The 3 year anniversary of when I was kicked out of school is a bit over a month away.
It’s been so much, time but it is still an incredibly touchy subject.

I can speak about suicide, self-injury, hair pulling etc in a detached, emotionless voice. When talking about my forced medical leave I struggle to get out a sentence at a time without being interrupted by crying. When upset, my verbal ability plummets.

I spoke with a researcher who is studying people who have been forced out of their school or asked to leave due to mental health issues. I’m glad someone is working to get awareness for the issue. I don’t feel I did a good job of communicating the long term difficulties I have as a result of the forced leave, but at least I did something.

School is the most important thing to me. As you can see from this blog’s name my major is a important part of my identity. Before this mess I was a different major. I defined myself by that major too. I’ve lost a part of who I am. That old identity is tainted by these happenings. I try to push that old part of my identity away and people keep throwing it back at me.

I feel so isolated about it. There are support groups for so many things. Except this one thing I could really use a support group for. I need not only someone in the same situation, but someone who also has long term problems from it.

There’s a message board I’ve been going to for support of a more general nature for nearly 5 years. Using a message board for support is tough. I spend so much time trying to give background information that I don’t feel the ability to vent freely that I really need. What I really need is a best friend and I use the Internet as a poor substitute. My most recent thread, several weeks ago, related to ways this still impacts my life. I felt very misunderstood. Feeling misunderstood feels like an attack. I tried to put on a strong front in my replies, while alternating between tearful keystrokes and slicing open my leg. I wanted to clarify and understand how I can better explain myself. I am extremely touchy about this issue.
I don’t need people to tell me to move on from it. I know I’ve been hanging onto this a long amount of time. It’s easy to tell a person to get over it and not understand why the issue is still hanging around.

Let’s look at this through Compromise Formation Theory which admittedly I don’t know a ton about, but the little I know leads me to feel it is particularly applicable here. I wouldn’t be doing something if it didn’t provide some benefit.

The negative part of this compromise is that I am still hanging onto this thing that happened nearly 3 years ago and have incredible emotional sensitivity to it.

On the other hand, hanging on to this issue is the only way I know how to feel some security. Letting it go feels like opening myself up to the possibility of it happening again. I would be too vulnerable.

My hyper-vigilance is both damaging and protective.

Periodically I do a very stupid thing and google the therapist who got me kicked out.
He’s developing quite the web presence or so he appears to think.
Up until recently, he thought it was a good idea, and not at all reminiscent of tacky 1990s websites, to include a hit counter on his blog.
I’ve taken a lot of pleasure in knowing how small his web audience is.
Yes, it’s petty, but it helps me.

In my more recent googling I learned he is publishing a book, set to come out this year.
It has a cutesy name, the same as his blog, and is about taking a trendy psychology concept and adapting it for
a young urbanite audience.
A blog I can deal with, a book is a different issue. It has the ability to reach a large audience. The thought of all these people reading his book and possibly thinking he is a great guy upsets me.
I wish I were brave enough to publicly tell everything, write my own book, so people could know the rest of the story about him.

I have these horrible images in my head of spotting his book in one of my professor’s offices. I need to keep my old world separate from my new one. A book on the wrong bookshelf would signify an invasion. The fear is almost as bad as if it were to really happen.

In reaction to this I did the only thing I could. I used my Internet knowledge for a tiny piece of vengeance, while not violating any laws.
I reported his domains to ICANN. He had blatantly false Whois info (I highly doubt his phone number is (999) 999-9999).
I got one of his domains suspended for a few days.
Again, petty, I know, but it put a smile on my face for a little bit.

I wonder if he knows I did it. Probably not.

I’m sure I’m much less on his mind than he is on mine. This is part of the problem. It hurts to see him achieving any level of success, when I still have a day to day struggle over what he did.

Within the past week, a blog post of his was featured on the front page of a highly trafficked pop-psychology website. I wonder how many people I know read his article, having no clue about our association.

I want to scream out to the world ‘Hey look what he did!’, but I can’t because what he did left me too scared.