Give Yourself Up
Do you remember what was your main interest, something that you really really loved, when you were a child? Has that interest extended its way to your adulthood, or have you forgotten about it entirely? Or, the third option, were you forced to let go of that interest because of what other people had been doing to you?
An almost entirely universal experience of bullying is the victim being targeted for the things they like. Particularly it is the neurodivergent kids and their hyperfixations or special interests that get the worst part of such abuse. If you are an autistic child among a class full of neurotypical kids, your obsessions with the things that bring you the most joy can be seen as “inappropriate” or “cringe” in the group. Despite the initial reasoning that your aggressors have for abusing you being something that is seemingly in your control, you as a victim are never the one at fault. It is the lack of tolerance for anything “different” that victimizes neurodivergent kids in peer groups, the social pressure of conforming (often referred to as peer pressure), and other bigoted attitudes that a group of preteen children is the perfect breeding ground for – that is the root cause of the issue.
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throw-away.
When I was a Kid, I devoted my entire existence to anime and manga. I was introduced to the world of Japanese comics and animation at the age of 8, and ever since then, my love for animanga grew bigger and bigger, year after year. One time I talked about my elementary years with my mom, and after mentioning how important anime and manga had been to me back then, my mom said, “yeah, you were living in that world completely”. And she was right: I was so deeply enticed in the wonders of magical girls that nothing else really mattered to me at the time. Or that is how I felt about it when I was having that conversation with my mom at the age of 18. Now, seven years later, I know a bit more about the reason why I was so fixated on animanga.
It wasn’t only because I loved watching mahou shoujo anime and reading shoujo romance manga that I was seemingly not truly living in the real world. It was because those interests that I had offered me something that had always been taken away from me: safety.
The stories were heart-wrenching but beautiful. The characters were sensitive and emotional but incredibly strong and resilient. The worlds were full of love and pink sparkles. They all enveloped me and my fractured selfhood in a comforting blanket of safety, where I was allowed to cry, be sentimental, draw pictures of those cute anime girls I spent countless hours of watching on the screen while not knowing what I was feeling deep inside. No matter what happened to the main protagonist, no matter how much she was hurting, no matter how lonely she felt when the people around her turned her back at her, I could always, ALWAYS, count on the strength of that girl and her willpower to keep going, to find the happy ending.
And to that little Kid, who was constantly attacked, assaulted, and violated for simply existing in this world, the mental image of that pretty protagonist in my favorite animanga series after a battle that left her bruised and wounded, still smiling, still choosing to keep going…that is what kept me safe, kept me believing in a better tomorrow, even if I had to wait for that tomorrow for over a decade.
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Generally speaking, I don’t like to name the individual things my abusers “bullied me for”. To me, this verbiage sounds like I was, at the end of the day, responsible of the abuse as it is being attributed to characteristics I possessed when I was younger. But here, I guess it makes sense: my passionate love for my interests was something that my Friends targeted me for, no matter the group, no matter the social setting, no matter if I truly even knew the people who were involved. Even in spaces that were supposed to be the most accepting ones – like hobby circles for all animanga enjoyers – I was attacked for existing and openly loving the things I loved.
“Giving in” to peer pressure has never been something I have consciously done. That’s not an ego trip of any kind (though I understand how it may sound like it), but it’s more about me simply not being able to change myself to be anything else than I was. Living in a lie like that has been completely unthinkable to me, possibly largely due to my neurodivergence. But that doesn’t mean that I have never ever changed something within myself, or sought for something else to take interest in, to latch onto, in order to distance myself from the things that have been stained with violent memories and the blood of my own bleeding.
Starting from my teenage years all the way up to being about 20 years of age, I distanced myself from the world of animanga and cosplay, from the ever-present pillars of support I had had as a Kid. My mind was desperately trying to find something else to find solace in, something that wasn’t a constant reminder of who I actually was and how badly I’ve been treated for that very fact. It might not have been a conscious decision, but it was still a trauma response: trying to make myself forget the joy of watching magical girl shows and cosplaying as my favorite shoujo heroines. Because the Pain of that joy was just too much to bear any longer.
Forcing yourself to let go of what makes you you is one of the greatest tragedies of childhood trauma. It is not always with the conscious effort to conform; sometimes, it is a survival instinct. But at what cost does that survival come if you have to lose yourself along with it?
From the sea of cardboard boxes,
ichigonya