Grad School: A Near Miss Shot at the Sun
Dr Belgrade was my most favorite professor I ever had and I met him when I started my MA program at USF in 2022. I clicked with him in ways I never had with any other teacher — that was in part because I myself was doing a lot of the work, and he ushered things along. Initially my project was on Mormon gambling behavior — I was interested in the religious dimensions of gambling and how it may have compensated for an unmet spiritual need in the Mormon faith. Dr Belgrade and I were very playful and connected and respectful/trustful of each other; he respected me MOST when I showed up prepared and confident in myself; he didnt like to too much into doubt, but he would let me work out my ideas and usher me along. Sometimes I fought his influence but he transformed my thinking with amazing ideas and theorists; I ended up choosing him as my thesis project advisor. Meanwhile, I was having issues in another class with another teacher and another student in my cohort, Dr. Brendan Cook and Blythe Creelan. Dr Cook taught a class on Dante’s Divine comedy. It had nothing to do with my project; but the poetry was beautiful and it’s themes intriguing and surprisingly relevant to my life. I was very very hesitant to take Dr Cook’s class. He had been very eager to meet me and told me I was the most promising candidate they had who applied to their program. This planted a seed in me even before I made a decision on which school to go to: “I want to go where I’m WANTED”. But ultimately USF was the best pick too. I got hesitant when Dr. Cook invited me out to dinner with his family upon my arrival in Florida. It was very awkward. The minute he saw me he seemed stunned at how pretty I was in person. Conversation between him his wife and kids was stunted and difficult. After that he invited me to discuss my project and his class one afternoon. I already knew he gave me a weird feeling in my stomach and I knew his class wasn’t relevant but it seemed like he was trying to convince me it was. I was still genuine about my interest in Dante however and did the class. Dr Cook’s behavior was alarming to me. The day after I talked to Dr Belgrade for 2 hours Dr Cook commented that he overheard me talking to Dr Belgrade for hours and that I didn’t stop by his office (I intentionally was trying to avoid him; I found him both attractive and scary and I didn’t like the combination). Every week he would have competitions for who wrote the best homework assignment. We’d read two of them and vote on the best then the winner would be announced. I was uncomfortable with it and I could see my very insecure cohort member Blythe also being affected by it and she was already competitive and insecure and I could tell she hated that Dr Cook giving me a LOT of kudos in class and out of class. I asked Dr Cook to consider not doing the competitions. He refused. On a homework assignment he randomly changed my grade by .1 points overnight and I got hooked by this irrational/whimsical behavior. I was outraged that it was so small that he would even bother to change it. I wanted to know why and I asked the other teachers who told me to let it go. I went to his office hours and I caved on my resolve to be true to myself and asked him how I could improve. At that point he made himself really big in his chair and I shrunk. He got me right there — hooked and addicted to his validation which would prove to be elusive and uncertain. I slaved over my next assignment and this time I wanted to be in the competition and win. It was sincerely a beautiful and wise piece of writing, something I did not even know I was capable of. I pulled a few all nighters and got it done right on time. Brendan was amazed and asked if I would please participate in his contests. I consented — because I did work my ass off for it; and, much like my childhood, I struggled fitting in with my peers. So, why try? Why not take the seat right next to Brendan? That same day, Dr Cook announced in front of everyone that my writing assignment was the best he’d seen from a student in years, that I had exceeded scholarly expectations even. I could see Blythe was really upset. I participated in the stupid, petty system that pissed me off from the start and it inevitably hurt Blythe and everyone else. After he publicly worshipped my paper, Dr Cook said he had an exceptionally special gift to give me in private. The intrigue which was building between us was insane and my skeleton vibrated with the risk, the danger, the electricity between us which, on my end, was either going to carry me into his bed or absolutely guarantee my destruction and collapse. When I went to attend this private meeting with him in his office, he kept up with compliments and he gave me his college copy of an Aristotle book with his notes in it and cried. I felt really touched but the personal value he tangled me in, the display of vulnerability added to the electricity. The longing in me the was becoming unmanageable. I was becoming obsessed and consumed and I was aware that I would NEVER surpass the work I’d done previously. I set a bar too high and could not stand the pressure which I had really just put on myself. My paper had been about a woman in the inferno who did the exact same thing I did with Brendan, selling