Emotional Abuse

I could write about this topic for hours, unfortunately. I have had numerous experiences with emotional abuse, the most significant one being when I was bullied in high school.

Now, as a point of reference, I live in a town with a lot of wealthy people. I’m talking the kind of people that live in $600,000 to $1,000,000 and up houses; the kind that can be stereotypically snobby at their worst or super generous at their best. My family lived in the same town, but we were part of the group that wasn’t wealthy, so to speak. Up until the end of middle school, this fact hadn’t been a problem. I made friends and life went on...High school changed everything.

In my first year there, I joined the high school crew team. I learned after the fact that this was an elite sport mostly set aside for kids of a more affluent background. Silly me, I just wanted to enjoy a sport I was passionate about. And I was good at it, real good. Before the season started, my coach took note and told the owner of the team that not only was I good at the physical rowing, but I could also coach others as a coxswain (coxsin: the person who tells everyone to keep rowing). My future looked bright until the season was in full swing...

I found myself alone more often than not. Before practice, the girls would spread out into little circles to talk. I would try to stand near them and listen to see when I could contribute, but they stone-walled me, acted like I wasn’t there. I vividly remember sitting in the side hallway close to the others, knees pulled to my chest, crying because I felt so utterly invisible and alone. This one girl found an abundance of pleasure in my suffering. She used to laugh obnoxiously loud when she saw me, curving her back to put her whole body into the high-pitched squeals. Looking back, she was my primary bully.

Things only got worse from there. It spread like wildfire through the team that wasn’t strong. At five foot four and barely one hundred pounds, I had no muscle mass. It became common knowledge. There was an incident where we were lifting this skinny half-ton boat over our heads, but there were only three people carrying it, all of them towards the front. To safely carry this boat, we would normally have eight people helping out all spaced evenly. Three people towards the front meant the back was going to crash on the ground as soon as it came off the shelves, thus breaking the back and cracking the $15,000-$35,000 boat in half. Not good. But no one was volunteering, so I jumped on the back by myself. Then, one of the guys started yelling, “Come on, guys, get on the boat. It’s Foe.” Thanks for that. Really appreciate the put down.

At boat races, otherwise known as regattas, I had a few friends I could talk to every once in a while. Usually, they hung out by themselves, or talked about topics that made me uncomfortable. Soon, we fazed out and I stopped really speaking to them. I sat by my mother for hours, waiting in silence for the races to be over, while overextending myself to volunteer for tasks the team should have been helping with.

The one incident that stood out in my mind the most when it came to the abuse I endured, though, was that cursed Wednesday afternoon. My mother had just dropped me off at the side of the River our boathouse was. Fifteen minutes later, everyone on the team had arrived, and the head coach circled us together for a meeting. There were thunder storm warnings in the area, so she thought it would be safer for us to go home rather than huddle under the tin roofed boat house. The group immediately dispersed, and most of the team piled into their cars and drove off...leaving me and a group of eighth graders who had made the team.

Now, we did have a car pooling system in place, but I had been placed in three car pools already. All of the drivers had unceremoniously rejected me from the car pool, or refused to acknowledge my existence (nothing new there). So I was out of luck. Unfortunately, the head coach didn’t understand this. As soon as the rest of the team left, she bombarded me questions like “Why isn’t your ride here? Why don’t you have a Plan B? You need to have a Plan B for stuff like this!” She went on and on, putting the blame on me and doing nothing to remedy the situation. There was no offer to drive me home, no words of consolation- only aggression. Meanwhile, I was sending text after text to my mother asking her to come pick me up, only to receive no response. I tried my father, but he texted back that he was at work; there was nothing he could do. In a panicked state, I begged the eighth graders for a place in their car pool, and they graciously accepted me. But fifteen minutes later, when their ride arrived in the pouring rain, there was no room for me. Being nice, they asked again and again if I was ok, and being the polite yet stressed teen I was, I shooed them away. And off they went, my only hope of rescue...and I was scared. My coach decided to take this time to yell at me again for my mother’s absence, arguing that I was taking up her time. We sat in silence for another fifteen minutes, the only sound my pathetic sniffles as tears ran down my face. Finally, when my mother showed up, i ran to the car, hopped in, and hiccuped that the coach wanted to talk to her. Then, the coach had the audacity to yell at my mother! It was, overall, one of the worst days of my life.

Needless to say, there were more experiences I could detail to highlight the abuse I took from multiple organizations and individuals, but this summarizes the most abusive situation. The effects, however, were nothing short of disastrous. I was scared, terrified that people were making fun of me, or simply hated me for my existence. I felt ignored by my peers constantly, to the point that I began doubting my existence. Even some of my friends began to treat me as a ghost. Sometimes I fantasized how, if I faked a heart attack, maybe then people would notice me. The stress of thinking I was never good enough culminated from every abusive source in my life until November of my senior year when I first attempted suicide. I didn’t tell anyone, and luckily I talked myself down before anything serious happened. I went on to college, thinking that graduating would suddenly make me feel better, but I was sadly mistaken. The strong, desperate fear of my friends abandoning me gripped my heart every day. Thank God I had friends in college who were so understanding, and who listened when I came to them with my fears. But the stress and the repression of the effects abuse had on me soon took over.

During finals week of my first semester, I started having seriously suicidal thoughts. I put myself into therapy for the next semester, and I was on suicide watch the next few days.

During the next semester, I regularly attended therapy and support groups. Every day, I woke up feeling dull, like life wasn’t worth living, and it would have been better if I hadn’t woken up. The last straw that caused the meltdown of my life was when my best friend got together with my crush, after I had told said best friend about my feelings towards said crush. It was...heart breaking. And with it being finals week, it was the most stressful experience of my life. I started losing sleep to the point that my roommate and I took it to the building advisors to help us sort out new sleeping arrangements. And on Easter, I pulled my first all nighter. I never went to bed. Stress kept me up all night. In the end, I completed the semester, but my parents pulled me from college. I needed to recover, and the stress of college would’ve killed me if they hadn’t pulled me out.

I started seeing an actual therapist, not a college counselor. I was put on a few different medications. Things were pretty terrible for the next few months. I barely left my recliner, simply watching tv all day. I had to force myself to eat since I didn’t feel like it. Life took another down turn when my meds were increased around my birthday. And on my actual birthday, I had my first panic attack. My mom literally thought I was dying. I was dry heaving on the floor, trying desperately to throw up. my fingers were tingling with anxiety. I couldn’t sleep. And pretty soon I could barely walk, the stress was so overwhelming. I was driven to the hospital at 4am, and stayed the night. They gave me a pill to calm me down, and I slept one hour. Worst birthday ever.

But over time, life did get gradually better. I got a job at a well-known retailer, and my experience helped me to trust people again. I learned how to stand up for myself, and that being frustrated at someone was okay. Eventually, I realized one of my bosses was abusive, which is why I quit, so I moved onto another job. I learned more how to talk to others while handling lots of stress. Every skill I acquired contributed to the more stable human being I became. Throughout all this, therapy and the meds we settled on finally started to work. I even had a boyfriend for a little while, someone who was supportive and understanding. Even if we didn’t work out, they were always there for me.

What I’m trying to say is that emotional abuse is a real form of abuse that people usually don’t understand. It’s just as real and heart wrenching as physical abuse. I have the scars to prove it. Please, take my story and know that things can get better. No matter how you feel right now, things can gradually get better and you will feel happy or at least stable some day. I promise.

Winning this contest for telling my story would be cool, but I'm already winning because I was finally able to write it down. That's good enough for me. I'm proud of how far I've come.

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