me? Does everyone experience this much meanness, this much cruelty? I hear couples speak to (and of) each other in language that I find utterly, unspeakably shocking, and yet to many people it seems to be quite the normal way of behaving.

But then I can think of others - I don't know. I can't figure out a pattern. I can't seem to find any people that I truly feel safe with, truly trust. It just feels like any time I try to get close to somebody, something goes wrong and I end up alone again. It always feels like it's all my fault, like the other person feels no blame or responsibility, and if I don't somehow 'suck it up', the relationship will be over. Or, it will be over anyway, and I'm just left with this horrible, rotten feeling inside of being worthless and unlovable. Like I'm just fundamentally flawed in such a basic way that nobody could ever love me.

If anybody from my family were to read this they would say I'm just feeling sorry for myself, "Don't listen to her, she's just trying to get attention," they would say.

Well, yes - I am trying to get attention. And failing, miserably. It seems like the only ones who get attention are the ones who pretend they're self-sufficient and don't need any help. Isn't that the American way, after all? And if I don't listen to the voice inside me that says how bad I'm feeling, who will?

Nobody, that's who. Everybody just wants you to move on, to get over it, to not bother them.

That's why I get stuck, seemingly forever, in these painful places: Nobody will ever listen.

Over the years it has accumulated to the point where the mountain of unheard hurts is so huge that it frightens even me. I don't even want to look at it - how can I expect anyone else to care? It's too much - it's already eaten such a huge hole in my life, and it feels like there's so little left - I feel as if my life is draining away without ever having really started. Like I never got a chance, like somehow there was never anybody who really saw me for who I was or what I could really do - it was always about how I could be of some use to them. Or, if I was no use to them, then I was useless. Maybe all people are like this.

***
The worst thing is not being able to get off the merry-go-round. You play the conversation over and over and over again, trying to figure what you said to make them be so mean to you. It just fucking HURTS. Like a sonofabitch.

I cry, and the sobbing frightens me, like it will never stop. The nausea, feel like throwing up - the feelings of shame and guilt are so horrible, like something inside me that I cannot escape. And there's never any way to get rid of it - it just sits there. I think that's why I the bulimia used to work, I literally tried to vomit it out.

But now I know it doesn't work, I no longer have the impulse to make myself throw up, though I've almost thrown up spontaneously a few times when I was crying so hard - I've heard/read that sometimes old grief can be like this when it finally comes out, that the physical blocking is so powerful that the muscles literally spasm. But the nausea - waves of it still hitting me. And granted it could be the food (chili), but I'm just pretty sure that it's the emotions trying to be dealt with and not knowing how, so its tying my guts in knots instead.

It just feels like I'm always wrong, no matter what I do. They never accept any guilt, never take any blame, any responsibility - never apologize. God forbid. This would be too major a loss of face - never mind how much pain I'm in, or misery. It's my fault because I'm too sensitive.

How do I escape these people, escape this pain? It's gotten to the point that I see cruelty everywhere, bullies behind every face. I suppose that wariness and fear must show in my eyes, and people can't resist attacking. Or, they try really hard not to, but it comes out anyway. What is that about people, the impulse to attack the weak, to tear them down?

(I'm thinking here of the exception, of romantic movies that portray some excessively vulnerable, fragile, pretty young thing who's been hurt by some relationship disaster, but who somehow yet remains trusting and open, like the wide-eyed Bambi or something. Gag me. Give me Lily Tomlin any time over these phony, fragile flowers who remain unscathed by life. Or maybe the pretty ones really do - no, been watching too many damn movies. Real life is not like that.)

Maybe dad would have been nicer to me if he'd thought I was pretty.

Parents don't really see children at all, do they? They see instead little reflections of themselves (both bad and good).

Who will listen, really listen, and actually care, in a way that I can feel, in this place in my gut where the hurt is?

***
I feel like I want to hurt them, to make them really feel the pain, the way they hurt me. It feels like the only way I can get even, to get rid of some of this pain.

But I can't get through to them. It feels so futile - because, unlike them, I know when I've hurt someone else and I feel so horribly guilty that I just can't do it. But they never seem to have the same feelings for me - that my feelings matter, that they should care about how I feel.

Why is this? Is it my fault somehow?

Some days it feels like I'm making progress, then other days something will send me sliding back down the rabbit hole and everything gets all weird and distorted again, and I can't see clearly or think straight, and it's all I can do to just get through the day. And then I hope for (and fear) sleep, the tossing, fitful, weird-dream-filled thing that happens when I can't fight it off any longer.

It's like, my logical brain knows that people are mean and cruel and thoughtless and selfish, and I know this, and yet I don't really believe it. I can't really believe that they are this way. And my inability to sort between the mean ones and the not-mean ones makes it impossible for me to trust anyone, because I'm always afraid that the ones who have been mostly nice and predictable will suddenly turn on me for no reason that I can ascertain. And why do I fear this? Because it's happened, over and over again.

Sometimes I think it's because I won't play their power games, because I refuse to be either inferior or superior - I try so hard to treat everyone as equal, even people I don't really feel are equal.

Is that a sort of hypocrisy, or what? And where does it come from, and why do I do it? Would it be better if I could just flip some kind of switch and go ahead and play the hierarchy game just like everybody else does? Would that solve this bullying problem for good and all?