off pieces of her self until the sum of her losses became an independent and unconquerable force of lust over which she had no power. It became more and more difficult to focus on the actual content as I wanted to believe that I was the one spinning a web for Brendan to land in, when in fact I lived in HIS game whose end I thought, or hoped, would end with us finally dispelling the tension in a frenzied fuck. His end was worse than that: it was to keep training me, directing my mind, and keeping me stuck in desire and craving as a statue. He wanted to isolate me from everyone; I was to be his true teachers pet. But I was a bad dog. He wanted me to be a super intellectual under his wing to make him finally look good to his colleagues (who, I guess, pitied him). He wanted me to continue slaving over this poem about HELL but when he told me to sit, I couldn’t listen when the treat was always in my face: his physicality took over the more he subdued my mind to his validation game. I could no longer extract meaning from the poem itself, and was stuck inside a dark academic porn cage. Being trapped in this limbo with him in and of itself just revved up my sex drive and I wanted to call his bluff, I wanted him to satisfy the desire he put there, but instead both my feet stayed steady on the breaks while he stepped on the gas.What resumed was my inevitable failure to measure up to the perfect standard I had laid out for myself. After being the best it was hard not to feel like the worst. I grew more attuned to Dr. Brendan cook himself rather than the class material. I cannot seem to separate the two. On the day he announced my win in front of the whole class, I had overheard Blythe talking to Brendan and his office asking why her paper wasn’t chosen. She asked what did Melanie have that I don’t have? She was hooked to accept. Brendan didn’t want her at first. But as my performance started to slip, Blyth was perfectly poised to take on the role of new teacher’s pet. They did have a genuine connection. They both loved Greek history and classics. Instead of Brendan and I morning the fact that we were incompletely different worlds, we tried forcing something that was doomed to fail. That didn’t stop me from trying to get his attention and whatever way I knew how. I started becoming more emotional and anxious in my daily life and reached out to him for support but this time I exposed my wounds. I told him I was struggling and he offered to take me to lunch privately. I remember seeing him at the office and we awkwardly walked around campus in search of a private room. We were in an elevator together and one of his other students saw us and the silence was almost intolerable. We ended up going back to his office and closing a door. And I told him that I didn’t feel like I belonged. I told him I was having trouble connecting with with the other peers. That I had lost faith in myself. And then I pushed the conversation in the direction of intrigue and revealed how devastated I was over a recent breakup. I told him I had been a really good partner and this was true to a certain extent. I wanted to test the waters so to speak, push the conversation into the direction of seduction, so knowing that he was a married man revealed that in one of my longer relationships I had cheated. He seemed to really enjoy this. He smiled and put his hands behind his head like he normally did when he felt he had the upper hand and he asked me what cheating really was Anyways? Well it seems like we could have had a discussion as to what it really meant, as in did it mean Melanie was going to get her way into bed with this person and somehow mean that we weren’t breaking the rules? This comment gave me an incredibly huge adrenaline rush. And Brendan had a knack for ending our conversations right at that point. And so I left dazed and confused and still immersing myself deeper and deeper in a maze. I Emailed him on the weekend and told him I was drowning in sorrow. I was. Even though on the outside I looked completely fine, I was out dancing and having fun with my friend Melissa. But deep down all I could think about was Brendan. He called me that same night and it was about 11:30 when he did. This fact alone generated meaning in my mind, meaning that I wasn’t the only one who was trapped in this. That the destruction would be mutual and inevitable. On the week I had written my worst homework assignment ever, I overheard Blyth and Brendan talking and the tone had completely shifted. Blyth had clearly gained his confidence. Brandon knew I was just two offices down. He had seen me earlier and knew I would be working there. I marveled at the fact that I had moved all the way from California to Florida, the opposite side of the nation based off of a whimsical intellectual hunch that had to do with a people I didn’t understand, the Mormons, engaging in irrational and compulsive gambling habits. As strict and as diligent as they were with God, they gave way to risky behavior in a game that rarely yielded any wins. As diligent as I was with my academic life and my practice, knowledge and intellectualism and even poetic beauty, which seemed the closest thing to the Divine on this planet, I could not make them my gods. I thought being an academic was who I was meant to be who I was