I'm not done with my adoption. It is not done with me.
I feel like the Grinch baby.
I know that sounds severe but seeing that stupid Ron Howard "Grinch" movie - when that wailing, hideous baby is thrown off the bridge - it punctured my heart. All those stories and fables when the baby is discarded cause it's ugly and freakish is the starkest, realest feeling I can communicate to you through mass media about how my adoption/abandonment feels.
It's a fairly common story. A baby abandoned cause it's ugly and freakish. Think Benjamin Button. Girls in China.
This is raw. This is not good writing. but this is how i feel. Dressing it up feels disingenuous.
She gave up. That's the thing. I have nothing but sympathy for all moms and dads who make tough decisions. I know how life works. I know it's not simple.
But the first person to see me, the first person to know me, the one the good Lord entrusted me to, she decided to take a pass.
Take a pass on knowing me. Take a pass on my being worth the effort. Take a pass on spending her life with me. Even though she bore me, life would be better without me.
Let's just say it was a lot of judgment right from the get go.
Look at me mother and you'll think:
that's too much work
that's too hard
that's too tough a challenge.
Look at my baby face and you'll think:
she's ugly
she's damaged
she's deformed
she's unnatural
she's NOT WHAT WAS INTENDED.
Insert my entire life post-adoption which I'm labeling simply STRUGGLE TO BE HERE.
No one should enter this world without a guide.
Imagining being born to the mother who rejected me feels like entering the world through something rough and cold rather than warm and viscous. Birthing my own babies, and feeling the immensely gratifying experience of visceral love as well as the honor and privilege of being responsible for their very lives, has been healing.
But I now know how it should feel, and how it could NOT have felt to her for her to give me up. And again I know parents who give their children up for adoption can and most often do love them. Of course. I just get a distinct feeling that that was not the case for me.
This is my pain. Quite unique. Cloutish freak.
Your pain is not so far from mine.
We all face some kind of rejection. We all must build our own altars to love. There is no birth without strain. There is no growth without pain.
Mine has left me with this complete fear of being all alone and the gravelly knowledge that that is exactly what I am.
The demons circle like a campfire ghosts. I swing my stick into the darkness and hope to make contact. Knock a big one down. Drag it into the light.
I know my pain is different but it's the same.
You wanna be gotten.
You wanna be loved.
You wanna have a place to truly call home.
you wanna feel safe.
YOU
WANNA
SAY
FUCK
THE
FEAR.
I wasn't an ugly baby. I wasn't a disabled baby. Still something in me resonated: I was a bad fit.
How do you re-write a story for someone who cannot read? How do you talk to someone who is pre-verbal? How do you repair such a tiny heart?
But they do get repaired don't they? My lovely friends MS and DS are having their baby's heart operated on next month. They grow strong oxen children and their darling son will be fine...better even.
Hearts, even tiny ones, heal.
My injuries are so tiny but so early that they pierce everything. They're the root tap that leads to the fine veins that pumps blood into every ventricle, every artery. Even those that lead to something good.
I know it's dramatic. But if feels dramatic. It feels like an abandoned basket on a lonely, windswept farmhouse step. It feels like an abandoned basket on a dark and wet cement townhouse stair. It feels like being tossed into a cold, rushing river.
But...
It feels like a reedy Nile River marsh too. Like baby Moses...maybe my mother took care of me for those six months under extreme conditions, she hid me from harm and then gently set that basket where she knew the Pharaoh princess would find it.
maybe I was saved for better things...
It Is What It Is
Monday, January 10, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Work in Progress
When I was six years old and living in Georgia, a 17 year old neighbor boy forced me to give him a blow job. For years he had played with my brother and I, slowly grooming me, teaching me dirty words, how to play spin the bottle. He was attractive and older and his attention made me feel seen, even loved.
