#confuzed

I think I know why this time at least. I found a graduate application and am half way through filling it out for consideration, but like nearly always I got overeager and ahead of myself, asked for references before calling to ask about the program (have 1 submission, 1 agreement to submit, and one who asked to be reminded which student, exactly, I was- understandable, it’s been 2 years)

But it’s making me anxious because I’m only 2/3 through the application questions. And they probably don’t have enough of an answer to be well rounded on any of them. And the stupid PDF keeps deleting my responses. Oh, and it might be due in about 30 days. Maybe. The website gives about fuckall information, just like all the rest of the stupid shits. (Like please go back to having a link list and give me allllll the information from class maps to instructors to summaries to outcomes to statistics and cost and all the things please)

This application feels too easy. It’s for a mental health counseling masters, with a conditional GPA that I meet, and a 285 GRE. The questions feel easier to obtain. I haven’t gotten this far in any of the applications I’ve been filling out for an entire year. It feels too simple.

All I can find are vague definitions or the definition crosses into sexual relationship/and or relates directly to sex.

I can feel the ache of it in my cervical spine and shoulders- weight of the world. But I’m not holding it alone. I’m leaning back into my childhood religion for a minute to help deal with it. Might be a bit of a regression, but being able to use the familiar to deal with the grief seems to be working.

I'm still conflicted. But I feel so,, light? vindicated? happy? seen? like maybe I'm not a failure? It's not a Done Deal or anything- it isn't the program accepting me, but the first step. I have a Mandated Reporter training, Immunizations Report, and the Entire program process with the deliberation and the interview and figuring out all the things to be there. I don't know how to feel. I don't like that my hopes are so high because that might mean getting crushed when (if) the program passes over me (not in a good way)

My mother did that. She turned my doorknob around and locked me into my room as a kid for hours at a time, and it led to significant increases in bathroom accidents. I don’t know how many were because she didn’t let me go, I was ‘abusing bathroom privileges to get out of punishment’ or how many were because I refused to use the breaks she gave after restricting bathroom access. I couldn’t help if I didn’t have to go right then. I shouldn’t have had to be subjected to the humiliation of begging to go to the bathroom. She made fun of me and ridiculed me for it. My younger siblings followed her example, leading to an increase in bullying at school too. Mom told her friends about it and they taunted me. I faced weekly issues with regulating my bathroom habits until I was probably in high school and I don’t know how much this had to do with that. It feels so shameful, and led to hot rage surrounding the issue of dealing with my disabled aunt’s incontinence when I was put in charge of a significant amount of her daily care after her surgery, even though I knew a lot of that was misplaced.

Apparently it is considered torture in some states to restrict bathroom access. It is a fire hazard to lock a child in their room without an easy escape, even if she probably didn’t leave the house with me locked in. And it didn’t matter that I taught myself how to pick the lock on the door in multiple ways because the fact remains I was locked-in in the first place. But she did it because I was a bad kid and didn’t listen when I was told. She had to lock me in to get me to listen to the punishments she set forth. She couldn’t hurt me by hitting me like Dad because she exercised self control. And she didn’t keep me from going to school or church- just locked me in at other times. Does me walking into my room and not fighting mean I have consent to do that? Can a child under the age of 13 assent to their own punishments?

I’ve been having emotional flashbacks surrounding the feelings of betrayal and shame surrounding the whole ordeal. It feels abhorrent and contaminating like my insides are dirty and I’ll never be clean.

She made a joke about it a few years ago. The person she made the joke to was shocked. The way their face immediately fell from humor to horror feels bad. It almost feels like pity.

Maybe this was a bigger deal than I thought, even if it isn’t felony material like Dad courted the idea of.

Cw. Talking about suicide of others and grief

There wasn’t an Extra Surprise Essay I needed to magically write stroking < stoking (let’s not make it weird even though that is apparently supposed to be the phrase wtf?) the academic ego of 4 strangers about their expertise while aligning myself with what values I can glean from their published writing (that part was just the first essay)- - that isn’t on the list (at least at the moment?)

I tweaked and submitted my resume (again again because the first two times it got lost and got to the wrong place ig - but BUt now it’s got a little green checkmark- sooo)

And now all I have to do is write 2/3 measly emails requesting a professional letter of recommendation- - it isn’t even work I have to do; I just have to request it from others. Like 30 minutes of their time or something.

(Do I have to specify that it needs to be professional since none of those professors ever knew me personally? I only had like one who could claim any kind of personal relationship and that was kinda by proxy through his family and my family being friends with each other, and also his wife being a target for conversion by the cult I grew up in, the third time during which he asked for clarifications on doctrines occasionally to better enable his arguments when he got home whenever I passed his office buuut that’s a whole other story)