Wednesday, June 22, 2011

A Note to You:

Post by Isabella-

I wish that there were some way to make people be able to see through my eyes, for them to truly understand everything I've dealt with and be able to see how it effects my decisions and my future.

I decided to quit my internship after taking a few days to think it over and talk to people at school and home to understand how it will effect the rest of my undergraduate time at NSU. My advisor will be giving me an "I" for the course so that I can redo the internship whenever and she can replace the "I" with the grade I receive and I won't have to pay for the course again. So, quitting will not effect my grade or my financial aid for the rest of my undergrad. stuff. I explained the situation to my advisor and my mom and a friend of the family and my roommate and a few select friends. They all agree that quitting will make the rest of my undergraduate time more difficult, but some say that they agree with my decision to quit.

See, what I think people have trouble understanding is the fact that people only see what I choose to show them. So, in a situation like this they may think that I'm just a spoiled brat who doesn't want to do her job because it's difficult and the supervisor is also difficult. But that's not it. There's more to the story that you aren't seeing, because I'm not showing it to you. But after a text message my brother sent me last night about not quitting and "internships are supposed to suck" I decided to just lay the cards out there for everyone to see. Maybe then you'll stop viewing me as some brat who just doesn't want to do something because it's hard.

I started dating a guy during my sophomore year of college. He seemed to be everything to me and I fell in love with him very quickly. But the relationship turned ugly after a few months. I found out he was cheating on me with a lot of girls. I confronted him about it and that's when the mess just got messier. It was a pretty cold day when I decided to go to his room and confront him about everything I had heard. He had just moved into the room a floor above mine so I put on my cow slippers and went upstairs. He let me in and I sat down on his bed. He sat down at his desk and went back to whatever he was doing before I got there. I didn't know how to ask him if he was cheating on me or how to bring up the evidence I had that he was doing this to me. So, we just talked for a few minutes about nothing important before I just blurted out something about how I knew he was cheating on me. He was angry that I accused him of that, that much was obvious. He kept trying to talk in circles about how he wasn't cheating and how could I ever accuse him of that and he loves me so much. But I stood my ground. I had evidence on my side, proof that he was cheating on me so I wasn't going to just let him brush it all under the rug. Then I started naming off girls I was sure he had cheated on me with: Rebecca, Jessica, Katie....etc. By this point he had moved from his desk to sit next to me on his bed. The conversation continued for a little bit before he reacted out of anger and hit me.  I don't think I even tried to leave at that point. I knew that he was stronger than me and that if he really wanted to hurt me he could. But he just apologized over and over and over again and eventually we swept it under the rug and acted like it never happened.

Over the next year, he continued to cheat, I continued to call him out on it and he continued to hit me. He's knocked my head into walls, bed posts, doors; he's pushed me against a radiator while it was on. Each injury I excused with saying I'm just clumsy and everything's fine. He played mind games and was an emotional manipulator on top of everything else he was.

I broke it off with him for good in late October of 2009. At that point I started having nightmares every other night. The nightmares got worse when I got back from Honduras in January of 2010. I started having nightmares every night, anywhere from 2 to 10 nightmares. It's been nearly a year a half since those nightmares got worse and it's just as bad as ever. I started having problems with confrontation. At first it was just that if someone was mad at me and confronted me I felt sick. But it developed into if someone starts raising their voice at me I start shaking and crying and going back to that time with my ex.  I get this irrational fear that whoever is yelling at me is going to hit me even if they're someone I know would never do that to me.

So, this brings us to the present. I've already explained that I hate my job. But maybe now you'll be able to understand why I can't continue working at a place where my supervisor yells at me every day. Maybe now you'll stop thinking that I'm a spoiled brat who just doesn't want to do two months of solid, hard work. Maybe now you'll understand that I'm a girl with problems I have no control over. Maybe now you'll understand why the idea of going to a job that makes me constantly go back to that place in my head gives me panic attacks.

But knowing you for who you are, you'll just say that I'm overly emotional or that I need to suck it up.

1 comment:

Book Spark said...

I don't think you're overemotional, or that you need to suck it up. I wish I haddn't found out this way, but I want you to know that you are an amazing person. That if you feel like you can't do the internship, then I trust you and hope things are better with your next one. I want you to know that Amy and I are here for you, no matter what. *hugs tight*