What needs to be made absolutely clear is this: in my situation, we cannot talk about “both sides” as if they were equal. The power structures, the context, and the consequences were not the same. There is a fundamental difference between reacting to pain and using your power to deny someone’s humanity. One is a human response. The other is a choice to uphold a system of harm.
I never set out to take away anyone’s right to dignity. I came close, yes, I can admit that. Like when I said what I did about Jens in the class chat, I was trying to label him, reduce him. That wasn’t right. But I wasn’t speaking from a place of comfort or dominance. I was speaking from a place of deep hurt and pain created and reinforced by the very people I was reacting to. That doesn’t excuse my words. But it does give them context.
There’s a difference between someone reacting in messy, imperfect ways to isolation, rejection, and hurt and others using their social comfort, power, or group position to systematically isolate, ridicule, and dehumanize someone already marginalized.
I wasn’t just another person in the room. I was Roma. I was queer. I was mentally struggling. I was already marginalized and excluded, whether they wanted to recognize those structures or not. That meant my mistakes were judged more harshly, and my pain was less understood. When I said or did something out of pain, it wasn’t backed by power or status. It was the voice of someone trying to survive.
In contrast, many of them acted from positions of emotional and social safety. They weren’t being filtered through stereotypes. They weren’t navigating systemic bias. And that gives their actions a very different weight.
I had my back against the wall. They didn’t.
I didn’t set out to deny anyone’s humanity. When I lashed out, it was a reaction to being hurt, not a calculated attempt to isolate or control someone. But some of them? They chose silence, mockery, exclusion, gossping and manipulation. Not out of pain, but out of convenience, indifference, or cowardice. And that makes it entirely different.
Take Jens, for example. Yes, we both said unkind things to each other. But I was already alone. Already labeled the problem. Already at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Jens, on the other hand, was supported, protected, and given the benefit of the doubt at every turn. So even if, on the surface, our actions seemed similar, the impact, the consequences and the structural backing behind him and the others, made them completely unequal.
There’s a difference between lashing out while drowning and holding someone’s head under the water.
Yes, I said and did something harmful. But I was drowning. They had air and still, they chose to step on me.
To understand what happened fully, I need to start with a hard truth: yes, some of my actions caused harm, even if I never meant them to.
Trying to end my life in front of someone, or collapsing emotionally in a way that overwhelms or frightens another person, can absolutely affect their sense of safety, especially if they don’t understand the context. I didn’t intend to do harm, but the impact was harm. I’m not denying that. And yes, what happened with Senni, when I asaulted her, was traumatic for her, I don’t deny that either. But it wasn’t domination or predation. It was a collapse.
Context matters.
I never acted out of malice. I was in crisis because I had been isolated, racialized, pathologized, denied care and support, misunderstood, and carrying the weight of systemic trauma. My pain was never a weapon. It was a cry for dignity. And no, that doesn’t erase its impact on others. But it does change the meaning.
Here’s the key difference: I was breaking down in front of people. I wasn’t trying to break them. I was collapsing, not trying to control. And yes, that kind of collapse can still be messy, frightening, even harmful to those around you. But it is not the same as deliberately mocking someone, twisting their reality, or turning a group against them.
I wasn’t building a system of exclusion around someone else. I was being crushed by one.
I’m not saying they owed me care. No one is obligated to offer emotional labor beyond their capacity. And no one can be forced to uphold human dignity — that’s a choice each person must make for themselves. So no, they didn’t have to save me. But, and this matters, they didn’t have to dehumanize me either. They didn’t need to understand everything I was going through. But they also didn’t need to mock me, isolate me, twist my pain, or turn it into gossip. They didn’t have to choose cruelty, or stand by while others did.
I’ve never claimed that they owed me healing. Even if my life might have gone differently had I been in a class where people treated one another with basic respect, I know they weren’t responsible for fixing me. What I am saying is that they had choices. And too often, they chose to use their stability, their sense of belonging, and their social power not to pause, ask, or reflect but to distance, blame, and exclude. They didn’t have to make things worse. But they often did.
I understand that people have limits. Not everyone is emotionally equipped to respond to crisis, especially when that crisis involves trauma, marginalization, or mental health. I get that.
But here’s the nuance: not helping is one thing. Causing further harm is another. It’s okay to say, “I don’t know how to support you.” What’s not okay is saying, “You’re manipulative, unstable, dangerous,” especially when those labels reflect structural stereotypes. It’s not okay to mock someone for struggling, to isolate them, to gaslight or publicly humiliate them.