meant to become. But my desires were fickle and obsessive. And I desired so much from someone who had nothing to give me truly. Except for a treat or a punishment. And the punishment was coming. Now it’s probably rich of me that I asked Brandon to stop the competitions after I had won one. How on Earth was that fair to anyone? I only realize how self-centered this was in retrospect. I had been declared the best the winner and then I wanted all other evaluations to be closed. But there was a genuine mix of concern as to the environment it created with me and my cohort who I was stuck with. Brendan didn’t have to sit in classes with only five other people who you would be attending school with for the whole year. He didn’t have to care. And he didn’t know what it was like. So I shouldn’t have been upset or surprised when. Brendan started really laying on the compliments on Blythe like he had done with me. In their discussion he loudly declared that she would get a perfect score. And that she had won the weekly competition. I started bawling my eyes out. I was in so much spiritual and emotional pain. Had gripped my entire being, my inner being, which felt like it had been put through a food processor time and time. Again. Something had to break and it was certainly breaking. Brandon heard me crying and he tried to comfort me but I told him there was nothing he could do. I knew I was going to have to watch Blythe be lavished with compliments and praise the next class. And I was right. I was allowed to take breaks due to my to my accommodations with the school borderline personality disorder. And so for half the class I tried to calm myself down and ready myself to accept the facts as they were. Brendan came into the lounge where I was laying like an emptied corpse, Deflated tired and exhausted. He really enjoyed toying with me. And he told me that the lecture would be incredibly sexually explicit. I saw him smiling to himself as he was refueling his coffee. His back turned me. But I could just feel his smile. I was that tuned into his micro gestures. He said that it might be triggering for some, and it might be triggering for me, but that it would be absolutely worth it to Attend the rest of the lecture. This private interaction and our intrigue laden relationship seemed to immediately evaporate when I return to the class. Where he had had always looked to me during lecture, seemingly endlessly inquisitive about what I might say, he had looked at everyone in the class but me as he delivered a lecture on Dante going through the final fire of purgatory. Brendan was paying a lot of attention to Blyth and then finally announced that she was the winner of the week’s competition. Blythe looked smug and looked directly at me as if to rub it in my face. I could say a lot of things about my own poor moral character, but I can say that I never enjoyed her pain. I always felt like she had pursued academia for all the wrong reasons. She treated it like a pageant. Whereas I really wanted to find meaning and purpose and what I was doing and simply failed to do so. But in the course of interacting with Brendan I had become like her. I sacrificed my values of cooperation and equality and unconditional support for one another in a learning environment. And I became absolutely enraged when she gave me that gloating look. It was then that I knew I had to drop the class. I called Brendan and I told him that what he was doing was really disgusting. That he had created a competitive cutthroat environment which thrived on insecurity and anxiety. I told him that he probably knew what he was doing and he outright denied it. I told Dr. Belgrade about all this. My work with him had been suffering because of the issues I was having in that class. Still, Dr. Belgrade and I maintained an incredibly positive rapport based off of play, curiosity, and intellectual depth. We really connected with theory and theory could be incredibly amusing and fun to wrestle with. We enjoyed thinking of things like how casinos induce a schizophrenia in the patrons. The casinos disrupt our chain of connections, our natural understanding of cause and effect, so that we walk in in almost like God’s trying to find some sense of order in the chaos. I respected him so much but unconsciously I felt I was putting him in a rescuer position. That it was Dr. Belgrade, the moral and upright man who could save all this and make everything go away. While he didn’t necessarily stand up for me, he was tactful in his advice. I learned later that teachers aren’t really truly advocates for their students, although they often are. They protect position and their colleagues because the reputation of one colleague inevitably affects the reputation of others. He chose the lightest sentence he could for Brandon which was that what he did between me and Blyth was ill-advised. He talked with the department heads and they got me out of the class without having to take a failing grade..I took the highest road forward. I was not vindictive towards Blyth or Brennan. Although every bone in my body wanted some form of punishment or some form of retribution to close the loop of this whole thing. But I chose to focus on the fact that I still had Dr. Belgrade. We would have our connection and that would make all the pain. Everything