u/_Solway_Firth

So a few months ago I met this girl at a concert, we exchanged contects, started chatting, etc. She asked if we're meeting as friends or dating and we agreed on a date. It wa great, she initiated everyhing, holding hands, kissing, etc. After the date we kept chatting and everything was looking great, we agreed on a second date.

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One day she just disappeared. In her bio I found a guy labeled as "baby" and of course I put it together and came to the conclusion that she ghosted me.

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This was right when I was in my deepest depression, every day I had panic attacks, I was in constant anxiety so this put another weight on that. Things got so bad that I actually ended up in a psychiatric ward for a day because of my suicidal thoughts.

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Well I got out and a few hours later she texted me. She was saying that she's sorry and she was grounded and her phone was taken away, ehich I really doubt because her parents absolutely doesn't seem to be that type. She told me stories coming home at 3:50am drunk af and her mom was like "you weren't home? Well, cool"

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So I told her what I felt and questioned her bio. She said that she didn't change her mind and the guy in her bio was her best friend. I asked if she wanted anything from me az all and she told me she wanted to get to know me better and how I'm such a kind and interesting person.

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After that this push and pull started, she disappeared for one day at a time, she came back with some lame excuse, then didn't answer for a day again. Or sometimes I found that she was no longer following me or that I wasn’t following her.

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I asked if she wanted to come to my music school concert and it took her a day to respond with "gotta ask my mom" then another 20 hour silence and then suddenly "gotta ask my dad." At that point it was 1 day before the concert so I told her to please ask him that day, she said she would but at 23:00 she texted "sorry my dad says we're at another town next week" and I was like "next week? This is tomorrow" to which she only said "fuuck I'm already off by a week?"

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So then we talked a bit and she said she will ask her dad the next day because she really wants to come. The next day I was waiting, and waiting... for a reply that never came. The concert went down and it was great but she couldn't say a simple "sorry can't go"

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And when I got home I saw that she had blocked me... and now it's been like 1.5 days of silence since our last chat.

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I know this is childish, stupid games but still it hurts. What she did either intentionally or not is that she made me addicted to her with this push and pull through chemical reactions in my brain.

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Every time she disappeared, "punished" my anxiety kicked in, my stomach was in a knot, breathing felt shallow. And every "reward" when she finally texted made me relax, made the anxiety go away. So my mood became dependant on her. So every time she disappeared she made me want her desprately, made me think about her and only her, and when she was finally back she became the solution to all my problems.

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Now I don't know if after this block will she reappear but even if she does I've had enough... I'm just gonna off this.

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TL;DR: after establishing a strong pull towards her (kissing me on the first date) she started disappearing for days or just one day at a time. She streched out simple yes/no answers to always keep me on the edge and gave me constant mixed signals, but with a hint of hope. So my mood became dependant on whether or not she responded or not. I got addicted.

So I went to Waldorf in elementary school and experienced a lot, both there and since.

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Let's start with how I lived it back then.

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So from day one I was bullied. On the 4th day of first grade my classmates were chasing me and throwing rocks at me. One hit me in the head and I have a scar ever since. I was mocked, humiliated, excluded, abused, beaten and hated before I even had a chance to show them who I was. For 6 years this bullying went on, I got regularly beaten, made fun of and verbally abused. The teachers? I never got any help from them. Always the same old "oh maybe you guys shouldn't be so mean to him" bullshit. One time a teacher literally watched as they formed a circle around me, kicked me, threw stuff at me and laughed at me.

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Of course this constant abuse and no help from the ones who should have been our guides, protectors and teachers through childhood quickly developed a mindset in me which I only recently realised: if they all hate me without even knowing who I am then fine, fuck them, I won't try. And so I gave them a reason to hate me.

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I didn't know why but I started being mean. I broke stuff, verbally hurt others, caused trouble wherever I went and so I became this troublemaker with a bad temper. Once I threw in the window of a car next to the school yard with a brick. Seriously I became a really bad kid, always yelling, saying ugly stuff to everyone, throwing stuff. And after some time everyone realised they can blame everything on me and the teachers will believe it. They did.

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This abuse and everything continued for 6 years. Multiple times me and my mother tried to seek help from my class teacher but he was NO HELP. Also he was a huge trauma. Overly religious and since in the Waldorf system the class teacher teaches almost every subject we were learning geometry, math, history, later physics and chemistry through a very religious lens. Imagine having to learn that the human skull is the temple of the body where God can reach us.

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I don't know why I stayed... really, no idea. But in 6th grade things got a bit easier. I was abused less and less, I could finally talk to others without being mocked but the situation didn't get resolved. A few newer classmates still bullied me and still acted awful, and I was still stuck in this troublemaker label. I never really got out of it. I was still the worst student both socially and academically.