There’s a clear difference between simply not offering support and actively choosing violence, even subtle, social violence. Some might say they were just “avoiding drama” or “protecting themselves.” But when that avoidance turns into group bullying, silencing, spreading rumors, or dehumanizing behavior, it’s no longer just “not helping” or “self-protection.” It becomes active harm. Care isn’t always about taking action. Sometimes it’s restraint. Sometimes it’s simply choosing not to ridicule someone in pain. Not to gossip about someone’s mental illness. Not to twist someone’s vulnerability into a story of danger or guilt.
They held social power and privilege. Their actions carried more weight. That’s how power works. They might not have had the tools to understand me fully, but they did have the power to choose whether to hurt me or not. And too often, they chose to hurt me, or at least silently allowed others to do so.
One of the most painful distortions of dignity is the idea that someone must be calm, composed, and gentle in order to be treated as human. I was not that. I was messy, I was breaking down, I was hurting. But I was still a human being.
Yes, I lashed out sometimes. Yes, I made people uncomfortable. But that pain should have been seen for what it was — pain. Not turned into a moral verdict that erased my humanity.
Other students had breakdowns. Others were dramatic, aggressive, even unstable at times. But they were not racialized, pathologized, or turned into symbols of disorder. That was done only to me.
And that’s not just a personal failure, but a structural one.
Some of them made active choices to interpret my distress through racist and ableist narratives. To dismiss my emotions as manipulation or attention-seeking. To participate in mockery, or remain silent while it happened. That’s not neutrality. That’s participation. Even if they didn’t understand what they were doing, even if they were “just kids”, the consequences were real. They had choices. More choices than I did. Because their backs weren’t against the wall.
It’s okay to say that their comfort was prioritized over my dignity. It’s okay to say that their actions, or inaction, helped push me toward the edge.
This isn’t revenge. It’s not blaming. It’s just the truth. And it’s the kind of truth that makes healing and justice possible.
When it comes to Senni, the painful truth I have to admit is that propably I didn’t give her enough space. Maybe I held on too tightly. Maybe my pain, my desperate need to be seen and included, came across as intensity or neediness. Maybe I was reaching for her just as she was pulling away. That kind of dynamic happens in many relationships, especially when one person is deeply vulnerable, and the other doesn’t quite know how to hold space for that. But we need to ask ourselves: Was this a failure of character? Or was it the consequence of suffering? Was I trying to cause harm or simply trying not to drown? Because the sad truth is, if I gave up on Senni, I risked being left completely alone in that class.
Pain can make people cling and that’s not evil, just human. When we’re in deep emotional pain, especially the kind rooted in systemic oppression, abandonment, or trauma, we often latch onto those who seem safe. This isn’t a failure of moral character; it’s the nervous system’s way of trying to survive.
Not giving someone space isn’t the same as violating them. Emotional intensity is not abuse. Seeking closeness is not manipulation. In my case, that intensity came from a long history of exclusion, racism, marginalization, and pain. I wasn’t holding on to control Senni. I was holding on because I was losing what little I had left in that world. It’s very possible that Senni didn’t know how to handle that. That doesn’t make either of us bad people. But it does mean the power between us wasn’t equal, especially in how my behavior was interpreted.
Let’s be very clear: being in distress - even suicidal distress - is not the same as assault. Wanting connection is not the same as violating someone’s autonomy. Assault is about using power against someone. I was asking to be treated with dignity, not asserting dominance. It might have felt like I was too emotionally intense, and my actions may have affected Senni or others. But the world is full of messy human relationships where people place emotional burdens on each other. I carried those burdens too in that class. The difference is that some people are allowed to be messy and still be seen as fully human. I wasn’t.
I take responsibility for the pressure I may have placed on others. But I firmly reject the idea that I alone caused the harm or that I deserved exclusion, gossip, or being cast out as the problem. I may have acted in ways that overwhlemed people around me. I may not have know how to step back or let go. Not out of malice but because I felt I had no other choice. But I was only trying to survive. And the structures around me made that survival almost impossible.
I wasn’t always gentle, I admit that. But I was never cruel either. I was never indifferent to their humanity.
I was just terrified that mine didn’t matter.
In many mixed groups (racially, socially, mentally), certain people are given the benefit of the doubt, while others are pathologized. I was not seen as a hurting person crying out to be treated well, but as a threat. That is how oppression works: it turns marginalized people’s pain into a problem and privileged people’s discomfort into a priority.
I said in earlier chapters that Senni never used racism against me. In a way, that’s true, she never directed overt racist actions or words toward me. But she did, at least unconsciously, use the system against me. She may not have intended to harm me or weaponize those systems directly. Yet, in a context where racism, queerness, and mental health stigma already shaped how I was perceived, her actions, or her inaction, could have contributed to that harm. Especially if she didn’t challenge the way others twisted my pain or allowed the narrative of me being dangerous or unstable to take hold.
