Every time I go into files I find notes to self about working in my department at UL. I’d be doing research projects and needing access to self to do them and be having trouble with it, and have revelations about how the abuse in my department was eroding me. These are not very legible, but based on the folder they’re in, they may be from the 2004-2009 period. They seem to say:
– “My biggest stressor is ignoring this or taking it as my fault.”
– “I need support and collegial advice, not abuse.”
– “Just sucking it up is not an option, because it prevents me from working.”
– “Having a frank conversation does not seem possible.”
– “I could really be contributing to this university if not undergoing this gaslighting and abuse.”
– “The abuse must stop.”
– “These attacks on my, and our integrity are baseless, and very destructive.”
– “We are not the problem. The problem is that those in power have no experience of other institutional models. They don’t know who we are. But the abuse must stop.”
– “In order to work I need to think of myself as a professional adult. But I am treated like a fractious child. It is not good, not for the department, or the university, or the profession.”
Those were things written in some moment of lucidity, the lucidity that comes with sharpening pain. Mixed into the file, that is an article draft, are fragments from Judith Herman, “Trauma and Recovery,” too. I had underlined:
* acceptance of belief system or rationalizations of perpetrator
* sense of helplessness or paralysis of initiative
* shame, guilt, and self-blame
* sense of defilement or stigma
I am doing Title IX training and it says that if anything like this happens, you should report to them because it is illegal.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 