A small victory

[baroque_mongoose]

I was brought up not to expect to be allowed things that other people in a similar situation would take for granted. So it was just normal that everyone else in my class had things I didn't have (primarily parental support and encouragement). It was just normal that my father withheld a significant proportion of the money that was supposed to get me through my degree, but didn't do the same to my sisters. It was just normal that they got expensive school trips, and (later) work experience at the company where my dad worked, when I not only didn't but was told off for asking for these things. It's quite hard to explain to people that the reason I wasn't resentful about any of this was not that I was some kind of saint, but because that was just how the world worked in my experience. If I ever complained that things weren't fair, I'd be met with "Life isn't fair!". Which it isn't, but that wasn't the point. The point was that they weren't interested in making things fairer, because they were firmly convinced that if they tried to do that I would end up "spoilt", and that was the worst thing that could possibly ever happen to a child. I probably need to keep on underlining this, because objectively the way my parents treated me was awful; but you really have to remember that they were not in any way malicious, and they did it because they'd managed to convince themselves that I was such a problem child that I had to be put down at all times or I'd become this... monster, I suppose.

It is one thing to forgive people. It is quite another thing to recover from the consequences of what they did to you that needed forgiving. To this day, I still struggle with those. For instance, there was the matter of how I ought to price my bead earrings (they're for sale on Folksy). Making these earrings is skilled work which requires an unusual level of fine dexterity, so I decided it was fair to price them in such a way that I would earn just above minimum wage... because it's me. I know very well that if someone else were making similar earrings, I would tell them, "well, that's skilled work which requires an unusual level of fine dexterity, so it's worth at least twice minimum wage". But that's someone else, so it's different, because that's how things have always been.

But... I had a little victory the other day. It suddenly occurred to me that, even for me, it was not unreasonable at all to expect that if I put in the work needed to get a degree, I should get that degree, given that there isn't any doubt that I do have the ability required. So far, in the various attempts I've made throughout my life, I have put in about twice the work needed to get a degree, so... I should get my degree, right? Even I should be able to do that? But if I don't get the money from the legacy, I won't be able to continue with it, as things stand.

So, this is what I did. I contacted the Open University. I explained to them all about the situation with the legacy, and I asked if there might be any other avenues by which I might be able to continue to study if I don't get this money. And it felt very defiant and transgressive, as though I was trying to get hold of something I shouldn't really be allowed to have.

To hell, and I mean that 100% literally, with feelings like that. Objectively, I've been denied the degree that I should have been allowed to gain from all my hard work, and no childhood mind-tape is going to tell me any different. I may never to my dying day be quite able to accept that I'm as good as other people, but there's a line. I do stick at the idea that doing more than twice as much work as other people to get a degree is not good enough to get a degree in my particular case (by the time I've finished, it'll be something over two and a half times as much work).

It's good to know there is a line. Let's see if I can start moving it a bit closer to where other people have theirs.