Feeling trapped

Haven’t been here for quite a while, but I suppose that’s because things were getting better.

So school has started recently for me and it had been going great until I got some information that ruined the positive outlook I had. This one’s going to require months worth of background so if you intend to read this, get comfortable. It’s also going to be a bit painful to reflect on, but I know putting it here is worth it.

If anyone saw my last post they’ll know who L is (I’ll put a short version at the end or in the replies if anyone has questions), and as far as that goes things haven’t gotten better. This time last year things were fine, and I was in the same tech class as them. We would have been in the same class this year but they were slacking a lot last year so they didn’t get recommended for the second year course. That, while unfortunate for them, was a huge relief for me. It meant I wouldn’t have to deal with the stress of having to interact with them before I was prepared. For reference, towards the end of last school year, when the school was closed, I could not bring myself to join the call for class with them. That hurt my grade quite a lot. I usually take pride in my grades, but when faced with this problem my grades didn’t matter to me.

(Just a note I think fits here, I have given them chances to work with me to fix things. Every time, it felt like I wasn’t considered as an important part of the matter, only what I did and how it affected them mattered. There wasn’t even a mention of how it affected me. I should have advocated for myself, but when I feel like I’m the one that did wrong I don’t feel like I matter either so I didn’t question it. Just as an example, one time I prefaced everything stating that I wasn’t comfortable stating why I did things because that still weighs pretty heavily on me. I went along answering what happened, not noticing that how I felt wasn’t a topic of conversation at any point, and the one question they emphasized over everything else was “Why?”. The one question I didn’t have it in me to answer. The whole issue stemmed from not feeling like I mattered. That just drove the point home that I wasn’t the one that mattered.)

I thought that was the end of this whole thing. I move on, they move on, we don’t have to interact with each other. That would have been great. All I would have had to deal with is something I’ve dealt with before. But the teacher offered them a condition to get back into the tech class. And they’re about to fulfill that requirement. This is where the problem comes in. They still seem to expect things to return to something like how things were before, but I have seen no effort be put in. Why would I go back if I was the only person who cared enough to try to start a movement to get things back? Even if things work out in some way that I don’t see happening (I’ve thought about this a painful amount) I don’t think it would fix things on my end. I don’t think we want the same thing to happen in this situation. I would say that, but anxiety and overthinking things forbid that. So that sort of solution doesn’t seem to be viable.

The next possible way to ease this feeling that I thought of was to just not go. I know that sounds like a terrible idea, but it’s a possible way and it’s what’s happened in the past. It’s what I go to when nothing else has worked out and I still feel trapped the day things would happen. I just freeze up and can’t get myself to move. That option is always there, but it doesn’t always work.

The last way I can think of is to just cross my fingers and hope the school closes. That would make it so much easier on me, even though my grades would be sure to take a hit.

I don’t like any of these options. None of them will work reliably, for long enough, and with me feeling like I’m not trying to act purely for reduced stress this school year. To elaborate on that last one, I don’t see a way I could try to fix things without it being for my own short term gain over everything else. That’s not what it should be. I don’t want to have relations with anyone if the relations are going to be anything less than genuine.

So to cut this off before I go on too much longer, I just need to know what to do. I have no idea what to do. This is causing problems outside of the scope of the issue itself at this point.

2 Likes

MA10,

It’s really tough to feel like there are literally no good options – you are in the same room as this person that causes you a lot of turmoil, you succumb to their surface desire to reconcile, you hide, or the school shuts down and your grades take a hit. It feels like there’s no way where you don’t end up getting hurt.

And to feel like you’ve thought this through over and over and over is even more disheartening because it feels like there are no crooks and crannies left unanalyzed. And so it feels like you just have to pick the least of a stack of shitty options, and that’s really freaking hard to do…which is sometimes why you freeze up because you can’t move forward towards something you know is going to be terrible. But then in doing that, you’re picking something that is also terrible…and so the cycle goes on and on.

Sometimes the worst place to be is actually being stuck in our own head!!

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