A few days ago, Bill Zeller, a 27-year-old graduate student at Princeton University, died. The cause: suicide. The reason: He was tormented due to being repeatedly raped as a child.
Zeller left a 4,000-word suicide note that eloquently explained the effect that the devastation had on his life. There is a link to it in this article:
Princeton student kills self over rape as child, on CBSNews.com.
Story suggested by a Lovefraud reader.
nancy:
Oh yeah!
pathetic is the word, infantile is another word.
LOL!
I have 25 years of memories in the WTF? bucket, and now I understand some of it. I’m still working on my own schtick. WTF am I all about? How did it happen to me?
sky – i heard a quote from mary shelley during my online tv sick girl marathon that really perked my ears up. i searched for it, and found a whole list of quotes here: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/11139.Mary_Shelley
(and in case the link doesn’t post well, it’s ‘goodreads’)
I need to read frankenstein.
I immediately thought i wanted to show you the frankenstein quotes. some refer to a type of wistfulness and moralism that i think was true to Shelly’s time, but the rest…..hmmmm.
this was the quote:
“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.”
gotta go back to bed….
Hi onejoy. I can’t resist to point something out about Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. The novel is a feminist one, of a very subtle feminism, but feminist. Frankenstein, the doctor Adam Frankenstein is the real monster. The “monster” has no name, is the creature, who symbolises women in that period.
The novel is a criticism of a society that started giving women education but still kept them inside the domestic sphere.
It’s the criticism of a science void of humanity. Frankenstein created a living creature who was born pure and innocent but he abandoned his responsability just because he didn’t like the result of his creation. It’s the father that abandones his child, in this case a daughter.
It’s a very good novel because of the freshness and the hidden criticism. Technically not very good because Mary was just 18 when she wrote it. But it doesn’t matter, it’s a novel that has something very special.
eva 🙂
we’ll talk some more when I have read the novel, okay?
best,
one joy step
Ok Joy
Read it; it’s a lovely novel written by an angry girl of just 18 who felt how unfair, hipocritical and oppressive towards women and minorities her society was. But she made a subtle criticism, nothing more was allowed in that period.
Best for you, too. 😀
Saludos
Hi Eva and One/Joy
One/Joy,
I hope you’re feeling better, I wish I could give you my flu remedies. The marine algae Gigartina, seems to work and also a homeopathic made from goose liver has helped me in the past. But you are probably past the stage where you need medicine? I hope so.
I don’t think that quote was about spaths, they just enjoy evil – don’t you think? My spath chose evil specifically because it was evil and hid that choice in a cloak of human weakness. Your spath simply enjoyed your suffering – right? Maybe I missed your point…
I understand “normal people” mistaking something evil as good/happiness, What I don’t understand is the “normal” people who watch another person be scapegoated or persecuted and choose to do nothing or choose to join in? How is that mistaken as good or happiness?
Eva,
now you’ve made me want to read Frankenstien. I never realized it had anything to do with creating a woman, although I have heard that it had to do with male envy of womens’ ability to give birth.
About your professor, it’s very hard for me to figure him out without ever meeting him. All I can advise is that you don’t show him the real you, because he will use it against you.
Hi Skylar,
it’s a lovely, rather short novel. Very fresh and a full exercise of imagination. Very imperfect technically but full of symbolism.
You’re right is one of those literary works that needs previous explanation. Mary Shelly was the daughter of an intellectual feminist woman who influenced her daughter very much. But the father was the typical man of the period, considered women second class citizens designed according to the needs of men.
The creature becames rebelious at the end, when realizes of the cruelty of his creator and other members of society. So it understands its life has to end because everybody wants it like this, but first it kills his irresponsible and cruel creator.
It’s novel, not essay, so the message is subtly administered through symbolism in the shape of gothic, romantic novel.
It’s because it’s a work of art it has last. An aggressive feminist attack would have been eliminated quickly.
Everybody remembers Mary Shelly, just a few feminists intellectual remember her mother, whom i don’t remember her name either.
Bill Zeller said, “I feel an evil inside me. An evil that makes me want to end life. I need to stop this. I need to make sure I don’t kill someone, which is not something that can be easily undone.”
Those emotions cannot be undone by just being loved or treated well. In fact, the evil feelings were intensified by relationships.
Someone posted this and I think its quite chillingly true that negative feelings towards a past abuser or past abuse are transfered somehow to anyone who comes into the intimate sphere. As victims those who defraud felt deprived of power and now try to reclaim in by seaking victims of their own. Since most stop short of murder the next best thing is robbery. “You” have to pay because you have come inside that sphere and aroused those feelings. Its a very strange and illogical kind of undifferentiated revenge. I don’t feel a need to make anyone else pay for anything in my past but I can see that some people are acting this out conciously or unconciously or maybe both.
Denise,
I feel a great deal of compassion for bill zeller and am horrified about the abuse he suffered. I don’t know much about him personally, and I haven’t read his suicide note. Is this where your quote comes from?
Your comment about it makes a whole lot of sense to me, in reference to both disordered and very damaged people: ‘Those emotions cannot be undone by just being loved or treated well. In fact, the evil feelings were intensified by relationships.’
this may be a bit off topic from your post, but it sparked something for me. I think with spaths, it may be more active than we have ‘come inside their sphere’, so we have to pay. I think they purposely bring us there so they have someone to abuse.
My take on this ….is that when we get into relationships, when we get close to someone, it always brings back “early” feelings from our childhood.
When I was in my early twenties…I was in a serious r/s with a guy who adored me. He was a decent loyal man..one of the only NONsociopaths that I have been involved in.
Well, I started to act just like my socio mom toward him!!!! I remember telling him that I can’t marry him…as he wanted to…because I need to “self actualize” and resolve things within me. I was becoming the monster I observed growing up..I was acting just like my abusive mom, toward HIM!!!!
I remember crying and leaving and telling him that he is a good man and he doesn’t deserve a messed up woman like me! I was immitating my mother. I knew I had to go live on my own, and “find myself”.
I bought my own home, went to a really good therapist, who helped me, at the time, realize who I am. I knew I wasn’t “ready” to get close to anyone. It only brought up early feelings…which were all negative. Emotionally, I couldn’t handle a relationship, even though its what I wanted so badly.
I think Socios function on a subconscious “early” level when they try to connect with someone.
My x told me that no woman ever loved him like I did. I never mistrusted him or asked him where he was…I was really laid back and he was such a good person..but I didn’t want to abuse him…..
Anyway..thats why I think they act the way they do when they get close to someone.