I find that examining who I used to be is a good way to change. So look at me. I look like a happy kid, right? I'm sure at this point (I'm about 3 here) I probably was. Sometimes I think back to childhood though and see it as this long torturous process that never seemed to end. In some ways, I feel like I've been waiting to be 30 since I was about 5. As I've expressed before, I was not your average kid. I mean I'll say it...I was downright weird. For starers, I was terrified of everything. I wouldn't so much as go downstairs alone for fear that someone was going to come and kill me. People were all there to harm me. I don't know where I developed this intense distrust of other people, but I was scared of everyone I didn't know and most people I knew for that matter. (Someday perhaps I will delve further into the plethora of bizarre "half memories" I have yet to be able to fully pull out of my subconscious, but that I very desperately want to so I could perhaps figure out who scared me so much). Anyway, I was absolutely the kid on the block who was made fun of, beat up, but still played with (they needed SOMEONE to be goalie every time...which I sucked at thank you very much). I wish I could explain what it was about me that made it evident to everyone else that I wasn't going to fit in. I see it with the kids I work with now. For whatever reason, they just know who the weird kids are. I just remember saying and thinking things that would make other kids look at me like I was absolutely insane. I remember so vividly trying to figure out why the leaves were green while everyone else just wanted to climb the tree. So I'd climb it too. But my brain never stopped moving. I guess I'm still that way.
The best thing is though, the kids I see who are just like me, they don't care that they don't fit in. I think deep down I sort of liked that people didn't get me. It made me feel different, but I was never sad about that. Granted, I never liked being made fun of and beat up, but I never felt like I was going to change. I never felt I had to conform to make people like me.
Of course then come your teens. For high school, I went to an all-girls Catholic school in New Jersey. I was there on a scholarship. There were high academic qualifications for your "average" person to get in, but mostly everyone else was there because their daddies were rich or they played sports really well. It was an amazing school academically, but I just remember thinking it was going to be a shit show. For the most part I was right. I excelled in school but mostly kept to myself. I found a few people I could tolerate and had a fun time in high school in the end, but regardless, I became your typical depressed angry teen. In my typical teen eyes, the world just seemed to be turning against me. My family was a circus, my mother died, I had a nasty older (much too old) boyfriend who I cannot begin to describe the multitude of unspeakable things he did to fuck my perception of myself, relationships, and men in general. This only exacerbated my horrible self image and image of the world. Eventually, everything made me angry. Everyone made me angry. I remember more than one occasion where I'd leave class to use the bathroom and would just sit in there so I didn't have to look at people. The nuns would come rushing in convinced they were going to find me slumped over the sink, wrists slit in a pool of my own blood. (not a joke here, someone actually said that to me). But I can see how the weird kid turns into the angry teen. I was frustrated by humanity. My tendency towards becoming a misanthrope clearly started early on. I didn't understand why everyone else didn't just "get it." I'd think...why are people so ridiculous? Look at them!!! How do they all flit around mindlessly just buying crap, listening to crap, ingesting crap, living a life full of total crap without a care in the world!?!? Do they just not have coherent thoughts? Do they just never think? Do I think too much?
Yes. Yes I do.
So what, then, happens to the weird kid and the angry teen as an adult?
They get into politics and indie music and write a blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment