Bullied for being shy and quiet
I hate being bullied for being shy and quiet
Warning: The following summarizes and vents a period of narcissistic abuse and mind control.
But I have always resented being treated like my shyness and quietness is some kind of “choice,” when it’s been ingrained in me since birth. I’ve always been adrift in a world with social rules and requirements that I did not know or understand while all my peers did.
I always wondered how other kids seemed to just know what to say or do, or why the kids made fun of me all the time, or what I did that was so strange, or how other kids were able to sound outgoing and make their voices just the right level of loudness.
If you say, “They don’t just know what to do or say all the time, either–they’re just winging it,” well, I didn’t have the ability to “wing it,” whether it’s a social requirement or keeping up with conversation, and it never even would have occurred to me to do so.
I’ve always struggled even with simple greetings. It’s always been very hard for me to warm up enough to someone to talk freely to them.
While Tracy did everything she possibly could do to push me further and further into my shell, then blamed me for not being open and outgoing with her. And got Richard to help her do it, as he talked to me like I was just imagining my social problems and could change them any time I truly wanted to.
They basically stuck a sheep in with a wolf and forced the sheep to befriend the wolf, threatening that the wolf would eat her if she did not. Then blamed the sheep for being wary of the wolf, blamed the sheep for every bite the wolf took of her. This is bullying!
Richard used to be nice to me, even called me the most awesome person he knew, and his “dear, sweet Nyssa.” But whenever she was around, he became highly critical of everything I did or said.
With both of them, it didn’t seem to matter what it was, from big things to little things. But whatever I did, whatever I said, my tastes, my hatred of gory movies, political stances, childrearing, marital practices, it was all “wrong.”
(I got plenty of lectures on how I was wrong for disagreeing with Richard politically. Which is one reason why I want nothing more to do with his political persuasion, TEA Party, where such an attitude is common these days.)
Even things I posted on Facebook were “wrong.” It was bad enough getting this kind of bullying from her, but Richard doing it was heartbreaking.
He would actually lecture me about why I was wrong to do or say whatever it was, while she would just make fun of me.
He even complained that because I didn’t like mob movies or gory movies or action movies, he couldn’t show me all these great movies.
But if I don’t like such movies, and won’t enjoy them, then what is the point of showing them to me? Watch them with your guy friends! Show me something I will like instead!
His reasoning for criticizing me over this was very selfish. Even Tracy got after him for it!
She pushed me further into my shell by being nasty to other people, verbally and sometimes physically abusive to Richard and the children in my presence, making fun of me all the time, treating every single thing I did as either a slight against her or some horrible, awful thing.
She even ripped on me to her mother one day when she knew I was right there in the bathroom, with half-truths. (I was too feeding them vegetables! The kind of stuff they wanted was far too expensive for feeding eight people every day, while they provided no financial help at all. And that week’s menu was made up while we were cleaning up the lice they brought into the house!)
She ripped on things that were none of her business. (Who cares if Jeff did the cooking instead of me while our son was small?)
She angered and frightened me constantly. When Richard’s online friends–who I believe also hung out in 4chan (which spawned Anonymous), and found goatses (links to hardcore porn) to be funny–started making fun of me and making disgusting comments about my genitals, she came in the chat room and began joking around with them and invited them to her house!
The incident was sexual harassment and traumatized me, yet she treated it lightly.
(Then a year later, when I complained to Richard because their names kept coming up in conversation and he had invited them to his house again, he sent me a nasty e-mail. On the phone he said I was “being ridiculous,” the stuff online “isn’t real and I thought you knew that,” and told me to “get over it.” This guy wanted to be a priest?)
She pushed me further into my shell by making fun of me for putting bug spray and sunscreen in a backpack and taking it into the backyard with me so I wouldn’t have to run into the house for them from my comfy chair.
She pushed me further in by going into a bizarre, jealous rant over me wishing Richard a fun trip and saying I’d miss him. And by ripping on me about a Facebook post about Greekfest raffle tickets having to be sold in person.
These two things–which I believe happened in June 2010–made me decide to stop liking her posts or saying a word about any of them, because I was sick and tired of her either snarking on or deleting everything I said.
Then she blamed me for not being open, friendly and outgoing with her, which was one of her biggest rips on me the day of the blowup.