I had worked for completely and utterly worth it. This was until I started a seminar class the very next semester with Dr. Belgrade and Blythe. And then the carousel kept on turning. Blythe immediately approached it as if it were a competition. She talked over everyone in class especially me. She would interrupt conversations with me and other peers by pretty much physically blocking me from their view. It was an absolute mess. I never got anything out of discussion and she was there because I didn’t feel safe around her. Not in the slightest. I complained to Dr. Belgrade about it. There’s just no way I could get anything out of class if Blythe was just going to keep escalating her attention seeking behaviors in a graduate level seminar. It was really embarrassing to watch and I think Dr. Belgrade felt embarrassed but I could also sense that he was sort of mad at me for trying to include him in this conflict between me and Blyth. Nevertheless, he actually had to make a seating chart where he placed me right next to him. And he put Blythe in the way back. The day he did that he gave a speech somewhat and said that the other professors had let us down and did not set a good precedent for a Democratic classroom. I felt triumphant and satisfied being at his right hand. Although I probably sought his favoritism, I don’t believe that I had ever done so in inappropriate ways. And I definitely wasn’t a slave to his validation like I was with Brendan. I know validation was never what I saw from Dr. Belgrade. Not. It was always the connection that I valued and prized above everything. It had meant the world to me after now going for so long without harnessing and using my intellectual potential. Our connection felt like in Oasis right in an expansive desert valley. Well, on the very same day that he implemented the seating chart, something unusual happened. We were talking about music theory and Lady Gaga as a satirical musical figure. He had this funny picture of her up where he described her as conforming to asexualized form of beauty with a corset and lingerie but pointed out the way she was flexing her foot at the camera which provided a stark contrast. It was just funny. Him and I started laughing about it. It was one of those things that spoke to our bond. We always laughed at the same times and it was a truly exciting and fun experience. But when we were laughing I noticed he looked me in the eyes and then immediately he fell incredibly silent and his face got red. He said he really liked the new seating arrangement under his breath. And I felt the same way.But it was from that moment forward that I noticed Dr. Belgrade started to ignore me almost completely. He wasn’t as responsive. He did not engage me as much in class. And Blyth went ahead and filled the space and he seemed to just consent to her dominating and controlling the classroom dynamic. From that point forward. I felt ashamed, embarrassed and confused as to why valued mentor seemed to turn so suddenly and make a sharp pivot in the other direction. Without his support I started not performing as well. My performance suffered. I was so sick of it. I was so sick of Blyth and I was so sick of the whole dynamic. I asked if I could just do homework from home and do extra reading to compensate for not attending class. I did not want to be in that environment any further. It was at this point I could see a look of coldness and judgment Dr. Belgrade told me that he was not like Brendan. He said that he thought the feelings I got about people and these situations didn’t have to do with my borderline personality diagnosis but my character. I took the blow and suffered quietly with the knowledge that my mentor held me in contempt. That he blamed me for everything that had happened with Blythe and Brendan. In retrospect, I realized that I was taking a lot of responsibility that others weren’t. T
So at one point I remember when I started the class with Dr. Belgrade and Blythe there were a lot of problems. Blythe still treated me like I didn’t exist and there were only five people on the seminar and it was a discussion driven seminar. I asked for the teachers to mediate the conflict between me and Blythe and they were unwilling and Blythe did not seem mature enough to be able to mediate such a conflict. I even acknowledged her in a positive regard in some of my classroom remarks and she simply ignored it. She pretty much isolated me from all my peers. Anytime I talked to someone she was close to she would come and interrupt and co-op the conversation and pretend like I didn’t exist. Dr. Belgrade also saw that this was unmanageable, although I think he was mainly concerned about her co-opting class time. He did not seem concerned for my social welfare. He did make a seating chart where he placed me right next to him, and he placed her at the very back of the class. He made a small speech about how our previous teachers had let us down by teaching us That competition was better than cooperation. But the whole thing that confused me is that Dr Belgrade did not seem mad at Blythe He seemed mad at me. Maybe because he thought as the aware one I should have given her more Grace and compassion but I had already done that. I had if anything taken on way more responsibility for the whole thing.
