Bermuda's Memories - Overflow Journal 1

[Armee]

I'm so sorry Bermuda (and Papa coco) that you were so brutally bullied at school. The part of other kids shyly asking if they could hit you to see that you "didnt' feel it or care is so very heart breaking. I'm so angry for little you. I understand your mom was way messed up and expect no better of her sadly. But I'm so angry wondering where we're the teachers? No one can tell me practically the whole school was beating you and no adult noticed. It makes my stomach churn, truly. And your mom...blaming you, and then asking you to take care of her instead of her nurturing you. I know you are a mom and can see how absolutely backwards that is. I'm sorry. Sending out a hug for Little Bermuda. You didn't deserve any of this.

[Bermuda]

When I reflect on this time I don't reflect on the bullying in the way others might. What I felt was an overwhelming feeling of monotony. Every single day. I would wake up early alone to do my chores, I would be harassed by my brothers. I would leave for school where I would be attacked on my way to school. I would sit in class where I would be made to feel stupid and unprepared. I would skip lunch every second day because I had to save up to earn my lunch. I would be attacked on the schoolyard if I didn't stay in class instead. I would be hit while waiting to leave. I would rush back to avoid giving children the chance to group up. I would come inside to an angry mother, do my chores, to be told I did them wrong and do them again, be disciplined for not doing well enough in school, my brothers who would beat me and torture me. I would go to bed at night sad, lonely, trapped. I would have to get up and do the same thing every single day.

I think about my reactions to the bullying more than the bullying itself. For example I think often about having my head put through a window... but every day the same children would grab me by my hair and hit my head repeatedly against a window. I learned that if I stiffened my neck and tried to avoid it, it would pull my hair more and make the force when my neck gave out so much stronger. So, a limp neck was the best technique. I had my head put through a window, and what I remember is learning to be limp and laughter.

There were adults, but in a way I think they were also powerless against it and outnumbered. I never blamed them, except when they actively participated or added insult to injury. Maybe I never expected adults to intervene. Why would I? I never knew that was a reasonable expectation. I never told anyone. I told my mother that once. Just that once. I remember feeling that was a nice interaction. She was giving me her nice side. I trusted that.

Yes, as a mother myself I would absolutely teach my children differently. I am passive and non-violent, but I am empowered differently.

In my past posts I haven't really reflected on myself in these moments, and I want to really practice that going forward. I don't remember my head hurting as it went through the safety glass. I don't remember shock. I don't think I cried. I don't think I did anything. Maybe I realised that it was over then. Maybe I got up and switched seats as if nothing happened. The hair pulling always hurt, but not stiffening my neck solved that, because then they weren't actually pulling. It was a choice I was making. It's always felt the same. Me going along with it takes their power away, because they weren't forcing me.

I realise that this is a coping mechanism and that I was powerless to stop it, but that is how it was... Always. It was relentless , repetitive, and predictable. This was when I started going to sleep at night imagining a different day in my head every night. A different life. I created a story I would build on day by day, one in which I was someone loveable.

[rainydiary]

I read your post and appreciate you sharing this.

[Bermuda]

There have been so many big things lately. They actually feel too big to share. It's strange. I have been triggered a lot lately, and I do think it's important for me to share the things I feel comfortable with, so here we go.

I have so many triggers. It's impossible to just be.

One of my things is writing. I have been complimented a lot lately on my handwriting while I am studying at Uni. It's very nice, I appreciate the compliments, but for me it's a whirlwind in my mind every time someone points it out. Today a professor came up from behind me in the university cafeteria to admire my handwriting and tell me that it looked like it was printed out. I put a lot of focus into my writing. It's to an abnormal extreme.

Firstly, I am lefthanded. I come from a time where people believed negative things about people who are lefthanded, and it was often corrected. In church you only reach out for the sacrament with your right hand, for example. You pass things with your right hand, you eat only with your right hand. Lefthanded people are sloppy.

The memory(s):
When I was little I broke my left arm, twice, and my left wrist, and two fingers on my left hand. One year in school I had casts on my left hand, twice. My teachers were unsympathetic and thought that pairing me with someone else to help me write was cheating. I was forced to do all of my work with my right hand at the same speed as everyone else. Having three broken bones is no excuse in life.

The next school year I had a teacher who made an example of me. She held up my paper to the class and asked the person who wrote it to stand up. She called me to the front of the class and made me write out my answers on the board while everyone laughed at me. I was humiliated, insulted, compared to animals.

My next teacher complained that I wrote far too small. I wrote tiny because that's how I coped.

Later when I was educated at home my made father me write practice CV's and forced to write them only in block letters. I rewrote it over and over in block lettering.