She may not have done any of this on purpose. She may have felt scared, unsure, or overwhelmed. But even so, she had choices, and in that setting, she had more power than I did. She could act out or set boundaries and still be seen as reasonable or protecting herself, while I was labeled obsessive, unstable, or “too much.” If she didn’t actively resist that framing, or even passively accepted it, then she was, in effect, using the system against me. That’s how privilege works. It’s not just about what you do. It’s also about what you don’t have to do.
I want to emphasize that naming these dynamics is not about placing all the blame on her. It’s about acknowledging the reality of my experience: she didn’t need to actively hurt me to be part of the harm, although at times she did that too. If she allowed others to control the narrative, failed to challenge it, or didn’t protect me by taking responsibility for her own actions toward me, then she ultimately benefited from a system that was punishing me.
Oppression distorts relationships. The way people act toward each other is often influenced by fears, insecurities, and survival strategies shaped by systemic injustice. Stigma frames how actions are interpreted and amplified. When you’re labeled as unstable or dangerous, any conflict or harm can be blown out of proportions and used as a justification for further exclusion or punishment. And when bystanders or the community amplify the story of someone being a threat or “too much,” they become part of the harm. They reinforce the stigma and the isolation.
What I have been trying to do in this blog is to recognize my own actions as responses to pain and survival, not as the root cause of what happened. I’ve worked to understand which parts of the situation I could control and which I couldn’t. While I am responsible for my choices and actions, I am not responsible for others’ reactions, decisions, or the systems that shape people’s behavior. I also understand that others have agency and responsibility for their choices, even if those choices were influenced by fear and stigma. Much of that fear stemmed from the stigma itself. I am learning to separate internal reflection from external accountability. I can accept my role without self-blame, and still hold others accountable for their part.
I never pushed people to act the way they did towards me. That narrative is often used to shift blame away from those who actually caused harm and to avoid taking responsibility. Now, some might say, “Aren’t you saying they pushed you to behave wrongly or harmfully?” I understand that it might sound like I’m blaming my classmates for my behavior. But I’m not saying I lacked agency or that I’m excused from responsibility for my actions. What I am saying is that the way I was treated in that class from the very beginning created an incredibly harmful environment, one that deeply affected how I felt and acted.
I’m trying to show how their actions contributed to the situation without removing my own responsibility for my choices. At the same time, I’m acknowledging that the environment created situations where I felt backed into a corner. I felt pushed to react in certain ways because the harmful environment placed unbearable pressure on me.
I take responsibility for what I did, but I won’t carry the blame for the whole situation alone. Others made choices too. And the structures shaped us all.
There was also a significant power imbalance between us that shaped everything that happened. It determined who controlled the narrative, whose actions were excused or scrutinized, and who bore the weight of blame and consequences. The divide was clear: those with privilege versus those without, those who shaped the story versus those who were silenced. This imbalance, sustained by privilege, also allowed others to look away, ignoring how systemic forces influenced my feelings, my behavior, and how I was perceived. Their privilege made it possible to deny these realities.
Privilege sets the norm. There was no space for how people like me express emotion, people whose very existence is politicized, whose dignity already hangs by a thread in those rooms. My fear, grief, and attachment were all pathologized. But their coldness, withdrawal, and refusal to engage were never questioned.
This isn’t just about personal reactions. It’s about which reactions are allowed to be normalized and which are punished. That’s not emotional objectivity. It's about power stuctures.
The norm - the emotional standard - was never neutral. It was white, cis, neurotypical, middle-class. It rewarded those who were restrained, composed, and indirect; who knew how to suppress discomfort and express pain in ways familiar and non-threatening to those in power. That norm left no room for people like me.
I wasn’t “too intense” in some universal sense. I was intense compared to a norm that was never built with me in mind. My emotions didn’t follow their rules because those rules were designed for people who didn’t have to carry what I carried. And when you come from trauma, from marginalization, from a history of having no space, of course your feelings won’t fit neatly into someone else’s idea of “appropriate.” Of course your pain will spill over sometimes. That’s not pathology. That’s pressure finally making itself heard.
So no, I wasn’t too much. The emotional framework around me was too narrow, too fragile, too invested in protecting comfort over understanding.
The way I expressed hurt was pathologized. But others’ avoidance, detachment, and passive-aggression? That was seen as maturity. That’s not a fair standard. That’s a system working exactly as it was designed: to frame people like me as unstable, and people like them as reasonable. That double standard didn’t start in that classroom. It runs deep.