I also forgot to mention that before Dr. Belgrade and Blyth and I were in the class and I was still in Brendan’s class, I had told Dr. Belgrade about Brandon’s behavior. I told Dr. Belgrade that Brendan called me really late at night and he had made some suggestive comments such as asking me what I thought cheating really meant. I hate to say it but I think I was playing the victim in the situation. I had such low self-esteem having my mentor See me and pain and come and rescue me felt gratifying somehow. But this is important because I I introduced a romantic sexual element into the discussion. I did not understand just how powerful the suggestion was in a situation like this. And I do regret it in hindsight. Because although Brendan was inconsistent, manipulative, and almost psychopathically abusive in his treatment of someone wounded and isolated like me, I doubt he would have done anything physical or sexual with me.
I bring this up because once Dr. Belgrade made the seating chart where Blyth was in the back and I was in the front there was something that’s strange that happened.
I remember we moved to another room and he literally told blyce to stay in the back and have me be in the front. I did not gloat or brag or both. I handled being up front very well and I used my power gracefully and I shared the experience with my peers and I shared attention. Unlike Blythe who left unchecked would just dominate with no questions asked. On this day in question, Dr. Belgrade showed a funny picture and he started describing it and we were looking at each other very directly and we laughed at the exact same time and we looked into each other’s eyes. And at that moment I noticed a look of shame overwhelm his face. And he looked down. He did say that he liked the seating arrangement.
But I noticed a huge energetic shift. And I became worried. I couldn’t describe exactly what it was, but I knew that it probably wasn’t good. I didn’t have access to the reasons at the time. I wasn’t looking at the entire situation and how my previous behavior might come into play.
Basically what I think happened was that he had a moment of Attraction in that moment and then he felt embarrassed. And then subsequently I think he felt very fearful that I would interpret his actions wrongly that I would misconstrue him as being flirtatious when he wasn’t. And in a way he had every right to be cautious in this regard. Although I had given him no reason within our dynamic for him to suspect I would ever do him harm or think of him in the way I thought of. Brendan.
The reason why this came to me in hindsight was because after that moment he treated me like I was invisible. It was exactly the same as Brendan. Except now I was losing Dr. Belgrade who was my favorite mentor and who I had an actual real connection. With that, I truly valued. I sincerely looked up to this person as a person and valued him in every way. And I had to just sit and watch as he then let Blyth take over the class after that moment. It became so unmanageable to be in class because he literally from that point forward just stopped regulating her behavior and seemed almost happy to let her fill the space instead of having any kind of moments of connection or fun with me as we had before.
I was becoming so miserable that I had asked him if I could drop the class or finish the assignments online. He told me that he was nothing like Brendan. Tried to make an argument that my diagnosis of borderline personality disorder was making the situation worse. And then he said that he didn’t think the feelings that I got about Brandon and Blythe were about my diagnosis but about my character.
That felt like such a damnation. And it was. He continued being cold and critical towards me in class. I had to basically tough my way through it but I felt that his comment was wrong and discriminatory. No matter what the connection we had He betrayed me in a very serious way in that moment. In a way I kind of thought he was worse than Brendan because he didn’t seem immoral or like he would throw someone like me under the bus. I had been loyal and kind to him throughout.
I waited until I turned in my final paper which did get the highest score in class. It was the loneliest highest grade I’d ever gotten.
And then I sent him an email. I said that his comment had been discriminatory. In fact, it was way worse on paper than anything that Brendan had done. I don’t think that Brendan had actually even violated any USF policies. I found that incredibly ironic. That Dr. Belgrade actually was so callous as to comment on my diagnosis and to dismiss my pain and to have such an extreme lack of consideration for my well-being that he would be willing to not only dismiss my diagnosis, but then condemn and judge my character as being deficient or flawed when I had taken on so much responsibility, it wasn’t even funny at that point. Emotional labor is just something that professors will never acknowledge even if it exists. I also did not like how our connection was at that point, I didn’t think it would continue in a good direction given that he already seemed cold and aloof. I was excited that I was going to TA for his class but I couldn’t continue on without confronting. What happened.
So I sent him and Amy an email about what he had said and I said it was borderline discriminatory and that although I didn’t care about USF policy or want anything in regards to formal action, I wanted an apology to repair our relationship. That was what I put at the forefront. I said all I cared about was maintaining a good functional mentor and mentee relationship and I would need an apology to continue.