His family had sold their house and at this point it sat empty across from ours. Clearly out of time, Jeff intercepted me during a game of freeze tag. While my four year old brother sat outside on the porch steps, Jeff carried me in his arms, showing me around the freshly-painted, cavernous house. I believe he was pretending with me that we had just been married and he was carrying me over the threshold. I remember distinctly feeling like a princess.
Last, he carried me into the empty master bedroom and it happened there, on the floor, my knees scraped raw on the wall-to-wall.
I exited the house alone. I grabbed my brother off the porch, walked across the lawn, into the street and executed a masterful job of placing that gruesome memory somewhere far away.
I can see my six year old back ramrod straight under my t-shirt and I can feel my long ponytail hot on my neck as I walked my brother and I home. I can see my hand on his shoulder in a rare moment of affection and probably protection. I steadied myself then as I do now on that really normal image of brother and sister...
My mind must have been flying in untold directions, busted wide open. In memory, my brain feels like a shuffling deck of cards and I hear the sound of static like a swarm of summer mosquitoes.
The hot noon sun looked like it had never looked before. It felt like it had never felt before. The street we crossed was made of dirt and gravel...had I ever seen it before? I mean really looked at it? Had I ever seen the muddy creek our driveway straddled? What about that tree in the front yard, the cool garage, our dog? They were all new. Everything was new.
And while I recalibrated, I completed the filing.
By the time I had crossed that street, the memory was put away and I never told a soul until my college roommate confided her rape to me and I felt safe to reveal my story to her.
For over a decade, the incident had all but been erased from my memory, yet it had managed to vein through almost all my relationships and would continue to do so. I let friends and lovers choose me rather than choosing them. I had trouble seeing my way out of bad relationships. I was there to pleasure, not to be pleasured. I convinced myself that I could not prevent or stop painful events from happening, my job was simply to deal with them well.
And I was good at it.
That practice of dealing, filing, muscling through, of being pleasurable and pliant dogged me my entire life. Consequently, under-reacting became my game.
I remember the high school senior who trapped a freshman me in a stair well and asked, if I knew how to give a blow job. My thought bubble: since I was six years old you scum bag. My reaction: to let him kiss me.
At 16, I woke up one summer night from a drunken stupor (after downing what I hoped would be a suicidal bottle of Everclear) to find a person I'd just met earlier that night having sex with me. That sex-waking happened about four or five times that night and into the morning and with more than one person on top of me. When I found my way out of that nightmare and the 125 miles back to my parents' house, I didn't tell anyone. I made dinner for my parents and brother that night and put myself to bed. I handled the rape and the alcohol poisoning by writing Cure-inspired poetry into my childhood rainbow-adorned journal. For years and years this was a hilarious story I would confide to my friends, complete with a soundtrack: "Why Don't We Do It In the Road" (one of the places I sex-waked) earning myself the super-funny nickname: Gravelback.
I learned to handle these situations and many others like them with silence, strength, courage and humor and I wore that ability like a badge of honor.
But it was no honor.
Reacting with a numbed out perspective that this is what life is like no longer suits me. Under-reacting will not be my game. What served my wounded six-year old self does not serve me now.
I don't need to put myself in challenging situations just to prove how resilient I am or how much I can love. I do not need to prove my strength and courage to anyone.
And realizing that slowly, step-by-step, re-writing each jokey-story with honesty - letting each brutal truth have its day in the sun has been the journey.
There may be situations in this world I can't handle. I may fail. I may fall down. I may come with baggage. I may be irreparably damaged. I've done things I don't have answers for. But at least it's the truth. And for it I can be accountable.
But I retire from the pleasing, the bending, the filing, the sacrifice, the compromise that comes from my need to be in the company of what looks like love and that in turn forsakes my love for me.
I will try anyway.
I do love you crazy people, and this crazy planet, and I'm grateful for the God that keeps me tethered to it all. (Glad the Everclear didn't do it that night too.)
