Feeling I: Nina
Jun. 23rd, 2021 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
takethisforexampleToday was alright because I walked into work and was immediately embraced by four of my coworkers. If there is one place I know I am always valued personally, it is there, despite it being a minimum wage retail job. Still, Adam and Jon were able to distract me for most of my day and were determined to do so. Adam was first to pick up on something being wrong (as usual) and really pulled through for me. He has this amazing ability to make me smile and I'll never not be grateful for that. He is an amazing person, and someone I will keep with me even after summer ends. Jon, on the other hand, has never given attention to me like he did today, and we shared all sorts of stories to one another throughout our shift. I can't even begin to explain how nice it feels to be asked to follow someone or have them follow you, or be invited outside just to talk. Maybe it's an adult thing, since I never really get that outside of work. Adam and Jon sort of saved me today.
I'd rather not talk about today's negatives since they are eating away at me ceaselessly and I don't want my friends' support to be in vain. I will, however, share a story I was vaguely reminded of today. It's not an easy one, but so many years have passed that I think it's time for me to write about it. Or rather her. This is a profile for Nina.
When I was in 7th grade, I had a best friend named Nina. Nina was a beautiful and intelligent Polish girl in my school, outcasted similarly to me for simply being strange. We became close friends very quickly and she was the first person I felt I could really tell anything to. She made me extremely happy. And being the confused kid I was, I developed a huge crush on her. I think of her now as the only person I have ever been truly in love with, in the most fucked up way ever. I don't even think of myself as conscious back then, the way I harbored such ill-fated emotions for a person, let alone my closest friend. But Nina and I had a... special intimacy. We spent copious amounts of time in her room talking and listening to music, melting away in the summer heat (her room had no AC). We were constantly on top of each other, touching hands and legs as if it didn't really mean anything, even though it probably did. It doesn't really matter now.
Nina came from a physically abusive household. Her parents yelled at her in Polish even when I was around, and I recall her having meticulous plans laid out for avoiding harassment. She refuted her trauma to me and became easily upset when it came up in conversation. I understood the position she was in at the time, but as a result failed to recognize abusive behaviors that she exhibited towards me. I had ignored, for two years, both physical and verbal abuse. Nina used to constantly degrade me for being "hyperactive" or "retarded", or would reprimand me for things that were inoffensive or not even my fault. She would grab my arms or neck often and even hit me on occasion. One time she hit me so hard in the side of my head that I lost almost all hearing in my right ear. Permanently. As time went on, she seemed to listen to me less and less. These things made me extremely self conscious and unstable. I was already dealing with mental illness that had only recently been diagnosed. My failure to gain her satisfaction led me to induce the most hardcore self harm I have ever experienced in my life. I would literally bash my wrist against my wall until it bled, or hold my knife to my wrists and cry hysterically for hours about my own inability to cut it open. And somehow, someway, I thought hardly anything of it because Nina was the only thing that allowed me to feel and to love. She was that person.
I remember one night in June we had hung out the entire day, and the rays of blue-green light were still peaking over the middle school field as we sat in the empty library parking lot. I can revisit this memory as if it happened yesterday: our unending laughter as we threw fistfuls of maple blooms like snow, how they got stuck in our long hair and on our socks, how amazing she looked to me and how amazing I felt. All of it. After we had exhausted ourselves running around, I took her by the hand, breathing heavy, and we laid in the baseball field and let the night consume us. When we finally left, she told me to text her when I got home safely, and in that moment I was in love. This memory is preserved in a singular light and I cannot experience it any other way. I shared this experience with someone who hurt me deeply. Someone I purged from my life confusedly and unintentionally. We went to different high schools. At some point in my freshman year I was possessed by a spirit or something and blocked her on every social media platform we talked on. I only saw her once after that, and she flipped me off.
My relationship with Nina ended swiftly but painfully. I only began to understand how unhealthy it was after I started going to therapy, and I could identify habits (both mine and hers) that had effectively torn me to shreds and caused me to hurt myself. But for a long period of time after our friendship had ended, I felt like I had nothing without Nina. I still wished that she was around despite all of the horrible things she did to me, and I never told my therapist this. Instead I made my own deduction that I am terminally connected to the people that come and go in my life. Even the people who hurt me. The tainted memories of yesterday still sit in their detailed bliss with only the omen of bad things to come, things that have already happened. Sometimes I still think about Nina and miss her. I know it's wrong and it makes me really uncomfortable. Since Nina, many people have come and gone, but none were the same. All the loss I feel and the issues I try to mask have become some sort of bastardized cakewalk. A cycle of pronounced devastation and slow, private healing.