Now as an adult when someone sneaks up behind me to compliment me on my handwriting I think of my broken bones, the teacher who insulted me repeatedly and created fodder for the bullies, my secret writing that no one could see, and my father who didn't think I did well enough.

Last week someone complimented me on my writing and I replied with, "That's because I had a horrible teacher who made an example of me."

Yes, now I write like a printer. I grip the pen so tightly I blister.

[Armee]

That would be extremely triggering to hear that compliment especially snuck up from behind because how can you explain to that person the depth of traumas plural behind that neat handwriting and that it isn't an object of pride but pain.

[Bermuda]

I don't even know what to say anymore. I have so many new feelings. There is just so much going on in my life that is beyond me. I just don't know where I am going to go with this post.

I think my professor has noticed that I am strange. He has started doing things differently around me, and it's good. He used to stand beside me during group discussions and I think he noticed it made me extremely anxious and unable to speak. No I noticed he now stands behind at a different table to listen to my group's discussion. It really does help me, but I do notice. He used to come up beside me and read my study journal as I spoke, and compliment me on my work. It made me feel horrible, and mortified honestly. He told me that he would make sure to give me more creative outlets. I love writing papers, so it's good, but it's also terrible. I am a student in my late 30's and I am still trying to be invisible. I just read over this and it makes no sense. I am terrified that my professor has recognised my work, adjusted his strategy, and all-together noticed me. He even learned my name.

The last paper I wrote was an ethnographic observational piece about a homeless man I observed every day in the same place. After turning in the assignment I have never seen that man again. I have so many feelings around that. Maybe it's nothing, but I am legitimately worried, and sad.

Sometimes I feel like my existence is too much. Like I simultaneously have poor output, but what I do output takes up too much space in the world. I don't know why I feel like this. I know that my professor doing his job and that homeless person's existence both have nothing to do with me.

[Armee]

It's really scary to be noticed when you've had the life you've had, Bermuda. Being noticed was probably pretty dangerous in the most literal sense of the word. I remember - I think it was you - who wrote about seeing someone walk into a waiting area who reminded you of how you used to feel, and how people who have been traumatized badly can see that in other people too. It sounds to me like your professor might be someone who understands trauma and can see it in other people too, whether that's because of his own experiences, or because he's gotten to know other students or people in his life with difficult histories. He doesn't know what or how much or how bad, but he knows to be gentle and give you space. I believe he sees trauma in you, not strangeness. But even someone adjusting their approach for us can be really threatening feeling, or actually threatening. This makes sense Bermuda.

This is what trauma does. It alerts us to danger nonstop to keep us safe. We learned to stay not just small but invisible. When someone sees even a fleeting glance of us...it's not a good feeling...it's the opposite of what our survival system has tried to accomplish for us.

I think it sounds like you are doing really amazing  and valuable work and that - I know from my own experience - that is scary and threatening too. I know comparing trauma is not generally useful, but my things are not as hard as your things. And yet it was still so bad for me at work that I ran away from a 100% perfect career. I ran because I was doing really good work and people noticed and it triggered trauma. I had to leave because my work was recognized and appreciated. That fleeing served absolutely no one but it made me feel safe, except it made me feel safe in a situation that was never really a threat.

I hope you are able to find a way to calm your nervous system down a little so you can stay and keep putting valuable work out there. It helped me when I could frame it as doing work for others, not for me. You have gifts and people will notice. Do you hide your gifts to stay safe? The most frustrating thing is when we logically know we are safe but that warning alarm blaring can get pretty convincing. You can truly help people with your combination of experience and talent. It's sad it is so hard to heal that the world often loses the talent of people who have been through traumas. I'm thinking now of people like Roxanne Gay who survived trauma and took the risk of really putting herself out there and how grateful I am for her work and voice being available. How helpful that has been to me and others. Many other examples of course.

I hope you catch sight of your homeless person again and can talk to him.  You know so much in the life of someone who is homeless can lead to a sudden disappearance. Because we were given abuse that blamed us for all the bad things around us even as tiny children, we now think we have superpowers that make us the cause for all sorts of bad things happening. I hope he comes back and is ok, but you did not cause him to disappear. 

[Bermuda]

Thank you Armee. I think comparing trauma is quite helpful for me. I always want to listen. I know what you mean, and I do it too. I turn down and even avoid opportunities, even though they might be the things I yearn for so badly. I want so badly to follow my passions and be a good role model, and to teach my kids that it’s ok to do things you are not good at or struggle with just because you want it. You don’t have to only enjoy things you find easy. This life lesson is one I try to teach myself every day.

