13 years
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me. girl. nerdy. unpopular. plain jane, on the ugly side. shy. depression prone. insecure. clingy. overly analytical. emotional. overly sensitive. overthinker. stuff like that.
outside, i’m still a plain jane, but i try to fit in as much as possible. friendly to my peers. get decent grades. get along with people most of the time. save a few people, i never ever ever ever ever show my depression and suicidal side to people. i stuff it in me as far as it can go. when i’m talking to people, it distracts me. outside, it looks like i’ve gone through a change. become friendlier, more outgoing, fun, ambitious. nope. i’m still in the same rut.
i tried talking to people. really, only one person. a good friend. her only problem is that she’s a bit immature, childish. her mind is drastically different from mine. we’re the same age but we’re completely different. i guess we used to be the same before but now i’ve changed for the worse and now it’s all pretend and fake laughs and sorry, but kind of stepping myself a level down to talk to her. she’s a good person really. but of course, i decided to talk to her about myself before i found about all of this. i’m sure i’ve given her a few hints about myself, about my feelings. totally. did. not. get. it. at. all. thinks it’s just a bad mood or something. course, she’s a sweet girl, so she’s still concerned for me. so i confide in her a bit more. give her a little glimpse of the real me to see what she thinks. needless to say she was probably totally creeped and freaked out. who wants a weirdo for a friend. really, who wants a friend, freakishly insesure and prone to depression and suicidal thoughts as a friend. who wants that dead weight? who wants all that emotional baggage? hence the two sided me.
that was probably the one and only time i’ve told anyone of my insecurities of that severe of a degree.
next part now. part two, my pathetic and disgusting and loser social life. i’m sure this will be entertaining to read. not really, it’s a bore even writing this.
you read my little autobiography earlier, didn’t you? so i’m sure you can just imagine my sparkling love life (hint, i don’t have one). i’ve only been in contact with a few boys in my life, all of them being miserable failures.
let me see now.
younger, didn’t talk to a single guy.
freshman year to sophmore year. infatuated with someone because i was infatuated with them. the only reason. tripped myself all the time trying to talk to him. nothing remarkable about him, really. ordinary guy. another nerdy one. wasn’t anything i really liked about him in particular. i just liked him because i did. i told a few people about that crush, and oh boy was it a bad idea. awkward now, same friends group, friends still think i have a thing for him. i. don’t. though it’s cool with him now. not weird around him anymore, but the atmosphere is quite awkward thanks to me.
last year was the most wonderful year of my life (sarcasm). tried the whole summer makeover thing. came back. who knew? a guy actually noticed me! background on this guy: kinda knew him throughout highschool. ordinary guy. nothing special. didn’t recognize me, thought i was new. for some reason he was abnormally interested in me. my friends thought he was into me, and considering my lack of social experience, you can imagine how confused and more increasingly awkward our encounters became. of course, i would like to mention his personality, at least to me. for one thing, clingy. awkward. pushy. yes, that’s the right word. way too pushy. i have a clear line between strangers and friends, and he just crossed it without even blinking. and that’s not a compliment. i have this bubble you see, it’s filled with my most sacred people and things and thoughts. you think you can just barge right into there and make yourself comfortable? no. get out. you’re not welcome. course, he kept pushing. even tried giving me a nickname. friends kept pushing the romantic aura around us. i became more awkward round him. really, it really confused me. in my little unexperienced mind, i thought he was into me. it made sense to me, since he kept txting me and talking to me and pushing to talk to me. it made sense to me. i wanted to tell him to stop, that he was making me so damn uncomfortable and weird and confused with what i thought were advances. i meant, what the hell. what was i supposed to do. course, i didn’t have any guts to tell him to back off in person. really, can you imagine me doing that? nope. so i got onto my lovely social media, where he was still incessantly messaging me about something irrelevant and stupid. i wrote a lovely long message on what i just wrote. how my friends thought that he was into me, that i didn’t like him that way, that i wanted him to back off because he was seriously making me uncomfortable and he was really creeping me out (hey, i was totally not used to guy contact). told him to leave me alone for real. told him i was sorry i couldn’t tell him in person because i had no guts. message ended. i blocked him on