Re: Hi everyone my name is GEB and I am new here, and this is my story
Date: December 17, 2008 12:00AM
Hi GEB,
Congratulations for your courage to attempting make sense of what has happened & put it into a different context.
One of the things that struck me reading your post, was that you talk about the move having been a kind of trigger for you to feel 'off balance'. I can genuinely emphasise with you - how unnerving & destabilisng 'moving' is - it is at any age or time, but when you're 12, it is, I feel, twice as hard because you're right in the middle of "changing" from a child to a teen, a time where we are learning to experience ourselves & how we 'fit' into our environment in a different way than the child we were who takes things as a given - metaphorically speaking (there are always variants from one individual to another and certainly I am not talking about children that come from an abusive background) - but going by your story, your life was good.
And maybe precisely because things were just 'so right' for you, it was the more distressing for you to have to leave such a good place (also, the place in your life where you found yourself).
Having to move so shortly after bearily having had any chance to 'settle in', I intuit (& correct me if I'm wrong), made you more vulnerable to questionable influences, being an easy target for what was to follow.
Given that this happened all during your 'formation' years of developing a solid sense of Self that was strong & trusting, I can understand how unsettling it must have been. I've been uprooted myself numerous times prior to age 10 & it is one of the reasons I could never grow any 'roots' anywhere. I felt like an outsider, 'out of place' & like a stranger no matter where I happened to be.
I sense a similar "feeling lost" from you, of not knowing where you belonged, from your own account...which is an 'ideal' prerequisite for anyone on the "recruiting" rounds of any dubious orientation no matter what 'cloak' it may present itself in.
I am sure you will find all you need to find out & also receive the information, the help & guidance this site provides us with; with such abundance.