Do you hate your former self?

Ikari Shinji wrote:So what about you guys? Have you significantly changed since your childhood? Do you hate who were back then or you wish you could be like that again?

Oh, absolutely. Everyone that knew me as a child is surprised at how bitter and angry I've become, how I've lost my sense of what matters, how I don't care about anyone or anything, how I'm nihilistic and too angry at myself....


...what they don't realize is that I already know these things, and it's killing me inside. Worse yet, almost all of my self-hatred is aimed at my younger self, which more or less represents all the things I think that are 'wrong' with me that I need to put right.

Having lived a life of seclusion at home with parents who, rather than noticing my mental issues and setting them to right, chose to feed the sprouts of my avoidant nature and self-hatred, letting them blossom like evil fruit didn't help much.

Those people who want to be individuals...would they want to be as individual as I am? Would they really want to be that uniquely strange kid who everyone always said was weird and scary to be around? Would they really want to be the one always looking in and never participating?

Honestly, I hated my former self too. I was always bullied by the kids on my bus and at school despite my shy and avoidant behavior. As the years went on, I just kept to myself even more to the point where I didn't speak at all unless I absolutely had to. So far my high school years have been considerately better with the whole bullying thing. People tend to just avoid me as I do to them.

My parents never helped either. They were always yelling at me for completely unnecessary reasons which fed my avoidant behavior. Currently, I can't even look or speak to my parents most of the time.

My dad said he'd rip my legs off and make me eat them. :/

sublyp wrote:My dad said he'd rip my legs off and make me eat them. :/

That's nothing. My dad used to skin me every night and then make me put my old dried up skin back on in the morning. it'd usually heal by then but it hurt like billy-oh to wear.

Alice Margatroid wrote:

sublyp wrote:My dad said he'd rip my legs off and make me eat them. :/

That's nothing. My dad used to skin me every night and then make me put my old dried up skin back on in the morning. it'd usually heal by then but it hurt like billy-oh to wear.

Skin you? As in rip your flesh off?

Alice Margatroid wrote:

sublyp wrote:My dad said he'd rip my legs off and make me eat them. :/

That's nothing. My dad used to skin me every night and then make me put my old dried up skin back on in the morning. it'd usually heal by then but it hurt like billy-oh to wear.

parents just don't understand

I dunno. I guess I used to be more idealistic about two years ago. During that time, I did a lot less thinking, and used to undertake projects and goals, but would abandon them due to insecurity, although I didn't realized this at the time. When I first got to my "current stage" though, I only functioned minimally, and used to wish that I could go back to the "good old days".

These days though, I've adjusted to my "new self", and feel that I'm a better-informed person, with a better capacity to undertake long-term goals. I don't know if I'm any more self-confident, but I am aware of my limitations now, so it makes the goal of becoming more socialible more of a reality. And I feel a lot calmer in general now. So I'm better off, for sure. My "old self" has puzzled me, and there have been times where I think of what I could be like if certain conditions where different (like "what if I hadn't been diagnosed with ADD in the first grade and put on Ritalin?"). But there have rarely been times where I authentically hated my past.