Then what ensued was Amy and Dr. Belgrade met with me and Amy tried to smooth things over by starting things off with light intellectual discussion. Although Dr. Belgrade did not seem into it. Then she went ahead into it and Dr. Belgrade ensued to deny that he had ever said what he actually said and then he also said he could no longer be my thesis advisor and that I would no longer be his ta. So not only was he getting off the hook for saying something discriminatory, which he actually admitted that if he had indeed said that it was in contradiction to USF policy, but now I was losing him as a mentor and he was my last standing connection at the University.
After that conversation the semester was over. The dust settled. I was absolutely heartbroken over how I have been treated so unjustly. There had been zero accountability and zero Justice in that department. There had been so much pain and so much abuse and so many toxic Dynamics that got in the way of My success. Everyone else seemed able to succeed in spite of it because they just weren’t in touch with all of people’s s***** behavior. But unfortunately I do not have that luxury. I am always keyed into the Dynamics of a room. And I’m usually the one who somehow ends up paying for it.
I did not know what to do. I didn’t even think that grad school seemed worth it. If Dr. Belgrade wasn’t going to be my mentor. I had such specific interests and we had such a specific kind of connection that was so gratifying to me. At first, I just knew I wouldn’t have it with anyone else in the department. And truly I didn’t. It was a real loss. And I was the one who seemed to lose time and time again. Meanwhile, Brendan got away with it and so did Dr. Belgrade and Blythe was going on blabbing her big mouth about things that she didn’t even care or know about. Everyone who was highly immoral seemed to be succeeding. Honestly, out of all of these characters, I really felt like I was the most moral out of every single one of them. I was the one who had an authentic interest in becoming an academic and researching the topics that I liked. I had an authentic interest in fostering connection between myself and my teachers and my peers. I was mature enough to share attention and to give other people the spotlight when they deserved it. Unlike Blythe who would constantly co-opt the discussion and pretend like I didn’t exist. I was the one who just wanted to be left alone most of the time. Who was the one who lost out on completing a course? Because a narcissistic professor couldn’t control his behavior around me. I was the one who suffered the most and I also lost the most.
So that was when I decided that summer that I would go to rehab and I wasn’t sure that I would ever come back and finish my grad school education.
Rehab: Fall from Grace
I was in a period of extreme distress and I did not have much energy. I also didn’t really have much help either. I decided to look at rehabs online that took my health insurance and it actually seemed like it might even be fun. Because they typically fly you out and I didn’t want to stay in Florida all alone with absolutely no support from my program or Dr. Belgrade. I was seriously contemplating suicide at that moment. I remember having a lot of different spiritual moments like I kept waking up at 11:11 a couple nights in a row. It was really weird and I remember I saw a rehab and it looked really nice and glossy online. I was clearly seduced by the idea that I would heal and all of my life’s problems would be solved with just one summer. I remember even getting advice from 12-step people saying that a month in rehab was equal to a year in recovery and I was hoping with all my life that this was the case. When I got on the phone with the rehab employee sold me a bill of goods. It was totally a bait and switch. I was convinced at that point that I had ADHD and that I needed to be on ADHD meds if I had any chance at succeeding in my current situation because I tried all the medications available for any and all conditions I had and none of it was working. They promised me they could try me on a stimulant if I agreed to attend their rehab in Tennessee. I was very excited because obviously the sales rep way oversold it and made it sound like it was an incredibly successful institution. Well I got there and the staff just seemed really stupid and not the most enlightened from the get-go. The rehab was in a bed and breakfast in the Smoky mountains. So indeed it was really beautiful and pretty. But there were only 10 other people there and there were only three therapists. I think. When I got there everyone seemed miserable and like nothing was happening. Some people hadn’t even seen a therapist. My peers were incredibly grumpy and emotionally angry and shut down. They seemed really bothered by superficial matters, especially matters having to do with the rehab itself instead of the more therapeutic aspect of it.
I was really excited to learn and I thought that the more I participated the more I would heal. But unfortunately I don’t think I really felt that way. I think the therapy was mediocre at best and they had some counselors who literally would play a Netflix movie and print out a questionnaire to ask us. The same counselor also told me I looked like Sandra Bullock and every time he said it he just sounded more and more like an idiot. I know I was taught not to look down on people but at this point I had already had enough experience with incompetent. People somehow rising to the top and dominating over now. Not someone’s intellectual curiosity, but their sense of health and mental well-being. In the mental health field it seemed like pretty much everyone in a position of authority was like Blythe at least in grad school Blythe was the student and not the teacher. Add that to the fact that it was a cash cow. They clearly overcharged and overbilled the assurances. They were getting probably almost $5 to $7,000 a day from the insurance which was a steal.
