Preface: some readers may know, but others may not, that I do not really write one post a day. Most posts on this blog are written on weekends, at Christmas, and in summer, and they are then scheduled to come up at the rate of about one a day. Some posts – like the recent one of Obama in his hat – are written off the cuff, but the longer and deeper ones are not.
I write the posts, and then forget them until they appear, surprising me almost as much as they do anyone else. It is interesting, and utterly coincidental, to see that the one below, written some time ago, had been randomly scheduled to come up today.
It is about rough times of old, rough times this blog helped me get over. This is a very rough week for different reasons, with which these old times strike an oblique harmony. If no post had been scheduled to come up today I would have written an empty one and titled it, “In Which Professor Zero Needs a Hug.”
It is true.
Axé.
*
Random Bullet on Abusive Relationships: they ruin your relationship with yourself, but they are quite destructive to your relationships with other people as well. This point is of course made in every domestic violence pamphlet there is. Still it amazes me to slowly realize how much Reeducation, and my subsequent abusive relationship with an actual person, had to do with almost every problem I had with other people during those periods.
Further Boil-down of Reeducation: its objective was to break the will. Its basic message was, you cannot exist and you must “accept” this fact. That is why I contemplated suicide so seriously and for so long: I had, after some coercion, finally accepted that I could not exist.
I could not exist because being an intellectual was prohibited, so there was no subject position left for my being; and because whatever I knew or perceived was defined as wrong, so I should only follow instructions but not have any being of my own.
Reeducation, which was terribly abusive, said: 1. Whatever think you know or perceive is wrong, because your father is an alcoholic and the children of alcoholics are always wrong. 2. You cannot be an intellectual, because intellectuals are “in denial.” 3. You must renounce making your own decisions about anything, because the children of alcoholics are always “impulsive.”
The summary of all this is, as I say: you cannot exist. Because this is its message, and because of its insistence on storefront Christianity involving “getting humble before God” – namely, trying annihilate one’s original thoughts and one’s will – I am against Reeducation.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I am constantly nourished by these posts on Reeducation. I’m writing about the roots of my anti-writing fury and it’s hard to think about how to share it. It’ll come out some how and probably surprise me, too.
Kiita sends profacero a virtual hug.
Yeah, I was also situated in such a way that others opposed my existence. I learned the hard way what it means to be very, very alone, and self-reliant. Some opposed my existence because of my gender, others because of my origins, and still others because of my way of thinking, which is intellectual. So for a very, very long time I felt nothing but grinding hostility from the world. It is very stressful.
If I were there, you’d have your hug. Thanks for reminding me that the lasting effect of abuse and hostility is the relationships you have with the rest of the world. Now, if only the rest of the world read this post so we could all heal and move forward.
Quickly, a cyber hug. Thanks for slogging this all out in semi-public, you have helped me so much.
Gracias, y’all! 🙂 Wish me luck tomorrow, I will need some.
Bon chance! By the way, I am now reading Sandra Ingerman’s new age shamanistic book, How to Heal Toxic Thoughts. It is actually a very good book, which doesn’t have the kind of trashy aspects that one often associates with the New Age ideologies and quackery. You might like to get it.
Good luck!
Anyway some of her points were to visualise yourself encompassed within a blue egg of protective light. You can also get a tranquil picture of some natural setting that you like, and place it over your heart, and filter all that you experience through that. (You need to spend about ten minutes visualising this setting first — the nature of the breeze, the sense of water in the air or land, the quality of the sun (fire) and invision sinking into the earth.)
i haven’t commented on your reeducation posts–perhaps because they hit home so much and make my mind and heart go in a million different directions. but i thank you for sharing them.
un abrazo. and good luck!
Gracias !!! You are all really helping and I really appreciate it. I am working on the blue egg. It is dawn, so “tomorrow” is starting.
…and now it is noon, and the day is improving.
I’m glad that the day improved. I join Kiita in sending you a virtual hug. I empathize with your experience with Reeducation. I spent five years there. I could not get over the weird idea that though I have no control over anything, that unpleasant responses to outward circumstances were my fault–in the sense that if anything terrible affected me, then I hadn’t been adequately reeducated and therefore needed to start my reeducation from the beginning. It started to seem like an exercise in berating myself for feeling, and isn’t that what happens in an abusive relationship? One is not supposed to feel or have needs or even be a person? Anyway, don’t know if this makes sense; you articulate the ideas much more clearly here.
Just to be clear, I was responding to this as reeducucation:
1. Whatever think you know or perceive is wrong, because your father is an alcoholic and the children of alcoholics are always wrong. 2. You cannot be an intellectual, because intellectuals are “in denial.” 3. You must renounce making your own decisions about anything, because the children of alcoholics are always “impulsive.”
and was commenting on having been in the groups that reeducate children and other relatives of alcoholics by using “storefront Christianity.”
“I could not get over the weird idea that though I have no control over anything, that unpleasant responses to outward circumstances were my fault–in the sense that if anything terrible affected me, then I hadn’t been adequately reeducated and therefore needed to start my reeducation from the beginning. It started to seem like an exercise in berating myself for feeling, and isn’t that what happens in an abusive relationship? One is not supposed to feel or have needs or even be a person?”
Actually I like your summary better than mine – or no, I like it as much as mine – it is the perfect complementary summary.