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So I got into this gray zone where I was still targeted by a few people (including my class teacher) but I wasn’t CONSTANTLY bullied. I found refuge in a classmate who was also targeted by the class teacher and some students, let's call him XYZ. So I, him and another guy turned our back on the class and just kind of lived in our own little circle. We mocked the whole school system, the teachers, the others, it was our way of saying "fuck you" to everyone.

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This gray zone lasted like 2 years, until 8th grade. I slowly turned from mean and agressive to skeptical, cynical and sarcastic, but I guess I slowly started opening up to others. I had regular "intellectual battles" with the class teacher about philosophical, religious, or scientific topics and I mostly won them, maybe that's how I earned everyone's respect. And so people slowly changed around me, they started accepting me and getting closer to me. It took me by surprise, my classmates suddenly started saying how smart I was, how wise I was. Some even said that they looked up to me, and that they admired that I had an answer to everything. I had classmates write letters to me about how they never really got to know me and that they find me such an interesting person, so they want to know just who I am.

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It meant a lot to me, finally not being outcasted. A friend group slowly formed around me and I just felt happy and glad. I've always had a kind of leader like personality, and so I became the center of the group. We formed a band, hung out often and just enjoyed the rest of the school year.

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But it didn't last very long... After the end of the school year it all fell apart, they became cold towards me, ghosted me, etc. I couldn't take it because a lot of stuff was happening back then, family lawsuits, etc.

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I cut ties with everyone.

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And so I entered high school with an overall negative view of Waldorf.

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To my surprise I became the best student in high school, not just in my class, but the whole year. I became this "perfect student," always helpful, always paying attention, always knows the answer to everything, etc. At first I liked it. But then I quickly came to hate it...

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The amount of pressure that is on us, the nonsense we have to learn, the terrible school system, the dark-minded people... it all feels so suffocating. It's not that I can't keep the pace but it's exhausting. Zero creativity, zero freedom, and half our teachers don't even give a fuck... they either sleep through class, don't come in or just rant about politics, F1 and other nonsense. We're told to fuck off and suck it up.

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This system is just a waste of time tbh. I'm studying electrical engineering and it's a 5 year system but what they taught us in 2 years could have been taught in 2 months... I can't even get my high school diploma if I don't do the 5th year, which is just another year of time wasting. I feel like a soldier, the system is so stupidly strict and it tries to mold everyone into the same shape.

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I'm a creative person, I play music, write, sculpt, voice act, make film accessories like costumes and shit. I've seen electrical engineering from my uncle, who used it in a creative way so I entered this school with that experience. This is NOT that at all. Pure industrial mindset. So this school might work for others but from what I’ve heard almost EVERYONE in my class hates this school and regrets coming here. And btw this is the best electrical engineering technical school in the country.

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And I recently met the mother of that old classmate, XYZ and was told that he also went to a technical school, is also the best student and regrets leaving Waldorf too. He almost went back but couldn't. So now we've got two people who hated Waldorf from the bottom of their hearts and now come crawling back because they finally understand the difference. It's not that we can't keep up in regular schools, we're both outstanding students, but we now have a reference. The only reason I can't go back is because I would have to start over from 9th grade because of the fucked up technical school system, and my family doesn't like the idea of just focusing on art because it's hard to live off of it.

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So even after years of abuse there I'll still say that Waldorf is ×1000 better.

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And another thing: when I tell stories about my crazy adventures in Waldorf people usually watch with wide eyes. Because of course I had good experiences even with all the bullying, heck I had a lot. And most kids don't anymore...

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And so I realised that I have to be thankful to Waldorf because I actually lived there. I had a childhood. I played in the dirt every day, climbed trees, I fell, catapulted pumpkins after Halloween 20 meters into the air, explored sewers after school, built bombs outside the city, raced down the main road in a shopping cart, dug tunnels under the fence and snuck into the junkyard, got lost in the forest in the middle of the night with a few classmates, sang songs by the giant bonfire, watched the stars from the roof of the school, built a secret base in the forest out of junk, played in the toxic stream (didn't know it was toxic), fought for the wooden shed every day after class, had huge snowball wars over the stream with other classes, went on a 4 day cycling trip around a lake with constant pouring rain, wind and ice, made pizza until 3am, laughed our asses off trying to figure out the 8th grade play, played Duality at the end, snuck into the storage room in the basement and got locked in there, also got locked in the classroom and had to climb down the gutter, watched shitty movies together, and so on. (Oh man I feel a bit emotional writing down all these memories)

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I cried a lot, yes, but I also laughed a lot, and I felt alive. Now I can't cry and I feel dissociated all the time.