On Feeling Doomed

That was thing when I lived with my mother, and times now when I spiral back to being age twelve again. The sense of doom. The feeling that I’m not in control of myself at all. Not that I’ve lost control and will lash out, but that someone else (in that case, my mother) had full complete control of even my thoughts and thus my future wasn’t mine. And with a future that isn’t mine then basically, I have no future.

This sense of doom carries over into everything. I figured I would never do well at school, even though I always did. I just thought that what my family constantly drove home (that I was worthless) was true. But there was something else inside me, apparently. That split persona that I think forms in abused children. The part of me that wanted to exist, and that I wanted to be was kept hidden from ‘them’ but exerted itself in school.

Worthless. Ugly. You’ll never do anything in life. You think you’re better then us, you want to go to college?

I’m writing it tame, and that’s not the worst of it.

Here’s a good one. I don’t know what age I was when my mother decided to ‘gaslight’ me. It was probably around fourth or fifth grade. I would go to school, come home, and everything in my room would be moved. Or just little things. I had this dog doll with those paws that Velcro together or something. He’d hang on one side of my curtain when I left and the other when I returned. I asked my mom what happened and she’d say, “Nothing, your room is just the way you left it.” This went on for a long time. Books would be taken from my room, dolls moved, sometimes my sheets would be changed. But whenever I thought it was wrong, and voiced that things had changed she’d tell me I must be going crazy.

I forgot how I found out. I remember her laughing, thinking it was funny. I vaguely recall her trying to justify it, that I thought I was so smart getting “A”s in school while my brother struggled.

She tried to take away everything, even my mind. And this all led to feelings of doom. I couldn’t even trust myself, so what was the point?

I don’t know, honestly, what kept me from suicide. Maybe that was also the other persona inside me, the real me, not the shell I had become. Maybe it was that at the time I was searching for a savior and clung to God, who I argue with constantly now. The whole issue of religion is another post.

But now I realize these feelings. Like recently when the PTSD was triggered. I had been contacted to tutor some college kid, very bright. I had accepted. But when in that triggered state I began to doubt myself, to feel there was nothing I could offer and that he was smarter than me to begin with. I didn’t fill in my contract with the college I teach at because I felt too dumb, worthless, wondered why they wanted me anyway.

At my full time job they are signing off on a promotion for me and suddenly I felt like I was pulling the wool over their eyes, like they just hadn’t figured out what a failure I was yet. And now it just pisses me off that I could sink to those depths again.

I’m trying so hard to control that and realize my self worth. I am not doomed, I have a future.