[The Succubus]

Originally Posted by INoKnowNames

I'm still struggling away with my own woes.... But in being part of a group greater than myself, I found someone nearby who is so much worse than myself. It's... a bit of a doozy.

Spoiler

Most of this is pieced together from what I do know of her situation, but I might be missing hings.

She is a single teenage mother. I was utterly shocked when I realised she's yonger than myself. She's had to fight to be able to ensure she could keep her daughter, less she be like her birth mother (and mine, a detail we shared in pleasent conversation) and be forced to adopt to ensure her child get a decent chance at living.

The father seems to have a history of being abused, being in trouble with the law, and being relatively threatening. But because he's mentally unbalanced, she doesn't seem to know, or want, to completely break off everything and deny him his kid, on fear that he might snap. He's apparently put dents in the walls of their appartment.

He's super possessive toward the mom, to the point where he's installed software onto her computer to periodically save images of the screen for review. And he checks her facebook, and gets angry when she shows signs of even knowing another male friend. She's only even allowing him to stay in the same house as them because he's got a job, and she can't afford to move out on her own, be a mother, and go to school with just 1 job going to expenses.

I don't know what to think, since there's so much one doesn't know looking on the outside in, especially when not even seeing the full picture in... I don't know how to help her, other than being there if she needs anything, as everyone in our church group is... I'm not even sure what to say to her...

I think that hit pretty much every single checkbox on the "Am I in an Abusive Relationship?" list. If what she says is the truth, I would be very, very worried for her and her kid. Someone needs to have a private talk with her (i.e. face to face without her husband reading/checking up on it) from a position of authority. I can understand why she might be reluctant to go if she's afraid of her child being taken away but in the UK at least it is very much the last resort for social services. (NOT as a certain UK soap opera would have it where every single care worker is hell bent on stealing children. ) From your perspective, be there for her as much as you can and help her see her different options, rather waiting for things to come to a head with her husband.

Originally Posted by Trekkin

I'm...back...

Spoiler

I failed a test today. I haven't gotten it back yet, but I know I did. Just like the other one. This one's for my bioinformatics professor, though. The one whose recommendation I was counting on to make my grad school applications a bit less farcical. The rest of the class will, as one, have thought it was easy, which is going to make my life even more of a living hell.

This always happens. Every test, every homework. I can't even look at a returned assignment any more, and my GPA is a piffling 3.14. I'm always the dumb one out.

I haven't slept since. I can't. I can't even get out of bed, except for more classes. Which I know I'll fail, and which I inevitably will. My parents agree with me on this--I've spoken to them, and they inevitably go on about the energy you project coloring your endeavors. Which is nice, but doesn't help me not fail; I can't just be happy ex nihilo like they can, and it's pretty much destroyed my relationship with my father. I can hear the disappointment in his texts.

I have another test in 28 hours. I'm even less confident about this one.

None of this was supposed to happen. I was a straight-A student in high school. 4.0, ludicrous numbers of AP credits. I thought I was a good student. Then this school happened, and ochem, and biochem, and genetics, and I wasn't a 4.0 anymore. Nor was I attractive or funny or anything else that subverts that. It might be what you know or who you know; I total to zero on both.

I can't talk to my friends any more. The feeling of wasted time just builds and builds. Before, though, they mentioned not being able to find jobs. Assuming, as I think I safely can, that two years of useless research and a 3.14 from an engineering school will relegate my application to birdcage lining, where does that leave me? Besides, I pull stuff like this. Everyone else just gets on with academic excellence, not effortlessly, but smoothly. There is something wrong with me.

Professional help is not an option. I'm too poor for private help and wouldn't have the time anyway, and I know the school knows who's seeing the school counselor. There's records and things somewhere. Everyone has contacts and ins and things and secret ways to subvert the system, law or not. Rich kids get busted with drugs and not arrested all the time, idiot frat boys get plum jobs at their friends' companies all the time; someone with the capacity to decide my future will be able to look. It's not that I mind the prospect of 72 hours of monitoring, it's that I don't have three days to spare.

I haven't had a break, without something vital to my "career" due within the next three days, for over five years. I know I shouldn't complain. If nothing else, this is how the real world is. Others have it worse, and complaining just marks me as not able to handle it. So would therapy, or speaking to my professors, or anything. I'm whiny by nature, so there's no way any of that would work.

I don't even know what the truth is any more. It used to be simple. Mathematical. None of it is any more. It's not about knowing the course material, its about agreeing with the professor. I can't choose best answers any more. This just makes the process of grad school applications even worse. One professor tells me my near-perfect GREs make Stanford a good idea; another tells me some state institution might take me in. I don't know what to believe any more.

Sorry. I just wanted someone to know.

I'm going to ask you a question and I would like you to breathe in and out very slowly 10 times, taking a full ten seconds for each breath so that you are cool and focused before answering:

What do you want?

This question is addressed to you, personally. Not your parents, not your professors, not your classmates, you.

What do you want?

It's a toughie, isn't it? Let me give you a little nudge to help you in the right direction...

You're feeling massively stressed out at the moment, so what you want is to get rid of most or all of this stress. How can you do this? Let's look at the sources of stress:

* Your parents - Every parent wants their child to do well so that they can have a comfortable, secure and happy life. It's the latter part that a parent should be aiming for. If it's just so that they can get bragging rights "Oh yes, my son is going to Harvard to be a biophyscist, quantum engineer and Superman as an extra cirricular activity" then their expectations can quite safely be ignored and if your dad is disappointed then it's something he's going to have to man up and deal with.

* Your professors - These are the people that should be ensuring that you do your best and actively helping you to do so. If they are causing you to be stressed out, then quite simply they are failing their duty. Talk to them and be honest with them. "Mr Professor Guy, I need some help. I am getting stressed out with the exams and I am have trouble focusing on them. Can you help me come up with a plan of action to help me focus a little more?"

* Yourself - Seriously, you are being far, far too hard on yourself. Even your own professors are telling you this:

One professor tells me my near-perfect GREs make Stanford a good idea

The real world really is not like this. All the real world asks of you at work is to do an amount of work you can reliably produce at a steady rate. A man that does a reasonably good job day in day out is far more useful to an employer than a man who is Albert Einstein one day and too frazzled the next.

But all we've done here is tried to reduce a level of stress for you. We still haven't answered the question we initially set out to.

What do you want?

I hope you'll find the answer some day.