Summary of this post - http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=221768
I have no idea if this belongs to here or the Pits; sure I am bitter; but I do not demand explanation, nor do I have a target to flame at. So I guess it’s just my humble opinon for everything that goes here.
Throughout my entire life I have been bringing entertainment to people around me. I am not sure if people are happy to see me, but they are sure laughing all the time when I am around. At my handwriting, at my inability to hit anything with any racket equipment, or to kick a ball straight or to score a goal.
The worse thing, the absolutely worse thing that I hate about myself, hate about others and most probably would forgive others for doing is – my stammering, and those who laugh at me.
I never have a good time at oral examinations. I couldn’t pronounce certain words. “Generally” is one of them. And I stutter and stammer and have a voice that is more sore than a gecko and have a voice that a teacher once described as “a permanent sore throat”.
A lot would point out that all these doesn’t matter. I am an unqiue person, born with different talents and gifts.
But a decade of brain-washing is not easily forgotten in just a three hours self-motivation seminar.
Out of what you would call high school, and onto a polytechnic, I learnt how to protect myself. I stammer, right? Fine, I practise speech. I sucks at sports, right? Fine, I avoid them, though because of regulations I have to take up badminton. I never forgot that it took me an entire month just to learn how to serve.
Three years later I was happy with myself. Sure, I am not a Mr. Winning Personality or Mr. Total Confidence, but I am okay. I am the top student of the class. I graduated with a certificate of merit. Next stop in life – the military.
It’s not like I have a choice. It’s the law. All male of certain age is to serve a minimum number of years in the military.
Unfortunately, I have depression during the last year of my schooling. Fortunately, the military is concerned enough as to put me through a less strenous course, and promised me that the rest of my service would be in the office.
Sounds good.
On the first day in camp I almost commited sucide.
Explaining ‘depression’ to a veteran sergant is like trying to tell what too much water is harmful, to a fish, or what the fourth dimension is to a pre-schooler. What else would I excpet. They went through tough training, dark jungles, days of discomfort in the mud and here is this bloody recurit, complaining about ‘bad moods’.
But they were kind, in a sense. The platoon-mates, however, were another entirely thing. But they are the opinions of other people. Technically speaking, I need not to care.
But what I am tells me things I couldn’t ignore.
I spent one week to learn how to put on the uniform, while other get dressed quickly, I struggled with buttons, the folding of sleeves, the wearing of socks, the cap.
Every parade is a nightmare. Marching is a nightmare. I was off the timing. I stumble. I stepped on others’ boot. They grumble and snarl.
The M16 was a complete nightmare. We have 60 seconds to strip and assemble the components of the rifle. I took more than two minutes. Or to put it, I never did it. I took two weeks to learn whereas other did in three days.
I found a distrubing quality about me. I couldn’t differnate left from right. Simple instructions like “right hand on top of left hand” left me reeling and completely disoriented. The sergants were none too kind. They scream at me names. The worse thing is when they are screaming and I couldn’t make up what the hell they were screaming about and I just stand there like a complete idiot and they screaming some more. I tried a step to the left. More screaming. A step to the right. More ceaseless screaming.
There was a night I wouldn’t sleep. Every time I drift off to a dream, it would be some sergants screaming at me.
I broke. After three years of reading motivation books, ‘beliving’ in me, trying to do my best, looking at my talents, fate, or God (indeed, if there is one), is forcing me to stare deep and hard into my inadequacy.
It took just one day to break me. The sergants, try as they may, tried to help, but they don’t understand.
I forgot ranks; I couldn’t salulate; When I march somehow my left and right got jumbled out. Sergants from other companies stare at me and laugh.
I feel like a freak.
Man, I AM A FREAK!
Three weeks later I meet my therapist. I explain to her the problems I face. She asked me to describe how I was as a child. And I remembered.
…how my mum used to scold me because I spent hours buttoning my shirt.
…the hot tears on my face as I struggled to tie my shoelace, at an age of nine, with my ma glowering and screaming at me…
…how the primary school teacher held up my execrise book, asking others to take a good look at my handwriting, and how a kindergarden kid could write better than me…
…the grins and the teasing of other kids as they imitate the way I spoke, as I stammer, blushed and felt hot tears stinging my eyes.
I don’t know who I hate more, them or myself. I wish there is a God to hate, but maybe there is, maybe there is none. And so what, if there is?
My therapist said I may have Dyspraxia.
And sympathetic my sergant or platoon commander was, there’s nothing they could do. They rather me to toughen through the course than to drop out from it. So I braved through it.
And so I went through everything. I passed my marksmanship test on the third try, where others pass on the first. I am humiliated everyday by the drill. “He still can’t march proper!” they say shaking their head.
I finished the course, physically unscathed. I am not sure about the inside, though.
Did my dyspraxia causes depression? Is my derpression in the genes? Is all this decades of humilation a cruel twist of fate, karma or chance?
Sometimes it just so much easier, so much less tiring, to just to admit “I am a freak. Stone me”
…
Okay, so I now am doing naught but office-work. Life shall be easy, isn’t it. Not in a military office.
They pull ranks all the time. The civillian employees bark at me as though I am their personal slave. Wait, make it I am their personal slave. I am just a bloody recruit.
The others are no better. I have no friends there, no cliches to back into, no one to hide behind. The officals there tried to, but they don’t understand; they can’t see from my level. They have their rank to protect them. They are officials - they are confident and what-not. I am…nothing.
I don’t feel like talking. My voice is like some sort of sick whinning dog. They laughed at the way I talk. Curse them! Damn them!
So who I was kidding when I think “I left the old me behind. Now I am new, confident person.” How could a few years possibly changes almost two decades of conditioning?
With any luck, I could stay this way the rest of my life without degrading any further.