Date: 4th Nov 2022
Hi everyone, I'm appreciating how much I suck at updating this blog! In my defence, starting a new MASc course, continuing to work towards grant applications with my organisation, making songs and new podcast episodes and recently learning how to live with both new trauma and old trauma memories resurfacing, has taken up a lot of my time.
This trauma stuff is at the front of my brain 24/7 at the moment and I feel I am being defined by it, which is endlessly frustrating! I have so many questions and so many complicated emotions, it's hard to keep track of them all. But I think at the moment, my biggest question I come back to time and time again is "how do I keep trusting tutors when I've had not one, but two tutors use the same tactics to abuse, manipulate and control me and my voice"? Not sure I have an answer for that. But I'll break down my thought process anyway. I think I seem to attract narcissistic people and I think that's likely because of what happened to me at college. After I finished college I swore I would never deliberately make someone feel the way I did when the tutors there tore my dreams, self belief and soul into pieces. I strive to build people up, to be positive about what they are doing and be supportively honest, because when I was struggling, I needed someone to do that for me and nobody did. But this leads to issues. The most recent tutor who has retraumatised me seemed to thrive off my support. I gave her ego boosts when she needed them, was her most avid supporter and tried to believe in her when she seemed unable to do this herself. And I think because she never seemed to see or believe that she was doing well, I saw an older version of 16 year old me and immediately wanted to help. I wanted to prove to her she was worthy, she could do things and was amazing. I did this because I wanted to help this young 16 year old version of me I could see trapped within the 30-40 year old tutor.
But within this year (2022), our relationship boundaries started to shift and I noticed something had changed but didn't know what. With the help of my therapist and talking this all through with friends of mine, I began to realise I felt like I was being used. That I felt this tutor didn't really want me to be constructively critical when she asked me to, she was expecting me to just tell her life was fine and she was doing fantastically. As an autistic human, I seem to run into this issue frequently, where people expect me to manage to read through the lines. And I can't. I cannot read people, tone, body language or emails very well. It's a source of great stress and frustration I tell you. Being me and unable to do this, I've taken to being honest and open about this with people in the hopes they will literally be blunt as fuck with me. Hasn't worked with tutors thus far though. But I take thing literally and so when someone asks for my genuine thoughts on a book, a project, piece of music etc, I will tell them the blunt truth. I'll always have something nice to say and be constructive with my feedback but I don't lie and say it's amazing when I think it could be improved. I think when you combine these two things, shit hits the fan. Narcissists like people who boost their ego unconditionally and adhere to their view of the world and themselves. And they don't like it when you start to put your own boundaries in place, branch out and start having a different view/opinion of the things that they do.
So... how do I continue to navigate this new world of new tutors, new relationships and a new course while in the midst of feeling terrifyingly anxious, alone and pained? I'm trying a new approach this time from when I was in college, I'm attempting to take the tutors who tried to destroy me in the past and turning their hatred of me, anger at my words/actions and their cruel narcissism and turning that into love, compassion and care for both myself and for everyone else I come across in this new university setting. I'm trying to continue to stay open, to keep being true to myself and keep being vulnerable even when it scares me to a point of no return. I continue to be brave, even when I am genuinely fearful of what might happen as a result. I emailed my two main tutors yesterday and went "hey, shits hit the fan recently, I think you might need to know about this". I had no expectations of them replying. In fact I thought they wouldn't, after all, I emailed after working hours and shortly before we go into reading week (a week off from uni basically!). I fired off my email, closed down the app on my phone and the tab on my PC and went onto make this website. So imagine my surprise (and admittedly slight terror) when I checked my emails today and saw these two tutors both got back to me within 24 hours of my email landing in their inboxes. My expectations of them both were blown away and while I am still really REALLY scared of being vulnerable with them, continuing to "fail" and facing the possibility that even if I do everything right, this could all still go hideously wrong and I could end up hurt again, these two tutors have provided me with something special. Hope.
In the midst of my terror, anxiety and tears, these two tutors handed me a light, handed me a tiny little flickering flame of hope for the future. And by doing that, have handed me my power (and semblance of safety) back and made me feel a little bit more sheltered from the storm the is raging on in my head and body at the moment. I'm still pondering how I feel about the fact they have both been really lovely and supportive, after all, both the college tutor and old uni tutor relationships started this way too, but I think the fact I have hope again, is enough for me.
Hope has carried me through some horrible times before and I know, if everything fails again this time and it's because of something I do, that this little flame of hope will carry me through that as well. I am not alone, this is not like college. I have my incredibly supportive and inspirational friend Molly by my side and many other friends as well. I have a lovely peer group at UCL and who knows, maybe this time, I will have found tutors who are genuinely nice, who have no ulterior motive and who just want to help me learn to trust again?
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