facebook, ignored him in real life. i’d like to note that before this i kept dropping hints that i wanted to him to back off and give me space. sure, i’m friendly, but to really get to know me, that takes years and years. it’s like he really wanted to drill into me (not in that way pervert). it was overwhelming, to say the least. but of course, i have s***** hint dropping skills and he didn’t understand a thing. thought i was joking around, that my cold and indifferent attitude was part of some playing hard to get scheme i was making up. dear jesus what’s wrong with you. after i sent that fb message, first day back to school. you can imagine how he reacted. still keep pestering, asking me what i got mad at him for. btw, we were kind of friends before this happened. classes with him became increasingly awkward. ignoring him became awkward. eventually, he got the hint and stopped trying to greet me and talk to me. school ended, summer started. summer ended in a blink. though throughout that whole summer i carried this pestering feeling that i made the wrong decision, somehow. he could’ve been my first guy friend. i mean, now that i think about it, he wasn’t really doing anything weird or creepy or bad. sure, he was defiintely pushy, but by the time summer ended i was kicking myself up because i acted like such an unsensitive b****. it was really confirmed when i told another friend about what i said to him (she was one of the firends who kept pushing the romantic relationship onto us both, well only me. i was really relieved at the time, as if i had really done the right thing. but she just looked straight at me with a look of horror on her face, as if she couldn’t believe what ihad done. “why would you say that?” she said. “that’s so mean,” she whisppered. well, that sounds kind of dramatic, but it went something like that. it was then when i realized what a retard i was. what the hell was i doing. what the hell did i just do. i just ruined a potential friendship, possible boyfriend, just because he was a guy. stupid me. i feel realy stupid that i don’t catch these little social hints. maybe i shouldn’t have been so honest, i think about it now. maybe i should’ve just endured it and just became friends with him and ignored the weird romantic messages and gestures he kept pushing at me and just became normal friends. but of ocurse, i ruined it, yet again. id on’t eeven know what i’m doing anymore. what am i even writing about anymore. it’s just random s***. my regrets are all in this weird bubble of weirdness that i can’t even read or decifer anymore. what the hell am i writing about. okay.
what hurts the most is that i kind of want to be friends with him again. told you already, he wasn’t a bad dude. s***, i can’t reveal too much because i dont’ want to be identified here. ayways. from as afar as i can see there’s no way whatsoever to repair this situation. i kind of get this feeling, as if i just dumped someone and now i want them back. even though we were never dating. i think i’m just desperate for love, which is why i fall for anyone who shows me a remote amount of interest. tehre’s another story after this, but i’ll save it for later. back to pushy guy. i don’t see much choices. one is to keep ignoring each other,which we have been doing, and hope these feelings of regret and hopefulness that he’ll notice me again and talk to me will go away. second is to go up and talk to him myself and be the one who takes the initiative to become friends. who the hell knows why i want to be friends with him, anyways. i just dissed him throughout this whole blurb of text, so i dont’ even know. i dont’ even know my own feelings for that damn male human, i dont’ know whether i’m romantically interested or if i’m just a masochist who likes ‘dumping’ people and then hoping they’ll notice me again after i told them to stop noticing me.
what do i doooooooooo. it’s liek the roles of switched now. he’ stopped even acknowledging me, which is what i wanted in my so lengthy rant/pseudo restratining order facebook message. but what’s the most pathetic is that i want him. WHYYYY DO I FEEL THIS WAY. argh. i feel sort of happy when i pass by him, when we’re in the same classes. f***, i may be socially inept, but i can tell when i have a crush. why do i have a crush. why. why. it doesn’t make sense to me at all logically. why would i like him at all? i thought i hated him. i thought i thoguth he was a creep. i thought i thougth that i wanted him to back off. i thought i thought HE was doing the chasing and liking, not me. this is not like me. so yeah, i’m a loser. my first kind of love encounter is thwarted by my weird socially awkward behavoior. blech. i dont’ think i still have come to turns that i really do like this guy now, the guy i used to think i hate and whatever. it just feels so impossible tome. i guess i’m just desperate to find smoeone who loves me and for a boyfriend. i think there’s no other adjective to describe this situation other than to make a whole new word, the word being my name. which i will not say now.
i am patheticcccccccccccccc