This story has never been exposed to daylight, only briefly when it is relevant. It's still depressing to think about, but it would be unlike me to discredit the knowledge I gained from it I guess. From Nina, I learned that I am incurable. I'm unbelievably sensitive and expressive in unusual ways, and try to hide it from other people. All I do is feel. Feel but refuse to think, stare but refuse to see. I have my own emotional deficiency, my own 'brick wall' of sorts in that I just feel too intensely. I don't really know what more to write about it besides that.
I'd rather not talk about today's negatives since they are eating away at me ceaselessly and I don't want my friends' support to be in vain. I will, however, share a story I was vaguely reminded of today. It's not an easy one, but so many years have passed that I think it's time for me to write about it. Or rather her. This is a profile for Nina.
When I was in 7th grade, I had a best friend named Nina. Nina was a beautiful and intelligent Polish girl in my school, outcasted similarly to me for simply being strange. We became close friends very quickly and she was the first person I felt I could really tell anything to. She made me extremely happy. And being the confused kid I was, I developed a huge crush on her. I think of her now as the only person I have ever been truly in love with, in the most fucked up way ever. I don't even think of myself as conscious back then, the way I harbored such ill-fated emotions for a person, let alone my closest friend. But Nina and I had a... special intimacy. We spent copious amounts of time in her room talking and listening to music, melting away in the summer heat (her room had no AC). We were constantly on top of each other, touching hands and legs as if it didn't really mean anything, even though it probably did. It doesn't really matter now.
Nina came from a physically abusive household. Her parents yelled at her in Polish even when I was around, and I recall her having meticulous plans laid out for avoiding harassment. She refuted her trauma to me and became easily upset when it came up in conversation. I understood the position she was in at the time, but as a result failed to recognize abusive behaviors that she exhibited towards me. I had ignored, for two years, both physical and verbal abuse. Nina used to constantly degrade me for being "hyperactive" or "retarded", or would reprimand me for things that were inoffensive or not even my fault. She would grab my arms or neck often and even hit me on occasion. One time she hit me so hard in the side of my head that I lost almost all hearing in my right ear. Permanently. As time went on, she seemed to listen to me less and less. These things made me extremely self conscious and unstable. I was already dealing with mental illness that had only recently been diagnosed. My failure to gain her satisfaction led me to induce the most hardcore self harm I have ever experienced in my life. I would literally bash my wrist against my wall until it bled, or hold my knife to my wrists and cry hysterically for hours about my own inability to cut it open. And somehow, someway, I thought hardly anything of it because Nina was the only thing that allowed me to feel and to love. She was that person.
I remember one night in June we had hung out the entire day, and the rays of blue-green light were still peaking over the middle school field as we sat in the empty library parking lot. I can revisit this memory as if it happened yesterday: our unending laughter as we threw fistfuls of maple blooms like snow, how they got stuck in our long hair and on our socks, how amazing she looked to me and how amazing I felt. All of it. After we had exhausted ourselves running around, I took her by the hand, breathing heavy, and we laid in the baseball field and let the night consume us. When we finally left, she told me to text her when I got home safely, and in that moment I was in love. This memory is preserved in a singular light and I cannot experience it any other way. I shared this experience with someone who hurt me deeply. Someone I purged from my life confusedly and unintentionally. We went to different high schools. At some point in my freshman year I was possessed by a spirit or something and blocked her on every social media platform we talked on. I only saw her once after that, and she flipped me off.
My relationship with Nina ended swiftly but painfully. I only began to understand how unhealthy it was after I started going to therapy, and I could identify habits (both mine and hers) that had effectively torn me to shreds and caused me to hurt myself. But for a long period of time after our friendship had ended, I felt like I had nothing without Nina. I still wished that she was around despite all of the horrible things she did to me, and I never told my therapist this. Instead I made my own deduction that I am terminally connected to the people that come and go in my life. Even the people who hurt me. The tainted memories of yesterday still sit in their detailed bliss with only the omen of bad things to come, things that have already happened. Sometimes I still think about Nina and miss her. I know it's wrong and it makes me really uncomfortable. Since Nina, many people have come and gone, but none were the same. All the loss I feel and the issues I try to mask have become some sort of bastardized cakewalk. A cycle of pronounced devastation and slow, private healing.
This story has never been exposed to daylight, only briefly when it is relevant. It's still depressing to think about, but it would be unlike me to discredit the knowledge I gained from it I guess. From Nina, I learned that I am incurable. I'm unbelievably sensitive and expressive in unusual ways, and try to hide it from other people. All I do is feel. Feel but refuse to think, stare but refuse to see. I have my own emotional deficiency, my own 'brick wall' of sorts in that I just feel too intensely. I don't really know what more to write about it besides that.