I didn’t feel safe there. I noticed their they’re higher Ups were really educated and competent, but the therapist and the staff who worked at the rehab were not. One guy who is with the company visited and he seemed completely drawn in by me and seem to seek my validation. I thought this was pathetic but I was so low at that point in my life That kind of enjoyed intriguing with this guy and sapping as much attention as I could from him.
Again, I was stuck in a situation with my peers where I didn’t really have much of a desire to connect with them. I didn’t feel accepted by them. I felt like they thought I was incredibly naive. Whenever I was alone with them, I could barely make conversation. It was almost always unbearably awkward and I had no way to navigate the discomfort. I felt around them. Ideally they would have been the solace. The one thing that could have got me through it. Not, but instead I watched all of them get along and laugh and create bonds. I saw them watch movies together. And have fun together. I did not have that capacity. For whatever reason or another I just felt like I couldn’t connect and I was so frustrated and I was so sad.
It was from this place I believe that a crush I had on one of the patients Jim grew intensely. I think both him and I were pretty disillusioned with everything. We knew The whole thing was a joke and just a place to get sober. The whole thing was crooked and about appearances. It turned out he was a working class man, a mechanic from Montana and he really hated big wigs or rich people. He saw through them in the same way that I saw through them. Except the difference was I still needed things from them or at least thought I needed things from them. I felt desperately that I really needed new medication. I needed something radically different and that’s something radically different. Was a stimulant ADHD medication. ADHD people absolutely need that stimulant component which is specific Obviously stimulant medication and they kept trying to put me on b******* stuff like strattera. I was still commenting on all of the rehabs deficiencies. I constantly commented on all the contradictions between what they sold me over the phone And what I was being presented with. They barely had the kitchen set up. Their therapists were clearly not sophisticated people. There were no real planned activities that took maybe longer than at least 5 minutes to plan. They didn’t seem to care that this was actually our life and that they were able to clock out and go home. I think Jim easily saw all of these things and he had an ease about accepting all these disenchanting realities without getting upset about them. He seemed to just take things as they come. I do think he took things for granted. He clearly had a lot of issues and he wasn’t talking about any of the hard stuff.
It was clear He just hid all the hard stuff he could and talked about as little as he could. I think he mainly adopted an attitude of indifference. That there was really nothing Anyone could tell him that he hadn’t heard in some way or another already. At that point he probably was a full-blown cynic. His sense of humor was actually in fact very cynical. He loved playing pranks on the people in the rehab and outsmarting them without their awareness. He loved quietly undermining them whenever he could. And honestly I had an intense admiration that he could stay so mechanical about things about enacting his revenge. He was able to pursue revenge with this cold detachment. I did not possess. Anytime I had vindictive feelings I would act on it in a hurry and in a rush and usually do myself in. He was able to evade capture. And I found this absolutely enthralling and exciting to be around after I had been hurt by the kind of people, he was tricking. People who were stupid and indulgent and lazy and thoughtless and had way too much privilege and way too much power and did way too little with it who were running institutions that had to do with handling something as sophisticated and complex and important as people’s mental health and their very lives. Jim seemed like the last ditch effort for the little guys like us who literally had no recourse because they had the institution on their side. He was able to be that poetic Justice that I wish I could have for myself.
I was also admiring of the fact that he was able to have fun in an environment like that. He brought a sense of mischief wherever he went. It was built into his body He was like a coyote. He loved to make little jokes And he loved teasing people and he loved teasing me. And I guess at that point I was a boiling pot of depression, confusion, identity erosion, disenchantment, distrust, betrayal, resentment, heartbrokenness, loneliness and isolation, physical and mental fatigue, frustration, rage and fury and powerlessness against institutions that kept exploiting me and exploiting me and exploiting me with no recourse and no justice and no healing on my part, and what did this rehab offer me as answers?
A Netflix movie and a therapist who couldn’t even give it enough. Thought to create questions himself. No, he prints out what he finds and recites it word for word without any thought.
We make posters about our best self
We write a couple sentences and tear the paper apart as much as we possibly can and then her to put it back together with glue.
