Throughout my life, I have been treated as if I'm not allowed to have emotions; I have been punished for getting angry and punished for getting upset. Now, at seventeen, I am feeling depressed.

I remember one time in infant school before a P.E. lesson, where this boy was teasing me about something. I reacted angrily and got punished for reacting, while the boy who was teasing me got off completely scot-free. I would have been six or seven at the time, I think. This was over ten years ago, and it still hurts.

Another example. In junior school, I was trying to talk to a learning assistant and she couldn't hear me. At the time, I foolishly thought she was deliberately ignoring me and got upset. The teacher saw me upset and screamed at the top of her lungs at me. I remember crying in the bath that evening over the incident, and I still feel the pain.

These are not the only examples, but if I listed every single one this post would be long, if it isn't already. What I am so confused about is: why are people punished when they are provoked into reacting? I mean, surely it's entirely the provoker's fault. I speak more of the first incident than the second because the second was a misunderstanding. To clarify, I am not at all like Carl Ericsson where I'm going to hunt these teachers down over fifty years after the incidents and shoot them dead in cold blood. But I feel so lost and confused over my emotions.