It didn’t seem like much at the time; it never seemed like much at the time, but the effects were cumulative. I didn’t notice the gradual withering away of any sense of self-worth, and it seemed like nobody else did either.
I don’t know when the depression started. I don’t know why it wasn’t identified. I don’t like thinking about how my life might be different had it been treated early on. I don’t like feeling that it’s not possible to undo it at this late stage.
I wore glasses and I was a geeky nerd, and I still don’t fully understand why that made me such a target. I think it even started before I wore glasses but my first memory of anything happening is being called “four-eyes”. I was a geeky nerd first, bespectacled a bit later, and as the effects cumulated I became overweight. I very quickly and unintentionally developed poor eating habits as a way to cope with what was happening; it was just another flaw for them to point out, repeatedly.
I never fought back so maybe that explains why I became a staple target; I just took it and probably visibly retracted further into myself each time. Chances are I was giving the perpetrators exactly what they wanted without even realising it. I was, without any awareness, encouraging them to continue doing it, day in, day out.
I didn’t see any point in telling an adult about it since many of them witnessed it happening and yet showed no signs of wanting to help. The only outcome I could fathom is that it would get worse. Rules of the playground are a very real thing and the punishment for breaking them can be extreme; it was not worth the risk. In my mind there were levels of torture beyoond what I was currently experiencing and I wasn’t going to invite any escalation.
So I continues to let them chip away at me. I’m not sure I ever got a chance to decide who I was or who I wanted to be. I mostly did what I was told, was definitely several teacher’s pet, and was probably several teacher’s worst nightmares. I was not academically gifted unless I was actually interested in the subject, and for me that meant anything to do with computers. Since it being the late 80s and early 90s this did not help my geeky nerdy image as the geek revolution was yet to begin.
I found some outlets. To put it another way, I found some hiding places. The school had a number of rooms that contained upright pianos and these could be booked for breaks and lunch, something I did whenever possible. I can’t play the piano particularly well even with all that “practice” but it was somewhere for me to spend what should have been social time with my fellow pupils in a way that didn’t involve exposing myself to the way they treated me.
In later years the school bought a computer-based music making system. I don’t remember much about it other than the room it was in. It was set up in a windowless storage room on the second floor off the stairwell at one end of the school. It had a lock on the door and you had to book the key out to use it. This meant I could lock the door and forget the world existed for the duration of breaks and lunch hours. I can’t say I every produced anything worth listening to using that system but it was a place where I could be calm in a place where I invariably struggled to be at all.
I focused on the music because while the school did have computers they were not something you could generally use outside of I.T. classes. This changed in my final years at that school but it was too late to have much of an impact for me. I regret not asking for more access as I feel it would have been immensely beneficial for me, but the possibility didn’t really occur to me at the time.
My life throughout school was simply a chain reaction with very little self-direction; I mostly did what I thought was expected of me.
I was expected to fail my A-levels. In fact my A-level Physics teacher told me exactly that, so I went out and got a job. I was then surprised when Bournemouth University, my first choice, accepted me with fairly low requirements… which I then met. I decided to defer entry for a year and I dearly wish I could remember exactly why. I think it may have been a timing thing. Whatever the reason I can practically guarantee it wasn’t really my decision so much as the way the current took me.
So I spent my first year following school in retail only to find that nothing had changed, or so it seemed to me. It’s frustrating how looking back on periods of your life can result in a completely different perspective. At the time I never felt like I fitted in with the other staff. In many ways it felt exactly like school but with hindsight I’m pretty sure I was creating that feeling myself. Wherever you go you cannot get away from yourself.
I can remember a number of moments, interactions with them where I injected a spin that wasn’t there. Maybe I’m looking back with a need to remember a better experience, who knows. What I do know is that even after leaving school I’ve rarely allowed myself to be open to genuine relationships in or out of work so as to protect myself from harm. I think I need to explore this in more detail.
I was working at PC World, initially in the sales department. It didn’t take long for me to realise that I was not cut out for selling people stuff they didn’t need, which is basically the whole purpose of the sales staff in that store. It took the store manager a little longer but he got there within a few months of me achieving barely adequate sales numbers.
I requested a transfer into the tech support department but was told that required qualifications. The only vacancy I was qualified for was store merchandiser. It’s odd to me that someone who had been tinkering with computers most of his life and who had previously worked weekends and school holidays as a computer technician in a tiny computer repair shop should be deemed unqualified but I didn’t see any point in arguing with them. This should have been another in a sequence of clues that something about the way I valued myself wasn’t quite right.
I jumped head first into the role I had unintentionally landed. I thought myself CorelDRAW, studied the corporate documentation on how the merchandising process worked, and very quickly got the trust of the store management and head office such that I was left to run my department of one without much oversight. I was paricularly proud of the pre- and post-Christmas sales, organising all staff who were working on Christmas Eve to completely change the look of the store in just a couple of hours. This was not something I was in any way qualified for having never been great at organising myself nevermind others, but for whatever reason I was motivated to succeed at the task and succeed I did.
After Christmas I was offered a role covering telephone support post-Christmas. I jumped at the chance and again I seemed very motivated to succeed. Following on from that I was offered a role on the customer service desk. Apparently my combination of technical knowledge and being able to talk to customers, especially the difficult ones, had been noticed. Apparently I was still not qualified to move into the tech support department. Again, I didn’t argue with them.
