Tatiana

 

Tatina was 13 or 14 when she started writing to EQI.org. She would be around 18 or 19 now.

S.Hein
April 12, 2006

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Feeling Afraid

I'll Make My Own Beauty

Letter to Tati about my fears for her


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


I'll make my own beauty. 8/17/2002
(I would also call this "
Different Kind of Freak" S. Hein)

I'll make my own beauty. 8/17/2002

Here I only put the best of my writing. Obviously this is not the best. This is just sadness.

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Thought of the day:

Never trust your friends, they will soon discover who you are anyways (in my case).

But no, they haven't discovered me yet. I haven't discovered me yet.

Still, never trust your friends. People assume too much. They think things that shouldn't even be thought about! Like what...like: she didn't laugh at my joke, she must be a freak then. Hey, I'm surprised her wardrobe isn't all made out of black clothes. Woah, she must be a different kind of freak then. Those rare freaks that don't talk to anyone. Still, she's a freak. Besides she's got an accent. Hey, let’s make fun of her, nobody likes her anyways. Yeah, like throw rocks at her and call her a whore!

Yes, exactly like that. Is that true though? I wonder if that's true. I hope that is not true. Do you think that that is true?

It is true though. I'm the freak here who got hit by rocks, so it is true. Doesn't that make you feel pathetic? YOU. You are just as pathetic as they are. Ha! I laugh at your patheticness. And I wouldn't be surprised if you do that to someone when you're 30 years old. Hey, you'd be still as pathetic. Pathetic people don't change. I hope not at least. I don't like getting along with someone who threw rocks at me.

The funny thing is, is that after a couple of years later, they like to call me pretty. "Hey, you freak...wait, when did you change so much? Woah, you look better, I mean, whatever happened. Why are you walking away? Hey, I'm not that ugly."

I don't know what I do to them. Why do people hurt me so much? It is getting worse because now I don't trust them. Like I said, that is my thought for today, they will discover who I am anyways. And they think of things that shouldn't even be thought of. Yes, I have an accent and I don't laugh at every joke, woah, I am such a freak.

Do I hurt people in some way? I don't even talk much. All I ever did was to be quiet. "Man, I don't think she talks, so don't look at her."

There must be some kind of beauty. Is there any beauty at all? I've been looking for beauty. But I'll make my own beauty. They don't have any beauty, they don't like beauty. They like saying freak so much. I can't find beauty. I can't find beauty. I can't find beauty.

It's raining, but not anymore because it's sunny. And it's raining still.

People hurt me. People hurt me. People hurt me. Why do people hurt me?

I want to hurt them back.

Tatiana

 


 

August 18, 2002

Tati,

I am almost crying now. I was thinking about the difference between you and the people your age who are cutting themselves and trying to kill themselves. I made this list about suicidal people.

I was writing this line... "They are sensitive. They care about others They take on the pain from others..." And then I thought, "Tatiana doesn't care about others. She is sensitive, but she doesn't care about others. She is so sensitive and has been hurt so much that she is only defensive now. And hostile. Attacking others so they can't hurt her, so she will have some power over them and be able to protect herself."

This is how I was until about age 35. I was always defensive. People called me insensitive. But actually I was always very sensitive. I felt hurt so easily that I became defensive and I had so many unmet emotional needs that I was using people to try to fill my emotional needs.

I don't want you to become like that. I don't want you to become bitter and full of hate for the human race which didn't fill your needs. I am scared for you Tati. I really am. I am afraid you will get deeper into your own world. And that you will resist people who try to help you or try to understand you or who try to help you see yourself.