His family had sold their house and at this point it sat empty across from ours. Clearly out of time, Jeff intercepted me during a game of freeze tag. While my four year old brother sat outside on the porch steps, Jeff carried me in his arms, showing me around the freshly-painted, cavernous house. I believe he was pretending with me that we had just been married and he was carrying me over the threshold. I remember distinctly feeling like a princess.
Last, he carried me into the empty master bedroom and it happened there, on the floor, my knees scraped raw on the wall-to-wall.
I exited the house alone. I grabbed my brother off the porch, walked across the lawn, into the street and executed a masterful job of placing that gruesome memory somewhere far away.
I can see my six year old back ramrod straight under my t-shirt and I can feel my long ponytail hot on my neck as I walked my brother and I home. I can see my hand on his shoulder in a rare moment of affection and probably protection. I steadied myself then as I do now on that really normal image of brother and sister...
My mind must have been flying in untold directions, busted wide open. In memory, my brain feels like a shuffling deck of cards and I hear the sound of static like a swarm of summer mosquitoes.
The hot noon sun looked like it had never looked before. It felt like it had never felt before. The street we crossed was made of dirt and gravel...had I ever seen it before? I mean really looked at it? Had I ever seen the muddy creek our driveway straddled? What about that tree in the front yard, the cool garage, our dog? They were all new. Everything was new.
And while I recalibrated, I completed the filing.
By the time I had crossed that street, the memory was put away and I never told a soul until my college roommate confided her rape to me and I felt safe to reveal my story to her.
For over a decade, the incident had all but been erased from my memory, yet it had managed to vein through almost all my relationships and would continue to do so. I let friends and lovers choose me rather than choosing them. I had trouble seeing my way out of bad relationships. I was there to pleasure, not to be pleasured. I convinced myself that I could not prevent or stop painful events from happening, my job was simply to deal with them well.
And I was good at it.
That practice of dealing, filing, muscling through, of being pleasurable and pliant dogged me my entire life. Consequently, under-reacting became my game.
I remember the high school senior who trapped a freshman me in a stair well and asked, if I knew how to give a blow job. My thought bubble: since I was six years old you scum bag. My reaction: to let him kiss me.
At 16, I woke up one summer night from a drunken stupor (after downing what I hoped would be a suicidal bottle of Everclear) to find a person I'd just met earlier that night having sex with me. That sex-waking happened about four or five times that night and into the morning and with more than one person on top of me. When I found my way out of that nightmare and the 125 miles back to my parents' house, I didn't tell anyone. I made dinner for my parents and brother that night and put myself to bed. I handled the rape and the alcohol poisoning by writing Cure-inspired poetry into my childhood rainbow-adorned journal. For years and years this was a hilarious story I would confide to my friends, complete with a soundtrack: "Why Don't We Do It In the Road" (one of the places I sex-waked) earning myself the super-funny nickname: Gravelback.
I learned to handle these situations and many others like them with silence, strength, courage and humor and I wore that ability like a badge of honor.
But it was no honor.
Reacting with a numbed out perspective that this is what life is like no longer suits me. Under-reacting will not be my game. What served my wounded six-year old self does not serve me now.
I don't need to put myself in challenging situations just to prove how resilient I am or how much I can love. I do not need to prove my strength and courage to anyone.
And realizing that slowly, step-by-step, re-writing each jokey-story with honesty - letting each brutal truth have its day in the sun has been the journey.
There may be situations in this world I can't handle. I may fail. I may fall down. I may come with baggage. I may be irreparably damaged. I've done things I don't have answers for. But at least it's the truth. And for it I can be accountable.
But I retire from the pleasing, the bending, the filing, the sacrifice, the compromise that comes from my need to be in the company of what looks like love and that in turn forsakes my love for me.
I will try anyway.
I do love you crazy people, and this crazy planet, and I'm grateful for the God that keeps me tethered to it all. (Glad the Everclear didn't do it that night too.)
