Thinking about my doctor’s reply to my email. She typed this on her blackberry and I am way impressed. It’s longer than the snippets I’m quoting here.

Again, you were all living in a separate world from the rest of Ateneo. It was as if you were in a ‘reality show’ like Survivor where there’s heightened emotions, & petty animosities that bring out the worst in people. Just like being in an island, you couldn’t leave (you had to finish your course), & all the emotional support ‘that mattered’, could only come from your fellow islanders.

• Island = the org
• support that mattered = from people in that org
• Except I didn’t really get that support because everyone (in that island) wanted to be “neutral.” It’s so hard for me to accept this because it meant they were seeing something bad happening and letting that happen.

On my first session, my doctor asked me how I would rate the horrible-ness of what happened at a scale of 1-10. I felt it was around a 8, and she said it was so horrible it was like a 15. And I couldn’t really get this. It felt really weird because it’s supposed to be so bad that she could compare how I felt to a rape victim (loosely, I suppose) except rape doesn’t (usually) happen in weeks and months, and victims can get sympathy. It’s a black and white thing that the abuser is so obviously wrong (there is no excuse in rape). If you see anyone being raped like that you don’t just think that it’s not happening to you and you don’t have a right to step in. You think that’s fucking cruel and defend that person. But I had to feel like I was to be blamed for what was happening or what happened to me and I had to understand why everyone was doing that. Kitkat emphasised this in one of her last emails to me: It was my fault. Everything was my fault. She had done nothing wrong whatsoever. Jopy was almost the same, and his ‘apology’ made it seem like an excuse for whatever he said and did.

Which was kinda sick and twisted now that you think about it.

Fact is, I couldn’t do anything to stop it. This is seriously making me question friendship, which led to me writing:

‘So now I feel a bit sad about nobody standing up for me more firmly. Is it some loyalty thing that I’m expecting from other people?’

My doctor explained that yes, it is a loyalty thing because I have a different definition of friendship compared to most people.

You most likely would have been a ‘true friend’ if it were to happen to someone you knew. But your criteria of friendship is higher/more noble than what is typical. Most people would prefer to act ‘neutral’ even if they expressed sympathy. Others my have been spiteful because they had issues of their own (we should discuss this). 

Which means…most people around me doesn’t even pass my definition of a ‘true friend.’

This concerns me a bit because basically, 90% of everyone I know will never fit that.

This brings me to question: is it bad that I expected the best kind of loyalty from any person I consider a ‘real friend’? I don’t know if I could expect less from anybody, or if I’m not interpreting this properly.

Which means I probably should ask my doctor again.