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flexibeastWhen i was 8 years old, my family moved to rural Victoria. And not to a regional centre, but to a hobby farm a couple of kilometres outside the local village/hamlet, which itself was ~25km from the nearest town, and its population of less than 10,000. i lived there until i finished high school and moved to Canberra to go to uni.
It was not a pleasant experience.
i wasn't 'masculine' enough, i was not interested enough in sport and the outdoors in general, i was too much of a book-reading nerd. i was constantly made fun of, picked on, insulted, harrassed and generally marginalised. By the time i started high school, i had what now appears to have been a nervous breakdown: i woke up crying, i continued crying on the once-a-day bus into school, i cried before i went to sleep at night. My parents took me to a doctor, who apparently concluded that there was nothing wrong with me, because my health was not examined any further, and my parents began telling me to basically STFU when i was crying.
Over the last several years, i've often speculated about how this experience might have affected me mentally. And yesterday i came across research which suggests that at least some of my speculations may well be correct: my depression, my OCD, my paranoia1, my negative feelings about myself (including in relation to others), my lack of coping strategies, and so on, might have their origins in the portion of my childhood spent in rural Victoria. Which is strangely satisfying, even if it won't substantially change the strategies i've put in place for managing and working on the mental health issues in question. i guess it comes down to feeling that my mental state is not necessarily about me being a jerk, but may have been caused by the external pressures placed on a vulnerable mind.
1. i've often been accused of this; and it's certainly true that several years ago, i was seriously, irrationally, paranoid. But in more recent times, it's been suggested that i'm paranoid in my 'imagining' what people were saying about me; yet in the progress of time, i've had people confirm that certain people were trash-talking me, as i suspected. So although it's true that i am occasionally being paranoid, it also seems to be true (as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
naked_wrat and sacred_harlot will confirm) that more often than not i'm making an accurate appraisal of people's behaviour.
It was not a pleasant experience.
i wasn't 'masculine' enough, i was not interested enough in sport and the outdoors in general, i was too much of a book-reading nerd. i was constantly made fun of, picked on, insulted, harrassed and generally marginalised. By the time i started high school, i had what now appears to have been a nervous breakdown: i woke up crying, i continued crying on the once-a-day bus into school, i cried before i went to sleep at night. My parents took me to a doctor, who apparently concluded that there was nothing wrong with me, because my health was not examined any further, and my parents began telling me to basically STFU when i was crying.
Over the last several years, i've often speculated about how this experience might have affected me mentally. And yesterday i came across research which suggests that at least some of my speculations may well be correct: my depression, my OCD, my paranoia1, my negative feelings about myself (including in relation to others), my lack of coping strategies, and so on, might have their origins in the portion of my childhood spent in rural Victoria. Which is strangely satisfying, even if it won't substantially change the strategies i've put in place for managing and working on the mental health issues in question. i guess it comes down to feeling that my mental state is not necessarily about me being a jerk, but may have been caused by the external pressures placed on a vulnerable mind.
1. i've often been accused of this; and it's certainly true that several years ago, i was seriously, irrationally, paranoid. But in more recent times, it's been suggested that i'm paranoid in my 'imagining' what people were saying about me; yet in the progress of time, i've had people confirm that certain people were trash-talking me, as i suspected. So although it's true that i am occasionally being paranoid, it also seems to be true (as
naked_wrat and sacred_harlot will confirm) that more often than not i'm making an accurate appraisal of people's behaviour.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-29 11:23 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-29 12:38 (UTC):-(( Very sorry to hear that.
This is true. i guess i just compare my experiences in rural Victoria with my experiences of going to primary school in a suburb on the outskirts of Melbourne. Sure, in the latter situation, i got bullied and harrassed by both peers and seniors; but at least i also had peers who respected and supported me, in a way that i don't really feel i had in rural Victoria.
Cool. :-)