I then went to university and did the course I wanted to do because nobody expected me to do anything else. It’s odd but I can’t unravel the actual reason I went to that university and did that course; I guess it doesn’t really matter. I knew I wanted to do something related to software engineering, and my experience at PC World had taught me that I had some level of natural people skills so the combination of software engineering and management made a lot of sense, I just wish it had been conscious at the time. Maybe it was and I just can’t remember, but whatever the reason that’s where I found myself.
University was much the same experience as school and PC World, except that there were more places where I felt I belonged. I was finally around people who shared my interests in a way I’d not experienced before. Yet, for some reason, I still felt out of place.
I found more outlets so I could cope. Continuing to eat poorly was definitely a big part of it, but I also embedded myself into helping manage the computer labs. This was a mostly solitary role providing support to other students. It was paid but didn’t pay much. I did it because it was a way to get more access to the computer labs that were reserved for the more senior students.
The 24/7 computer labs mostly contained macs and were geared towards people being able to surf the internet, work on assignments and print them out. I wanted access to the unix boxes, specifically they were HP/UX machines. These were tightly controlled as there weren’t many of them and demand was high. Joining the support team was the easiest way to get more time with these machines and the support needs in those labs were minimal. So long as there was a spare terminal during my shift I could use it.
In case it’s not clear yet I was largely a hermit at university. I did not get on very well with the people in the house where I lived for my first year. I made some friends but always through circumstances. I somehow landed in a social circle with another house in the student village and managed to maintain a semi-active social life with them. This grew over the years following as we moved around the area surrounding the campus, and I’m still in touch with them today. But even now I feel like an outsider in that group, and it’s something I’m good at unintentionally persisting despite their efforts to include me.
The third year of my degree required me to spend a “year in industry” and I was equal parts excited and anxious about it. I landed a decent position with a company that developed and sold nuclear monitoring systems, and as it turned out it was not a position that should have been occupied by an undergraduate. As with previous things I threw myself into it hard and found some success with it.
I think this is the time to talk about the difference between the shriveled up shell of a man that was created during school and the man who recognises that he has repeatedly proven his worth in every work role he’s ever had.
There is a very well-defined line between my social self-image and my professional self-image. Professionally, aside from suffering from fairly standard imposter syndrome I’m fairly confident regarding my skills and abilities. Personally I’m anything but.
Up to this point in my narrative I’ve had a number of jobs, including some casual and part-time work that I’ve not bothered to include. On balance I’ve always had positive feedback but I’ve never felt like I belong anywhere. I have no reason to believe that I didn’t, or don’t. I’ve had very few bad experiences interacting with other people since school and yet I’m socially a very quiet and withdrawn person. I don’t reveal much of myself I think because I’m convinced that if I let them see who I am and what I think I’ll be back at school and I don’t believe I could survive any more of that.
There another line and it exists in both the social and professional arenas, but more so on the social side. I’m quite a different person one-on-one than I am within a group. I’m very open but a group of more than two will almost completely shut me down. This makes no sense to me except that, maybe I feel like I can explain myself far better when I’m not competing for airtime with a group of people. I’m not someone who can talk over other people or interrupt them without feeling very guilty. This leaves me at a massive disadvantage when part of a group discussion. And I think the reason is that I don’t think anyone wants to hear what I have to say; the views of everyone else in the group are more important so interrupting doesn’t feel right most of the time.
I have a similar view on over-talking and interrupting in professional groups but I’m more confident in what I have to say so will do so if I feel it’s important. In fact I’ve had feedback from a couple of people I’ve worked with that when I think I’m right I can be downright arrogant about it. I’m actively working on recognising and curtailing that tendency.
I do something similar in personal contexts but it comes out slightly differently. I won’t argue my point for long and will shortly shut down from the social situation I’m in and internally try to work out whether I was actually right or wrong. According to my family this comes across as sulking which is not a good look past 40 years old.
So here I am, in my mid-40s, with most of the character traits discussed above still large and active parts of my daily personality. The writing prompt that triggered this self-reflective trip down memory lane was it didn’t seem like much at the time which I connected to the extensive bullying I endured at school. I can’t say with any degree of confident that the root of the way I am can be traced back to that but it makes a lot of sense to me.
I’m like a turtle who spends most of his time in his shell. When I peek out I’m always ready to duck back in at the slightest hint of danger. And it depresses me.
I want to be sociable, I want to be out there. Surprisingly I actually like talking to people, I even enjoy arguing with people most of the time. I find it very difficult to open up to people but when I do I don’t seem to know when to stop. For people who know me pretty well I’m an open book; to people who don’t know me I can appear to be cold and distant.
I should say in closing that I’m a lot better than I used to be, but there are things I still don’t do that I think would be beneficial. I don’t date (why the hell would any woman want to spend time with me). I don’t socialise unless I feel like I must (there are certain groups of people this doesn’t apply to and several where it absolutely does). I don’t initiate conversations with people unless it’s part of my job (people don’t want to hear what I have to say). And so on.
Living in my head can be difficult at the best of times but I endeavour to make it a little better every day.