COMO LE DUELE

Trauma survivors don't make appealing or attractive victims.  Children who survive trauma are beset with coping mechanisms which render them protected but ironically, also isolated from what they really crave inside:  basic acceptance, care, and approval. I did not get approval from my family of origin, and was at an age where I still sought positive attention from authority figures. But my walls were always up and I copied ugly traits from my narcissistic parents: grandiosity, arrogance, defiance. I had no insight. I was blind to how others might perceive me. But underneath the bravado,  there was so much pain that semester at the University of Texas in Austin. 

My academic performance was not consistent. I was far too distracted by acting out socially and partying;  desperate to find somewhere to belong, some people to fit in with. When I applied myself I excelled. Unfortunately I performed well only sporadically.  I must have come across as cocky or rebellious, a "know-it-all".   My intellectual life, well developed by this point, had far outstripped the emotional morass that was my basic condition...I was definitely infantile, and at the beginning of using drugs and alcohol to cope with my feelings. 

So I was completely unprepared for the devastation, the lethal blow, awaiting me. I had enrolled in a new Department of Russian Studies. I am not sure why I did that. I always loved Russian literature and history, but I didn't know yet what I wanted to be when I grew up.  The new department was headed by the infamous Dr. K.  I was not too familiar with the well-known and I assume well-respected scholar, but I would have liked him anyway, if only from a distance. I had a thing for Jewish men. The call from Dr. K's office came as a total surprise  He wanted to talk to me. I had no idea why. I was nobody. Delusionally, I was hoping it might be something positive, and I am sure I dressed up to look nice. He was, psychologically speaking, a powerful father figure and I would have been eager to please him and earn his favor.  I took a bus to campus and walked over to his office (I forget what building it was, UT was huge even then, in the 80's).  As soon as I sat down he let me have it. Never had I been yelled at by any teacher or by anyone in the educational system, ever;  I was completely caught off guard. He was furious with me. He did not let me explain. He vented his rage on a puny little vulnerable naive girl. And for what? His ego. I was in total shock. My father always yelled at me and put me down,  but never in a million years did I expect to be treated like that by anyone at the university. 

Looking back I see how much similarity there is between academia and politics. (I always used to want to be a macademia nut, but now I am glad I am not one.)  There are huge amounts of politics in academia, and gargantuan egos. I was oblivious to how much prestige and reputation might have been at stake for Dr. K. regarding the success of his new department. Or maybe he was sleeping with her, the professor of one of my Russian Studies classes, the one who  complained about me, though I did not know she had. My remark was so innocent. And it must have hit home or else it would not have set off the minor firestorm it apparently had ignited. 

It was a history class. She had just gone through in a lecture and explained how Russian society at the time period we were studying, was not quite taken seriously by Europe. The stereotype of the "mad Russian" aristocracy or "mad Russian" poet or artist or person in general, was the prevailing norm. I was very interested in the lecture, and did not think I was particularly invested in Russian stereotypes.  At that time of my development, however, I always unconsciously identified with the out-group, the marginalized, the persecuted, ridiculed, etc. So I must have had some identification with those Russian aristocrats, but I don't remember being deeply offended, just surprised, when the same professor started talking about Russian society in exactly the same mocking way and using the same patronizing tone that she had just taught us was how Europeans spoke about them.  I cannot remember exactly what she said but I raised my hand and all I did was point out, that she seemed to be making fun of the Russians just like she was telling us the Europeans had done. That's all I said. She became FURIOUS. I have no idea why my observation was such a threat to her. Maybe she felt humiliated. I don't mind saying, at times women in authority seem to overreact to perceived challenges due to I guess, insecurity. Maybe she, like Dr. K., also had a lot at stake.  But she should have thought to realize that she held all the power and I was just a child, despite being in college.  Surely whatever I said did not merit the long and violent harangue I got in the office of Dr. K., or the extreme rage of two so-called adults. Dr. K  did not end up throwing me out of the department, but he made me want to drop out anyway. He crushed my spirit. 

There was a cemetery on my route home from campus. That day after leaving Dr. K, I took the detour into the cemetery and circled around and around through the headstones and tombs. The shock of what happened had given way to a profound grief and despair.  I am sure Dr. K had no idea how cruel he was being, but it so happened his lambasting catapulted me into a deep suicidal depression. I simply could not understand how I could mess up so spectacularly without even trying. He squashed me like a bug, and all the put-downs, rejection, and insults of my childhood came flooding back. I wanted to crawl into one of those graves and be done with it. Life was just too impossible and too painful. After I got home, I know I would have started drinking. I may have called a suicide hotline, I am not sure. I think someone came over to check on me. I don't know how long I was there in my place, in bed,  I think two or three days...After I pulled myself together, I withdrew from the Russian Studies program. 

There was a TA in the program, I think his name was Tom. I ran into him later and he told me how much he disagreed with what Dr. K had done. He encouraged me not to drop out but I already had. I never fogot his kindness. To this day I have no clue why it all happened. It is possible I was foolish enough to have brought my "observation" of what had happened in class to Dr. K's office myself.  Or maybe he really was involved with my teacher and she went to him angry and upset and complained about me and he got mad and in order to defend the honor of his lady love, and the reputation of his new department, he felt he had to destroy me, just a student, maybe arrogant, but inside, so fragile... Regardless, there was no justification for how those two supposedly more mature adults reacted. 

That is the last time in my life I was ever that vulnerable again.