Monday, December 13, 2010
Pathetic
Life gets better and better. Over the long haul. I mean the looooooooong haul. But in between it sucks. It sucks between the neurons. It sucks like gunk between your toes. It's uphill. You're blind AND deaf. At best you see those 3 feet in front of you like you are walking through life with a flashlight.
Hey it's better than total darkness, right? But it's still just a flashlight. You will not be able to fight off a jaguar in the rainforest with a flashlight.
Not that you have the first idea of how to fight off a jaguar.
Not like you're even in the rainforest. But it sure as hell feels like it.
How do you start a relationship this way?
Openness and trust takes on a life-or-death kind of feeling. Or perhaps I'm simply neurotic as fuck.
Perhaps it's the new birth control.
My daughter said, in response to me dating someone new and thereby reinforcing my no longer being with her father, "You had your chance at love."
She simply picked up on me and this guy's togetherness on a field trip (so did her teacher) and confronted me. She's mad. She's sad.
It makes me wonder.
I can at least console her by saying, "I will not be getting married ever." And then I hear myself say to her, "and I already told him that."
What kind of fucking conversation is this to be having with your ten year old?
And did I tell him that?
And who is him?
Him that is running ramshod through my life. Who is he? What's he mean to me? Why does he so suddenly mean so much?
I had to tell the ex-dh of course. Cause the ten year old can't tell him. And she will. And that's cool. Telling him is infuriating of course. And then there's a call from the principal's office. Molly's melting down.
This thing that's happening; it is page one of a thousand page book but okay, let's spill the beans. Let's face the music. In the words of Good Morning America's Advice Guru, "Let's make room for love."
Tonight and last night and even today, I felt sick of not knowing.
I felt sick of people hurting.
I realized how really bad I am at playing games.
Especially the dirty ones my mind is fooling with.
I want to know. I want to be sure. I want Certainty to be my middle name.
Is it so far from Audacity?
I want to smoke in bed.
I want to trade myself in for a new me.
I wonder why I'm in my pajamas drinking wine out of a plastic cup.
I want to reach you. I want to invest. I want you to rush in. I want you to convince me. I want you to commit while I squirm away.
I want you to see my worth. I want you to ravage me.
It's all about me pretty much.
I want to give up when it gets hard. I want to pull off the scab and make you eat it. I feel like quitting already. What was I thinking??????????????
Sylvia Plath never used fourteen exclamation points in a row.
I feel like I'm risking so much. Are there returns? For real? Are there? I'm not seeing it. But I smell self-sabotage. It smells like burnt hair in here. Why can't I enjoy myself? Cause really, what about this ISN'T ENJOYABLE?
Fear. Complications. Revelations. Insecurity. Embarrassing reveals. Sudden intimacy. Stumbles, Escalation, Love, Rush, Wait, Wonder.
It sucks being alone but it's easier. You know you get used to lethargy. That's the definition of it. You think, life will just be like this now.
But I DID NOT want that life. Page one is a good place to start. In fact, we may have gotten to page two tonight.
"Oh dear, out here.
Everybody stumbles on fear.
Who cares if we're scared?
Everyone is on there own."
Brandi Carlile
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SDpZrLciCE&feature=autofb
Hey it's better than total darkness, right? But it's still just a flashlight. You will not be able to fight off a jaguar in the rainforest with a flashlight.
Not that you have the first idea of how to fight off a jaguar.
Not like you're even in the rainforest. But it sure as hell feels like it.
How do you start a relationship this way?
Openness and trust takes on a life-or-death kind of feeling. Or perhaps I'm simply neurotic as fuck.
Perhaps it's the new birth control.
My daughter said, in response to me dating someone new and thereby reinforcing my no longer being with her father, "You had your chance at love."
She simply picked up on me and this guy's togetherness on a field trip (so did her teacher) and confronted me. She's mad. She's sad.
It makes me wonder.
I can at least console her by saying, "I will not be getting married ever." And then I hear myself say to her, "and I already told him that."
What kind of fucking conversation is this to be having with your ten year old?