I looked through all of your entries yesterday, from the very beginning. I saw one where you said that you tell people to leave u alone, but really you wanted them to talk to you. You do the same thing with me. You push me away, but you want me to understand you. Because I don't understand your poetry and your way of expressing your feelings, and I want you to express your feelings with feeling words, you get frustrated with me, angry, and then you attack me. You have made it clear that you don't care about my feelings. I don't really need you to. I would like you to, but I don't really need this. But in a relationship with a romantic partner you will have to do some things differently or you will have one heartbreak after another. I have already seen how bitter you got with Dan. Bitterness might be thought of as misunderstood pain. Because a person doesn't really understand why they were hurt, and they have not learned something positive from it, they feel bitter. I say "something positive" because often people take away a negative lesson like "I will never love again" or "I will never trust another man" etc.

You don't like to talk about your parents. Yet I have seen enough to know that your mother has hurt you deeply with her words. I think she has hurt you with her hands. Maybe not recently, but when you were younger. It is clear that your mother places more value on a clean house and clean dishes than she does on your feelings or on your writing or on your dreams.

Now you have learned to be hard on yourself, self-critical. You said the other day you hated your poems. I wrote this about you....

Tatiana does not cut herself with razors. She cuts herself with her words.

Tatiana does not hurt others with her hands. She hurts them with her mind.

 

I care about you. You are very special. You have so much to offer. I am afraid for you.

I am afraid you will go from a bad relationship with your mother to a series of bad relationships with men. I am afraid you will never see the connection. Or that it will, cost you, and others so much pain before you see it. I don't want you to know the pain I have known, Tati. I really don't. I didn't hate people when I was 15 the way you do. I didn't hate myself. I laughed. I didn't think. I didn't lay awake at night and think and feel and write poetry and books. I am really scared Tati. You are a powerful person. Your power can be used to create or destroy. I am afraid you will push me away. Feel defensive by the things I say. Attack me again. Maybe you feel attacked. But what I say I say because I care about you. I want to help you. But you never ask for my help. You resent it when I try to force it on you. But I believe that if you care about someone you keep trying to help even when they hate you for it. I don't know of another way to help. I am trying to help you in the way you need it, but you will say I dont need help in anyway. Yet we all need help. We are social creatures. Part of our needs are social needs. For support and understanding. You know you are funny sometimes. You criticize teenagers because they complain about not being understood. Then you scream at me because I don't understand you!

I want to ask you if you want me to care. But I am afraid you will feel obligated to say no. So I won't ask. And I won't ask how you feel when I say I love you. I want to respect your feelings Tati, especially since no one else seems to, not at least the people you most need to - which are your mother and father of course. Parents don't know how to respect their children's feelings. Not unless they were very fortunate and had parents who respected theirs. Your parents believe they are doing what is best for you. I won't criticize them for that. But I don't believe they are actually doing what is best for you. As I started to say though, I want to respect your feelings, but it I am just guessing at how you feel. I am trying to do the best I can. You scare me Tati. You can hurt a lot of people one day. You can make a lot of money and have a lot of power. Then use that power to hurt people, or at least not to help them. You are so powerful Tati. You could be a dictator of a country or something. This is such a critical time in your life. I am just scared.

SPH

 


Steve,

Could you please now remove my name from your webpage (http://eqi.org/tod.htm)? It is a strict violation of confidentiality. I am applying to graduate schools and will be publishing scientific papers, and I cannot have my teenage "counseling" reports on the internet. You can share my story, as you obviously have done without my permission, but you can use another name or just remove my name from your website. Please understand that if you do not do so, you are directly impacting my future and professional career associated with my name as it shows up in Google every time. I am trying to be a biologist and be taken seriously in my field, without having my teenage life story on the internet.

If you have questions you can always email me,


Tatiana

 

Notice she didn't use any feeling words? She is now very educated in biology, but still emotionally illiterate. Another example of over-educated and emotionally illiterate.

Tatiana started working with me through a CWRU Evolutionary Biology Program summer internship, and then completed her SAGES Capstone project with me (which she presented at Research ShowCase). Her project involved quantifying the taxonomic and morphologic diversity of marsupial carnivores in South America during the Oligocene and Miocene epochs. We collaborated with a colleague to analyze these data, and presented a paper on the subject at the 2010 SVP annual meeting.


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