My depression in Waterloo, part 13: dropping out
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My parents have always worked very hard throughout my life to cut me off from people who inspired, encouraged, or helped me to make the most of myself. They attacked me for socialising with people who motivated me to do well in school and provided me with opportunities to practise many of the skills I would later need in university while I was still in high school. They discouraged, prevented, or forbid me from associating with people who supported me. They did everything that they could to deprive me of the intellectual cultural background shared by my future colleagues, and continually criticised me for being in the company of the kind of people that my teachers and my classmates’ parents were always trying to inspire their students and children, respectively, to become. But the fact is that throughout my life there has always been a perfect correlation between my productivity and my sociability, and my parents’ eradication of my enjoyment of the company of others led inevitably to the collapse of my ability to do any work whatsoever.
The only way for me to return to work was to complete my Research Proposal. I couldn’t write it, because every time I sat down to write all I could think about was how my father had beat me, locked me out of the house, and threatened to disown me for writing about essentially the same thing back in high school… » [Expand post]« [Collapse post] [Permalink]
My depression in Waterloo, part 12: the aftermath
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I scrapped my plans for the seminar, and in fact, I essentially did not go to school for several months. Anything that was related to quantum computing became very depressing to me. A series of events related to research into quantum foundations and information, collectively called “Taming the Quantum World”, was scheduled to take place that summer at IQC and PI. But I couldn’t stomach the idea of being surrounded by people who would have told me what a moron my father was, if they had known about his opinions on their research, even though I had wanted to be there. I also had to avoid the other graduate students at IQC because I didn’t want to hear any discussions about QIP and their plans for going to India.
One of the activities that I undertook to cheer myself up was a hiking trip to the Bruce Peninsula with several people, including Mina, who became my girlfriend over that summer. My parents had thoroughly destroyed my ability even just to be in the presence of my academic colleagues by continually attacking them and their research throughout my life, but despite their persistent efforts they had not managed to eradicate my social life entirely, and I still had friends who supported me.
In the meantime, I applied to have my surname legally changed… » [Expand post]« [Collapse post] [Permalink]