And did I tell him that?
And who is him?
Him that is running ramshod through my life. Who is he? What's he mean to me? Why does he so suddenly mean so much?
I had to tell the ex-dh of course. Cause the ten year old can't tell him. And she will. And that's cool. Telling him is infuriating of course. And then there's a call from the principal's office. Molly's melting down.
This thing that's happening; it is page one of a thousand page book but okay, let's spill the beans. Let's face the music. In the words of Good Morning America's Advice Guru, "Let's make room for love."
Tonight and last night and even today, I felt sick of not knowing.
I felt sick of people hurting.
I realized how really bad I am at playing games.
Especially the dirty ones my mind is fooling with.
I want to know. I want to be sure. I want Certainty to be my middle name.
Is it so far from Audacity?
I want to smoke in bed.
I want to trade myself in for a new me.
I wonder why I'm in my pajamas drinking wine out of a plastic cup.
I want to reach you. I want to invest. I want you to rush in. I want you to convince me. I want you to commit while I squirm away.
I want you to see my worth. I want you to ravage me.
It's all about me pretty much.
I want to give up when it gets hard. I want to pull off the scab and make you eat it. I feel like quitting already. What was I thinking??????????????
Sylvia Plath never used fourteen exclamation points in a row.
I feel like I'm risking so much. Are there returns? For real? Are there? I'm not seeing it. But I smell self-sabotage. It smells like burnt hair in here. Why can't I enjoy myself? Cause really, what about this ISN'T ENJOYABLE?
Fear. Complications. Revelations. Insecurity. Embarrassing reveals. Sudden intimacy. Stumbles, Escalation, Love, Rush, Wait, Wonder.
It sucks being alone but it's easier. You know you get used to lethargy. That's the definition of it. You think, life will just be like this now.
But I DID NOT want that life. Page one is a good place to start. In fact, we may have gotten to page two tonight.
"Oh dear, out here.
Everybody stumbles on fear.
Who cares if we're scared?
Everyone is on there own."
Brandi Carlile
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SDpZrLciCE&feature=autofb
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Family of Man
We are a family of man. A tumble-torn, bruised and damaged lot. Our original sin is held in the heart, in its fragility, its ability to break, its inability to heal. We are handicapped by this organ that just wants to love.
We walk grey streets of remorse and denial, our motley pasts zipped into our packs. We walk alone although we are surrounded by people, our family. A family of brittle hearts. We struggle to communicate our love and longing and loneliness but share easily our pain and anger and frustration. Frustration at our inability to shape our lives into what we want them to be. Frustration that things don't work out the way we want them to. Frustration that people aren't what we need them to be. Frustration that the road is steep and long.
There's so much we have to work for. To fight for. To struggle for.
To gamble for.
We must extend ourselves, risk our joy, play our shitty hand, toss in our glass hearts, our flimsy souls.
I keep looking for a guarantee of happiness like it's a star in the damn sky somewhere.
I keep thinking that pain will recede yet it returns like a tide.
I keep hoping that I will overcome my faults and insecurities. I will stop stepping in the same potholes, the ones I swore I patched up.
But there are so many cracks in the infrastructure.
Consequently, I lean heavy on the power of prayer.
I pray for eyes open and raw and seeing. I pray that the blinders of my upbringing, my race, my sex, my expectations fall away even if it makes it a Visine kind of day. Because I so much want to see YOU. To see your experience, your heart, your raw and open eyes looking in mine.
I pray for ease. I pray that I don't make things harder than they have to be. I pray that the incline abates. That I get out of God's way. That my pain-popping ego stays in its place and stops dancing all over my primal wounds. That I don't become hard-edged and pessimistic. That I don't court rain when I need a clear blue sky. That I have faith in the universe's merciful leaning toward equilibrium.
I pray for quick lessons. As much as I want this journey to be grief-free, it seems impossible. There are dues to be paid. You must ante in to play. But when the darkness does come, I pray I learn what I need to learn quickly. And I wish the same for you.