For so long I thought I was stupid. Why can everyone around me just DO things, and I can’t? I know now that I AM slow, but it’s nothing to do with so-called intelligence and honestly I question the meaning of that word to no end. It is a weapon more than a word.

I was recently talking to a friend about how I am so defeatist and I said, “It is extremely difficult to be such a mediocre perfectionist.” That sums it up pretty well.

Today I felt like if anyone talked to me during the lesson that I would burst into tears. I wanted to leave, but that would have drawn too much attention and I would have felt it necessary to excuse myself. So rather than speak, I stayed. With tears in my eyes the whole class. I thought since I have a bit of a cold that the tears could look plausible.

In the past I may not have even attempted to study. I am determined to be strange and mediocre, to be a role model.

But I am struggling.

I know that I am not the catalyst for everything bad, but it feels like it sometimes and other times it’s a sense of looming; a thick fog that could easy harbour bad things.

The fog is the problem and the solution. C-PTSD for you. It's not paranoia in a clinical sense rather just in the senses themselves.

[Armee]

"Mediocre perfectionist" cracked me up. That's a pretty good description. We have to try so dang hard for so many reasons. Many based on survival needs so it has a life or death feel. But it takes so much effort. We do overcompensate so it's like perfectionism but it's not that either really. I too thought I was stupid and when people would try to say differently and boost my self esteem it made it even worse because then I was misleading them and I'd try to convince them harder no I'm really stupid and they'd try to boost my self esteem and inside my survival instincts are screaming run!!! Lord it's almost funny but too sad.

I'm sorry being in class was so hard today.

[Bermuda]

We are constantly lied to until we internalise it. That Nike Slogan can go fiddle its toothpick.

I am constantly trying not to measure my worth by my output. I know very well that effort ≠ output. That there is no amount of willpower and determination that can actual overcome every hurdle. It is a very damaging lie. There are things I may not be capable of no matter how much, "I believe I can fly."

I am willing to fail, not fail until I pass, but actually fail. I will put in all my *available* willpower and if I fail that is okay. I wish I hadn't had to work this out for myself in life. It's okay to come in last, just as it would be okay to choose not to participate at all, but if it's something I want to participate in than participation is the goal. I chose to be in class today, so I did it. 

It's hard, the world doesn't agree with me. If I failed this course I may not be able to join another course in the future because Swedish education works on a merit rating, and my merit rating would decline.

It's not a level playing field. We're not lazy nor stupid. We don't lack effort or determination. It's not that we're not applying ourselves. Some people can, "Just do it!" and others can't, or even won't, and that's equally as valid. I just want to be there because I am genuinely interested in the information. It's for me not for my contribution to society.

I am glad I am at a place where I can laugh and cry at the same time. Thanks for your kind words. I do want to contribute to society, someday. I know I have things to offer. I am still figuring out how to do that with what I am able to offer. We all have different and ever fluctuating  complex abilities. 

[Bermuda]

Someone who I haven't spoken to in what feels like a lifetime just messages me and told me that Facebook reminded them that 12 years ago I visited them. I had this friend drive me to an airforce base where I turned myself in and was shipped to and imprisoned in Fort Knox. For this friend it was a happy memory together. For me it's a culmination of memories like a whirlwind starting.

Someone else recently looked shocked when I mentioned something military, and I gave them a quick synopsis. They looked at me in staggering disbelief and said nothing. I don't blame them.

I also wrote about this a very long time ago, but quickly deleted it. It felt too large, too self-identifying, and also so preposterous.

I want to take the time to tell that story, when I have time. Somehow being reminded that there are people in the world who knew and they still know makes it feel tangible and valid.

I'm not ridiculous. People take advantage of people who are disadvantaged, and that is why my life that seems like impossibly bad luck is not. It's real and I am real, and now I can't sleep.

[Armee]

You've been through so much Bermuda, as trauma and difficult circumstances beget more trauma and difficult circumstances. Sending along safe hugs as you get through these latest remembrances.

[Bermuda]

Well, it’s been a hard week. I feel like I have been constantly trying to swim above all my triggers while fighting my executive dysfunction which is determined to drown me.

I have so much to do and I just locked myself out, so I’m stuck at a cafe for a couple of hours when I desperately need to be writing a triggering paper about happiness. It’s due on Wednesday. I have rewritten it three times. Alas, I only have my phone with me, so here is the story of my military life.

Trigger warning - military, I don’t talk about the actual abuse, but the terrible circumstances.

Breathing. Woo.

It started long before this. I was schooled at home. My mother kept all of my identification from me locked in a fire safe box in her closet. When I was homeless I had nothing, and no address, nor a simple country of residence. I had no proof that I was real, and no way to fix that.