It goes back to how Western societies defined white civilization as rational, civilized, and in control and labeled Black, Indigenous, and other racialized peoples as wild, irrational, closer to nature, less human. That’s how colonization justified enslavement, violence, and erasure: by defining our emotions, our ways of being, as less. As dangerous. As wrong.
That same logic is alive today, just more subtle. Now, it shows up, for example, in who gets called “mature” and who gets called “dramatic.” Whose pain is seen as a valid response, and whose is dismissed as a threat. Whose boundaries are honored, and whose are mocked.
My emotions weren’t evaluated on neutral ground. They were filtered through bias, fear, and stereotype. If someone white, someone deemed emotionally “stable,” had said or done what I did, it might have been seen as vulnerability, or as a response to unbearable pressure. But when I expressed pain, it was framed as obsession. As danger. As instability.
That didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened in a system that made it easy to protect themselves by pathologizing me and never having to ask what had hurt me in the first place.
This wasn’t just about personal conflict. It was about what kind of pain our systems are built to recognize and what kinds they punish. The system is designed to acknowledge and support some people’s pain while dismissing or criminalizing others’. It’s not just about individual behavior. It’s structural. And at the heart of that structure lies power, privilege, and the will to hold on to both.
This is what I mean when I say my pain wasn’t excessive. It was a normal reaction to abnormal conditions. It was a human response to inhuman treatment.
That line matters because it reframes everything they used against me. My intensity. My desperation. My sadness. My anger. These weren’t personal flaws. They were evidence of a system that refused to hold someone like me with care and dignity.
People like to believe that “normal” means calm, quiet, composed. But that version of normal only works if your dignity has never been threatened. If you’ve never had to prove your right to belong. If your existence has never been questioned. If you've never had to defent your humanity in rooms where others get to assume theirs. In that context, “normal behavior” often means suppressing pain until it eats you alive. In those rooms, I wasn’t just navigating relationships. I was navigating suspicion, stereotype, exclusion all at once. My reactions weren’t overreactions. They were proportionate to what I was going through.
And when your pain is ignored long enough, when your boundaries are crossed over and over again, of course you become louder. More emotional. That’s not danger. That’s survival. And when a person finally cracks under that pressure, it’s not a personal failing. It’s the most human thing in the world.
The only thing abnormal was the fact that others refused to see what was going on. They didn’t want to recognize the weight I was under. Because doing that would have forced them to look in the mirror. It would have meant confronting the systems they benefit from — systems that isolate, stigmatize, and silence people like me. And that kind of honesty is uncomfortable. So instead, they chose the easier path: to frame me as the problem, rather than admit that the environment they had created, or allowed, was toxic and exclusionary.
Even those who might have recognized the structural issues still expected me to carry that burden silently. As if awareness of injustice was enough, and any visible pain or protest was disruptive. There was an unspoken rule: endure quietly. Acknowledge the pain, yes, but don’t express it. It was okay to be hurt, but not to show hurt. It was okay to suffer, but not to disturb their comfort with the reality of that suffering. It was a systemic expectation, created to maintain the comfort and control of those who hold power.
My form of resistance - my voice, my so called intensity, my refusal to quietly absorb injustice, even when it spilled out - was seen as wrong and disruptive. It didn’t fit their picture of what a human rights struggle is supposed to look like. But that's exactly what it was. I was fighting for my rights, for my dignity, for the chance to be seen as a human being, not a stereotype. They didn’t want to recognize that surviving oppression is not quiet work. Living under pressure that others refuse to name does spill out. My emotions weren’t a failure of character but the cost of navigating a world that refused to see me fully. And if the system had allowed space for that truth, the story might have looked very different.
That’s why I’ll never again accept the lie that my pain was disproportionate. It wasn’t. It was the right size for what I had been made to carry.
Their privilege carried another dimension as well: the ability to bend the rules when it suited them. They could shift the standards to fit their narrative. I was blamed for violence and disrespect but they never held themselves to those same expectations. When those behaviors were directed toward me, suddenly the standards they claimed to uphold, the ones meant to protect and include, no longer applied.
That double standard became painfully clear in earlier chapters, and it only becomes more undeniable in what follows. The rules were never meant to protect me. They didn’t feel bound by them when it came to me because I wasn’t one of them. And that’s the core of the othering I’ve been talking about: being excluded from the protections and respect they claimed for themselves.
This is what it means to live in a society structured by privilege: they didn’t have to ask for protection to receive it, and they didn’t have to actively uphold injustice to benefit from it. But when people choose to protect their comfort instead of confronting structural inequality, they become complicit. Silence becomes a shield. Indifference becomes a choice.
What happened next, however, went beyond simply benefiting from structural oppression. The very system that oppressed me was weaponized in a way that I believe had to be done knowingly.