New Confession

A letter I did not get to write. By Carmen Portugal

Principal Mark Fenwick
Michael Power-St. Joseph High School
105 Eringate DriveEtobicoke,
ON M9C 3Z7

From: Carmen Portugal, Grade 13 Student

September 25, 1995

Regarding: Deceptive Conduct, Breach of Confidentiality, and Harassment by School Chaplain

Dear Principal Fenwick,

I am writing this letter to formally report a deeply distressing incident involving the school chaplain, Sister Marie Howorth, and my guidance counselor. This situation was handled with complete deception, violated my privacy, and has caused me such severe psychological harm that I no longer feel safe at school. Recently, I published a poem in the school newspaper honoring Jane Slovensko, a former student who passed away suddenly of an illness in the 1980s. I wrote this piece out of genuine admiration for her memory and a desire to celebrate a bright light in our school’s history.

On the morning of September 25, 1995, I received a chaplaincy to meet with Sister Marie Howorth. I had no idea what the appointment was for. There was no need to wait for Sister Marie Howorth. She appeared at my class door for everyone to see at 9:30am and summoned me directly out of my classroom for the unsolicited meeting. When I asked her what the meeting was about, she dismissed my question, saying, “Oh, just something.” In light of what followed, this response was a deliberate deception. I was misled into her office under false pretenses and forced into a private conversation about family trauma. Without warning. Without my consent. As an 18 year old, this is a violation of my autonomy.

As soon as the meeting began, Sister Marie Howorth immediately attacked my character, telling me, “You know you wear a mask.” She did not explain to me what she meant by this statement, leaving me to feel judged, confused, and defensive before she even explained why I was there. This unprovoked, highly damaging psychological label had an immediate negative impact on me. She then proceeded to ambush me with my private family history. She did not tell me how she knew this information until I asked, at which point she revealed it was my guidance counselor who told her. Sister Marie Howorth looked at me and asked directly: “Carmen, you wrote in your poem that Jane’s death was sudden. Now Carmen, your father died, was that sudden?” This question was unconscionably cruel and a profound violation of my emotional safety. To hear those words from a school chaplain—someone representing spiritual care and the authority of God—felt like a clinical cross-examination and a predatory ambush. It was a complete violation of my boundaries to have my private childhood history dragged into the light without my permission, stripped of context, and used against me like an interrogation tactic. The question was cruel because it reduced my genuine artistic inspiration and admiration for Jane into a cheap, traumatic stereotype. By forcing a jarring, completely false comparison between Jane’s tragic death and my own past, Sister Marie Howorth attempted to rewrite my reality. She completely invalidated my real intentions, treating my talent not as a gift, but as a symptom of damage. She used my father’s history as a weapon to dissect my mind, rather than treating me with basic human decency. When I tried to explain my poem, Sister Marie Howorth refused to listen. At one point, I got so upset by her aggressive tone that I told her I was sorry I ever wrote the poem. Sister Marie Howorth saw my acute distress, yet she completely ignored my pain and continued to ask me prodding questions in regard to why I noticed Jane, saying, “What made you notice Jane? There must have been something that made you notice her.” I refused to answer Sister Marie Howorth because I knew she was only trying to pathologize me.

There was absolutely no excuse for Sister Marie Howorth to treat me this way. If she had a concern with me, or if someone else on staff did, this was entirely the wrong way to address it. Here is why:

She chose deception over transparency: If a chaplain is genuinely concerned about a student’s emotional well-being, they approach them with honesty. Sneaking me out of class under false pretenses and hiding how she obtained my private records destroyed any possibility of pastoral trust.

She substituted counseling with an interrogation: True care requires listening. Instead of asking me how I was doing, she came to the meeting with a preconceived verdict. She tried to force my life into her own narrative, completely ignoring my actual thoughts and experiences.

She weaponized a student’s distress: When a student becomes so visibly upset that they regret their own creative work, a responsible educator stops. Continuing to probe and press a student who is in acute distress is not guidance; it is psychological harassment.

This interaction has caused me severe harm in the following ways:

Severe Loss of Safety: I am writing to tell you directly that as a result of this incident, I do not feel safe at school. I now feel constantly watched, evaluated based on gossip, and unsafe walking the hallways.

Deception and Emotional Distress: Being summoned out of class under a lie, immediately told I “wear a mask” without explanation, and then interrogated while visibly upset was a traumatic experience. Sister Marie Howorth chose to press into my boundaries rather than offer pastoral care.

Breach of Confidentiality: My guidance counselor had no ethical right to share my personal family file with the chaplain, and Sister Marie Howorth had no right to weaponize that information to ambush me

Censorship of My Voice: Because of this invasive behavior, I feel I must completely stop contributing to the school newspaper or expressing myself creatively just to protect myself from the staff.

Sister Marie Howorth’s approach was an interrogation that violated my rights as an 18-year-old student. I request an immediate formal meeting with you to address this breach of safety, hold the counselor accountable for sharing my file, and ensure Sister Marie Howorth is instructed to never approach me again.

Sincerely,

Carmen Portugal
Grade 13 Student

PS The Toronto Catholic District School Board takes my side: Sister Marie should not have asked me about my father’s death, saying that if I didn’t disclose his death to her, she did not have a right to ask. They also verified that Sister Marie Howorth was in the wrong to ask me prodding questions and her comment about me “wearing a mask” was indeed an inappropriate comment to say to a student. In all, Sister Marie Howorth’s approach to me went against trauma informed practices (and basic human compassion that any atheist garbage man could recognize)

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