u/Forward-Comfort-3531

I’m a 23 year old single woman, I’ve been single for two years after getting out of an abusive relationship that lasted 5 years since I was 15. Before that relationship, I dated a girl who was abusive towards me for a year. My entire life, I have never been approached by someone who wanted to show me genuine, soft love. Anyone who ever told me they had a crush on me growing up or that they were in love with me ended up hurting me deeply and always showed me they harbored hatred towards me. Now, there’s definitely been times that I wasn’t the best girlfriend to past partners, I’m not trying to paint myself as innocent. However, I was often on the receiving end of belittlement, beatings, and sexual assault by girls who felt like they had the right to do those things to me. I want a genuine connection with someone, but I’m terrified of it all being a waste of time again as it was with my other relationships. I don’t want to keep bringing people into my life that are just going to destroy me. Being single for this long has made me really value my alone time, my space, and my freedom. As much as I want love in my life, I’m scared that seeking it will cost these things for me. It’s so frustrating sometimes seeing people that experience such good luck with dating and end up matching with someone who genuinely really cares for them. I know outward appearances don’t always reveal the whole truth but for the most part it feels like I’m just surrounded by happy couples who are crazy for each other and then I’m just here, hoping someone will come into my life that truly wants to show me love free of pain and fighting. I just feel like I need to accept that maybe I’m just someone who isn’t meant to have romantic love. Not to mention I’m not a huge fan of sex since my previous relationships traumatized me sexually, so I feel like that limits my options even more significantly. I just feel like this is what life is going to be for me. My grandma never had a happy marriage, my mom has never had a happy relationship, maybe it’s just my destiny. Has anyone else ever felt this way?

I (23, f) spent the last two years working in an elementary school in the special needs classroom. I was a teacher’s aid and spent a lot of time helping the kids in our room with work and attending their general ed classes. I went to elementary school here so I already knew the majority of the staff and was familiar with the environment. When I first began working there, I was enthusiastic, cheerful, and always coming into work with a positive attitude. I wanted the kids I worked with to have a safe and fun day at school, and did everything I could to make sure they had that. At first, things were okay and I was embraced by the staff. As my time there continued, I noticed how a lot of staff members would put responsibilities on me that weren’t mine to do, like opening up the doors to the school everyday, watching kids in Gen ed classrooms, and restraining my disabled students without any form of training. I started being taken advantage of constantly by a lot of Gen ed teachers who began to only acknowledge me when they wanted me to do something for them. A lot of the staff didn’t want to interact with the disabled kids I worked with and therefore didn’t want to interact with me either. I over exerted myself so many times with the tasks they expected me to pick up, and because I was focused on the kids having a good school day, I would take on the responsibilities anyway. So many staff members, especially the male teachers, were incredibly lazy and would only do the bare minimum. I went above and beyond for both the kids and the other teachers, trying to help any way I could. This past year, I couldn’t take it anymore. A lot of the staff started treating me really cold and no longer spoke to me at all. I think it’s because I stopped picking up the slack and really shifted my focus back to the responsibilities of the special ed room. It began to become unbearable as I saw how favoritism played out with staff members. Some teachers and aids virtually did nothing, acted cruel towards the kids, and discriminated against students they didn’t like. Despite this, they would still receive praise and warmth from other staff members. Someone like me though, who would try to bring good energy into the classroom and treat all the students with kindness, ended up being isolated from the rest of the staff. It felt like the only way to really bond with the other teachers was to gossip about kids and their families, something I wasn’t about to stoop to. I left at the end of March and have been feeling better ever since, but at the same time I can’t help but feel resentment towards the staff. I spent so long trying to support the students and the staff, and no one would ever reciprocate that. I even started changing some of our disabled students at school so they wouldn’t be sitting in their waste all day, something of which even the nurse wouldn’t do. I’m not saying this to pat myself on the back, just to show how much I was trying to foster a healthy environment for the students. There were so many times when I was with a disabled student in the hallways who would be having a meltdown and there would be several other staff members around us who would just stare and judge as I tried to redirect the child safely. I’m not expecting anyone to do anything they don’t want to do, however I feel like if we are working in a school and have the responsibility of protecting our students, that should extend to all of the kids, not just the ones that are easy to work with. I think it was even more hurtful to deal with because these teachers knew me as a child, they knew that I had a dysfunctional childhood and was trying to be a well-rounded adult, and yet still made things so much harder for me when working there. Not that they really cared or accepted me as a child either. I just feel like I have all this anger towards my experience working there for being used and exploited for so long when all I wanted to do was support the students. Has anyone else ever dealt with something like this?