I visited a childhood friend while wandering as I did, he had an empty house he let me squat in for a while. The neighbours called the police on me thinking I broke in when they saw me sleeping on the floor, I digress. My friend was a lieutenant and told me that if joined that I could get a passport, that it happens all the time. He said that he would get a referral incentive and that he would split it with me. All I had to do was lie a bit about pre-existing medical conditions. Well, I went to a recruiter who I was very honest with. He told me the same thing and seemed really invested in helping me get documented. He even tried to search school records for me to prove I was educated, got me an ID and social security card that I could use to get a passport once I had a residence and eventually took me to get a GED. I had become a real life person.

When I joined it was clear my health was not amazing. I don’t want to get too much into that, but I was unfit and deemed so. I was to be medically discharged along with two others. However, my commanding officer refused to sign off on it. The three of us were medically excluded from service, and yet were punished for this. This commanding officer made constant jokes about how there was nothing we could do and that he owned us. The two others who were not trauma survivors were extremely distraught when he made threats to torture them. One of them had a broken leg, and was forced to stand for hours on end.

I told the other two that I had a plan. That we would leave. That we would be fine and I would get us out. When we were escorted to medical evaluations we made sure we were together and there was one other with us who was responsible for us. Military buddy system. We went into the building leaving our buddy waiting outside as she wasn’t permitted inside. Then the three of us left out the back throwing our medical paperwork out into a field and changing into our physical exercise outfits. I helped the girl with the broken leg run out of that open field, leaving behind our uniforms.

I lead them into a forested area with heavy needle trees. The girls were so terrified of what would happen to them. I promised them I would get them out so they could get help.

In the forest I found a small ravine, I picked up some fell tree branches and laid them across and covered it with needles to mimic the ground cover. It was just big enough for the three of us to shimmy inside. We waited for night fall, and then we heard the search. There were dogs barking and people marching around us. The girl who was pressed against me in this ravine started to panic. Someone stepped on a branch a finger length from her face. I covered her mouth so she couldn’t scream if the branch broke.

As the hours went on we heard the search effort die down. We held each other before crawling out of the shelter. The sun would be rising soon. It had been a day.

I told them to act naturally. We went through town, got in a cab and left base. We told the driver we were at a party at our boyfriend’s house. The driver dropped us off at a shop. With my money that I secretly hid, I bought us all new clothes and we changed into it there, stuffing our sweats into a waste bin.

We walked out feeling like we had done it, but terrified. We went to a motel, I booked us a night and we slept, except one girl who looked out the window every couple of minutes and panicked whenever she heard a knock at a door or someone talking outside. I was exceptionally calm. The next day I bought us bus tickets, and we left.

A couples years later, I learned that a had felony warrant for my arrest for desertion. I waited until my contract had expired, went to an airforce base where I knew I would be treated better, and I turned myself in and explained what had happened. I was interrogated briefly, but the officer in charge of me was very kind. He actually took me to a nice hotel where he had to wait outside the door and check on me every hour. He brought me food too, and seemed like he was genuinely interested in what had happened.

The next day I was loaded up and sent to Fort Knox, where my treatment was very different. They tried to force me to do labour, but I silently refused. Honestly, I may have smirked. There was nothing they could do to me that my mother hadn’t done better. I refused to move. I told them that my contract was expired, that they have no authority over me, and that I am medically exempt. It was a taunt, I had nothing to lose. It didn’t take long for them to realise that my behaviour was having an effect on other prisoners, and they released me with an honourable medical discharge that I was entitled to from the beginning.

That's the story of how I became an American Citizen. So, if I ever come across as bitter, it's because I am very much so. I am so grateful to be living as a German citizen in Sweden now.  That would never happen here. Now, to write my assignment on happiness.

[Armee]

Thank you for sharing it Bermuda. It's unconscionable they did that to you. I'm sorry. Happiness is an interesting topic. I actually am happy, I love my life I have now, but no one would know that's how I feel because I look the opposite. I carry a depressed or terrorized look mostly even when I am happy. There's so much locked away that I don't know or see but it shows on my face and in the way I carry myself, which I hate.

I'm sorry this is a hard trigger filled week.

[Bermuda]

Oh Armee, when I think about happiness I draw a blank. The things that come up are more like very difficult things that I made it through rather than things that brought me joy. Actually when I think about happiness, my mind goes to the worst places. After writing different versions of the assignment I settled on the idea that happiness is not for me to interpret, and that any day can be a good day, to someone else, and that's something we have some control over.

It's not about me. All the things that happen to me are not about me. All I have is what I am able to do. That is where the happiness lies.