You know what they recommend when you're going through hell.
Keep going. It's the only way out.
Be brave. Have courage. Face your fears. Bet your heart. And keep going.
We walk grey streets of remorse and denial, our motley pasts zipped into our packs. We walk alone although we are surrounded by people, our family. A family of brittle hearts. We struggle to communicate our love and longing and loneliness but share easily our pain and anger and frustration. Frustration at our inability to shape our lives into what we want them to be. Frustration that things don't work out the way we want them to. Frustration that people aren't what we need them to be. Frustration that the road is steep and long.
There's so much we have to work for. To fight for. To struggle for.
To gamble for.
We must extend ourselves, risk our joy, play our shitty hand, toss in our glass hearts, our flimsy souls.
I keep looking for a guarantee of happiness like it's a star in the damn sky somewhere.
I keep thinking that pain will recede yet it returns like a tide.
I keep hoping that I will overcome my faults and insecurities. I will stop stepping in the same potholes, the ones I swore I patched up.
But there are so many cracks in the infrastructure.
Consequently, I lean heavy on the power of prayer.
I pray for eyes open and raw and seeing. I pray that the blinders of my upbringing, my race, my sex, my expectations fall away even if it makes it a Visine kind of day. Because I so much want to see YOU. To see your experience, your heart, your raw and open eyes looking in mine.
I pray for ease. I pray that I don't make things harder than they have to be. I pray that the incline abates. That I get out of God's way. That my pain-popping ego stays in its place and stops dancing all over my primal wounds. That I don't become hard-edged and pessimistic. That I don't court rain when I need a clear blue sky. That I have faith in the universe's merciful leaning toward equilibrium.
I pray for quick lessons. As much as I want this journey to be grief-free, it seems impossible. There are dues to be paid. You must ante in to play. But when the darkness does come, I pray I learn what I need to learn quickly. And I wish the same for you.
You know what they recommend when you're going through hell.
Keep going. It's the only way out.
Be brave. Have courage. Face your fears. Bet your heart. And keep going.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Best Revenge - Live Well
My parents moved a few times when I was in elementary school. Starting a new school was never easy and at one time they even moved me in the middle of the school year but the worst move by far was at the beginning of seventh grade. When I arrived at St. Anne's Catholic School I did not have a uniform and for some reason all the stores were sold out for the year so I had to wear "church clothes" which my parents saw fit to have my GRANDMOTHER make for me. Peter Pan collars. Split princess sleeves. Boxy heathered pastel vests with matching skirts hemmed mid-calf. I have no hesitation in telling you these clothes were hideous.
I was un-liked. And by seventh grade standards for very good reason.
But still, they didn't just not like me, they hated me. It was their job. Spitballs in my hair. Tripped in the hallway. Boys would gag when I walked by. The girls were the most brutal if only because they ignored me but because I wanted to be their friend so bad. I missed my friends at my old home.
Now at the school I had left, I was class president so this was a very long way to fall in the social strata. I just didn't get it.
The girls and boys hated me equally. They would cram into a single table at lunch so as to not have to sit at the same table as me. They would pass invitations to a party by my desk saying, "could you pass that over. there's not one for you." There was no shame in their dislike. I simply wasn't included. But like anything weak, it's an easy target. And after a while the games began. Boys would pretend to like me but when I started to trust them and made any move to reciprocate they would laugh in my face and shout, "As if!" (The game was called "As if.")
