GirlRobot's Pod - by Droniela

CW: Sexual violence, abuse, starvation, trauma.

The answers to our problems lie in the past, not the future.

This much seems reasonable and logical enough but nothing clears that up more than years long introspection and examination of the past. It's pretty fucking jarring how much of one's personality is not innate but a reflex/response to one's upbringing and traumas. We really underestimate how much of what makes us "us" was molded by our experiences growing up.

I came from a emotionally disfunctional family, like I think most of us in my generation.

Mom and dad never let our plates empty and we always had a roof over our head. The house was always obsessively clean, there was no substance abuse, so even tho we were lower middle class, we never lacked anything essential in material terms.

But emotionally? Man, what a mess. And the more I explore this past in therapy and doing introspection, the more I realize all of my life was dictated by that mess.

This past years I figured some of the biggest hurdles in my life were caused directly by trauma response to that mess.

It all started with my marriage, where I was kept in private incarceration for 2 years, when I was not allowed to leave the house to work. As my useless ex-husband also didn't work, we starved frequently. He also abused me emotionally, sexually and beat me up on the regular.

When I ran away from that relationship I went deep into therapy to figure out what got me there. I think it's important to understand we are not passive victims of our destiny, and that as much as we are not to be blamed for the violence we suffer, we own ourselves the responsability of not letting it happen again.

Long story short: my ex-husband did to me what my family did to me, but 10x more intense and violent.

And the reason why I struggled so much to break up with him before we even got married to avoid all that was that I was programmed to be in constant misery, trying to help someone who was always about to die, that I only saw value in myself if I was saving someone and that taking that abuse was normal.

When I realized that, I stopped suffering over my relationship and started digging deeper on how else my life experiences in my formative years shaped my behavior.

There's "smaller" stuff, like being taught that studying is a bad thing actually by my undiagnosed ADHD dad who was a very smart guy who struggled with finishing his education and applied morals to justify his difficulties. He made it a moral choice to not study, because he would never admit "weakness". The problem was never him.

But in 2025, things ramped up in therapy. It was such an absurd thing that *all* my harmful behavior (to myself and others) was rooted in my family's emotional disfunctionality that now I don't even wonder where things came from: I look at my family and I immediately figure it out.

For instance, one of the biggest hurdles in my career, even more than ADHD, was the fact that I always took everything as an accusation, and was permanently paranoid that I would easily become someone's scapegoat. That made my work relations very hard as I'd be 100% defensive all the time. On therapy I figured out that happened because I was the scapegoat for all my family's problems so I developed a defense for that as if the entire world did that. But it didn't. Only my family did that.

It was also in 2025 that I figured out there's nothing wrong with me and that rejection doesn't mean I did anything wrong necessarily.

And as infuriating as discovering those things is, it is great because once I can rationalize the origin for something is bullshit, I can let go of that.

But now I'm facing a dilemma:

What to do about my relationships that were built in one way or another on those learned behaviors that I no longer have?

This shit is so rough. I pursued relationships where I was "useful" to the other person my entire life because that's what my family taught I should do and now I find myself in social circles where I'm there solely for my utility, with people that are not really good friends and just stay around because I'm useful to them, sometimes.

I don't blame them, I'm not accusing anyone of taking advantage of me. I offered my utility on my own volition, I don't blame those people nor do I resent them.

But these relationships gotta change or go, you know? I'm no longer willing to be in people's lives for my utility alone.

It's the first time in my life where I'm not bothered as much by my constant solitude because I'm realizing that the reason this solitude hurts me so much is that I worked very hard to deserve company and I still didn't get it.

I'm still as lonely but at least I'm not wasting energy in dumb ways to "deserve" company. I now reckon that I just gotta go out and meet people, which I am doing.

And if nerdy AuDHD me is too annoying to some people, I don't have to change. I don't have to compensate the annoyance people feel about me being me by masking and helping them with whatever.

It sucks to let some people go in my life because I am no longer willing to be treated like a nuisance that must simp to deserve company.

But I will meet other people that like me for who I am and not for what I can do for them.

And it will be fucking awesome.