Well Jim was looking pretty good at that point. And he did look good. He was from a background which contradicted mine. But looking at him from where I stood I thought God damn, I want someone like him to win. I want someone who sees reality and sees the Injustice in front of him have his say. I want to be less dependent on academia which at the end of the day is just a bunch of big fluff. A bunch of words that none of my professors could ever back up with actual moral action and accountability, and I wanted to fall into the silence, the stillness, the grace, and even the Elegance of this mechanic from Montana who walked around with a kick in a step when no one was watching. Who seemed completely inhabit not just his mine but his body and his surroundings. Who watched and listened and scanned and observed and made simple formulations as well as probably humorous or sometimes bitter commentary on the tragic comedies of the stupid and the powerful. Someone whose entire existence was rooted in the here and now: he was a mechanic for semi trucks. He was responsible for fixing trucks on the side of Frozen highways in negative 20° weather. His body and that rough environment were enmeshed and this seemed to be a noble thing. I did not even know it was a noble thing, but then I came to value it. He absolutely fascinated me. Ironically, he stimulated my intellectual curiosity, even being the simple person that he was. Maybe because of the simple person he was. I failed to understand his simplicity; but unfortunately, as these things go he was tragically More complex than he even was able to understand.
Jim became my saving Grace at that time. I pursued him. He was absolutely the only thing that I wanted at that point. I was happy to be reading the books I was reading and dreaming of a better life, but he was reality itself. He seemed to be the reality in which my dreams could manifest. He had the bronze for it right? I mean if he can lift 200 lb tires. He has what it takes to facilitate a quaint academic woman’s dreams and fantasies who mainly centered around some redemptive role as the coach or cheerleader for the little guy, you know, the everyday Joe. Except you know a really handsome everyday Joe. I thought that with his love and support I would be able to complete my grad school program and introduce my edgy boyfriend to all my professors in the hopes that they would wonder if he was as criminal as he did indeed look and be left Wondering about any lingering vendettas I might have. I imagined bringing Jim to my graduation and we would laugh at the whole thing. We might even make fun of my own degree because of how nonsensical it all was becoming.
I pursued him sexually right from the get-go. I had no social skills and he was incredibly quiet. If he was quiet around other people he was insanely quiet around me. And he often I felt like did power games because he probably knew I liked him and he would put his arms behind his head a lot when we were alone. On one of these times I admitted I was really attracted to him and he told me that he thought I was a beautiful person too and asked for my contact information. I asked him if he would consider us sleeping together because I didn’t know if I would ever go to Montana. He said that we would probably get in trouble in a place like this and I accepted his answer and admitted. I felt embarrassed. And I did feel really embarrassed. He seemed so perfectly in control of himself and everything and I was such a complete mess inside. I felt a crippling anxiety and a crippling shame that seemed to be focused on him at a certain point. That seemed to be focused on him. At a certain point. All areas of my life had become so inadequate and my desire for him had become so out of control. It almost completely possessed my whole mind.
He came back around though and the next day he seemed to pursue me and pursue my company the entire time he seemed even like he was a little infatuated. And at the very end of the day when we were alone and we were looking at the fireflies together as the night came down he said that he had thought about my proposition and that he’d like to give it a try. And we then followed each other upstairs and made out. And I had never experienced the level of sexual chemistry that I had with Jim. Up until that point. Our physicality was so incredibly mutual, but our mind and our emotions were so so foreign and so inaccessible and had torment over the fact that him and I weren’t actually friends. And that I didn’t have confidence that with any effort or trying that we could ever actually be friends. I really felt the dissonance really deeply between us that we had a deep physical connection but not an emotional one. Or maybe an emotional one, but that would take Great lengths that I don’t think he wanted to go.
I hated being at that rehab and I was there for a month and it was clear that Jim was going to leave and so I decided to go to the partial hospitalization program in Massachusetts for another month to try and get the meds that I really wanted to get so that maybe I could still get well. Jim and I stayed in contact and he went back to Montana. We talked pretty much everyday and I was building an incredibly elaborate fantasy surrounding him and our relationship. I had a lot better of a time in Massachusetts, although of course I still struggled in my relationships with people, but at least half of the people liked me or felt drawn to me at some point, although they were all of course crazy. Anyways so yeah that’s all I have for now
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