I had one friend, a lone wolf who had been bullied for years by these kids and she was kind enough to take me under her wing. But notes would circulate with she and I doing things to each other with the words "Lesbos" above it. We were even physically shoved around, especially on the stairs where we could potentially fall and hurt ourselves. Even teachers got in on the act. Hey, they want to be popular too. By eighth grade, I was pretty low and depressed. It's hard to admit but I had given up on myself. I remember wearing my hair in a ponytail and for days on end not bothering to take it out when I bathed and wearing that same ponytail every day without brushing it out. I just didn't care. Nothing mattered. I was hated and there was nothing I could do about it. I was even kind of designing myself in their image, rather than my own. And THAT'S WHEN IT HAPPENED. When a ray of self-awareness shined in and I deemed to wonder: why? Why did these people hate me when they didn't even know me? I was worthless I would sigh to myself, no doubt looking at my greasy ponytail. Plain and simple. And the ray of light faded.
One day, a teacher asked me to take something to the nurse's office but when I got to where I thought her office was it wasn't there and I couldn't find her new office and I hesitated going back to the classroom cause I knew I would be humiliated so I kept looking and next thing you know all this time had gone by and I'd made it so much worse on myself. I had no choice but to go back and explain what had taken so long and why I had not even completed the task which the teacher made me do in front of the class. She chastised me for being stupid and irresponsible and on and on and everyone laughed. She said she would send someone else with "half a brain in their head" but I begged her to just tell me where the new office was and I would complete my task correctly. I was desperate to get out of that room. Hot tears were about to fall and I had yet to let them see me cry.
She let me go and I hightailed it to the stairwell and collapsed in tears on those dusty linoleum stairs. And there for no good reason I had one of the biggest epiphanies of my entire life. And thankfully, it's never let me down.
I sat on those steps, crying, complaining inside: why don't they like me? They don't even know me? I've never even done anything to them. They don't even know me and they hate me.
They don't even know me and they hate me.
They don't even know me and they hate me.
They don't even know me and they hate me.
That was it. They are going to hate me no matter what. So why am I trying so hard to please them...to get in their good graces? Why am I bending myself into a smiling, pleasing, pleading, greasy freak when they will NEVER like me. They don't even know me. No matter who I am, they will hate me, so therefore, I AM FREE. I am free to be me. To be whatever me I want. THEY are trapped. I would watch the lowest among them, clinging to the underbelly of their popularity, desperate to maintain it. But I had no such need. I was free to be AS ME as I wanted to be.
And high school was 6 months away and there EVERYONE would be starting a new school. Many kids would come from far and near and they would all get to meet a new Erin. The real Erin. The true Erin. Like me, hate me...I don't care. I am free. And I am me.
I started immediately with my friend to remake ourselves and by freshman year our old classmates didn't know who we were. And by the following year, I was a free and happy new waver with wacked out hair and a wacked out wardrobe. I was not that girl who wore split sleeves and pastel dresses. I was a girl with a shit load of friends and a shit load of self-respect. I just had to cross over.
As they say, the best revenge is to live well.
Bullies act out of their own sadness and frustration and weakness. Most of my old classmates weren't even aware they were "bullying" me (we're friends on facebook ;-)
I think it might be easier and more effective to educate kids on how to react to bullying rather than trying to end bullying.
And maybe sharing stories of overcoming bullying will help kids learn how not to let someone else's opinion change how you view yourself. Respond instead by becoming more yourself. Don't hide. Don't be ashamed. You might even end up inspiring the bullies to break out of their fear, their cliques, their misunderstanding of how life really works and allow them to see their own path, worry about their own lives and become who they really are...FREE from influence. Accepted by yourself. Led by your own star. Deeply loved.
I was un-liked. And by seventh grade standards for very good reason.
But still, they didn't just not like me, they hated me. It was their job. Spitballs in my hair. Tripped in the hallway. Boys would gag when I walked by. The girls were the most brutal if only because they ignored me but because I wanted to be their friend so bad. I missed my friends at my old home.
Now at the school I had left, I was class president so this was a very long way to fall in the social strata. I just didn't get it.
The girls and boys hated me equally. They would cram into a single table at lunch so as to not have to sit at the same table as me. They would pass invitations to a party by my desk saying, "could you pass that over. there's not one for you." There was no shame in their dislike. I simply wasn't included. But like anything weak, it's an easy target. And after a while the games began. Boys would pretend to like me but when I started to trust them and made any move to reciprocate they would laugh in my face and shout, "As if!" (The game was called "As if.")
I had one friend, a lone wolf who had been bullied for years by these kids and she was kind enough to take me under her wing. But notes would circulate with she and I doing things to each other with the words "Lesbos" above it. We were even physically shoved around, especially on the stairs where we could potentially fall and hurt ourselves. Even teachers got in on the act. Hey, they want to be popular too. By eighth grade, I was pretty low and depressed. It's hard to admit but I had given up on myself. I remember wearing my hair in a ponytail and for days on end not bothering to take it out when I bathed and wearing that same ponytail every day without brushing it out. I just didn't care. Nothing mattered. I was hated and there was nothing I could do about it. I was even kind of designing myself in their image, rather than my own. And THAT'S WHEN IT HAPPENED. When a ray of self-awareness shined in and I deemed to wonder: why? Why did these people hate me when they didn't even know me? I was worthless I would sigh to myself, no doubt looking at my greasy ponytail. Plain and simple. And the ray of light faded.
One day, a teacher asked me to take something to the nurse's office but when I got to where I thought her office was it wasn't there and I couldn't find her new office and I hesitated going back to the classroom cause I knew I would be humiliated so I kept looking and next thing you know all this time had gone by and I'd made it so much worse on myself. I had no choice but to go back and explain what had taken so long and why I had not even completed the task which the teacher made me do in front of the class. She chastised me for being stupid and irresponsible and on and on and everyone laughed. She said she would send someone else with "half a brain in their head" but I begged her to just tell me where the new office was and I would complete my task correctly. I was desperate to get out of that room. Hot tears were about to fall and I had yet to let them see me cry.
She let me go and I hightailed it to the stairwell and collapsed in tears on those dusty linoleum stairs. And there for no good reason I had one of the biggest epiphanies of my entire life. And thankfully, it's never let me down.
I sat on those steps, crying, complaining inside: why don't they like me? They don't even know me? I've never even done anything to them. They don't even know me and they hate me.
They don't even know me and they hate me.
They don't even know me and they hate me.
They don't even know me and they hate me.
That was it. They are going to hate me no matter what. So why am I trying so hard to please them...to get in their good graces? Why am I bending myself into a smiling, pleasing, pleading, greasy freak when they will NEVER like me. They don't even know me. No matter who I am, they will hate me, so therefore, I AM FREE. I am free to be me. To be whatever me I want. THEY are trapped. I would watch the lowest among them, clinging to the underbelly of their popularity, desperate to maintain it. But I had no such need. I was free to be AS ME as I wanted to be.
And high school was 6 months away and there EVERYONE would be starting a new school. Many kids would come from far and near and they would all get to meet a new Erin. The real Erin. The true Erin. Like me, hate me...I don't care. I am free. And I am me.
I started immediately with my friend to remake ourselves and by freshman year our old classmates didn't know who we were. And by the following year, I was a free and happy new waver with wacked out hair and a wacked out wardrobe. I was not that girl who wore split sleeves and pastel dresses. I was a girl with a shit load of friends and a shit load of self-respect. I just had to cross over.
As they say, the best revenge is to live well.
Bullies act out of their own sadness and frustration and weakness. Most of my old classmates weren't even aware they were "bullying" me (we're friends on facebook ;-)
I think it might be easier and more effective to educate kids on how to react to bullying rather than trying to end bullying.
And maybe sharing stories of overcoming bullying will help kids learn how not to let someone else's opinion change how you view yourself. Respond instead by becoming more yourself. Don't hide. Don't be ashamed. You might even end up inspiring the bullies to break out of their fear, their cliques, their misunderstanding of how life really works and allow them to see their own path, worry about their own lives and become who they really are...FREE from influence. Accepted by yourself. Led by your own star. Deeply loved.
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