once a social retard, always a social retard
I wasn't sure what to title this blog entry. Initially, I had thought of calling it 'slap in the facebook' but it seems to extend beyond that and well into real life, as usual. I've recently had a rude re-awakening of some latent insecurities. Sometimes a bit of emotional nudity is good, and so I'm giving you a peek into the type of journal I usually write out by hand. And set on fire. There's a soundtrack that goes with this, brought to you courtesy of youtube - just hold down control when you click the link and it'll open up in a seperate window.
I've never possessed the social graces that make a girl well-liked and popular. I don't wear the right clothes, live in the right house, come from the right family, or say the right thing. I find myself thrown back to Jr. High again, 13, awkward, desperate to fit in. The popular girls knit themselves tighter and even if they have over time had occasion to hate each other, it's their disdain for you that reunites them. They write you nasty notes. They call you names. They talk about you behind your back, and speak in whispers and exchange knowing glances in front of you. They put tacks on your seat and floor your sweats in the hallway. How many times did I stand there on the verge of tears, face red and hot, trembling inside, wanting to scream but lacking the courage to do it. I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt like this, but most of us would never say it, for fear of further humiliation. No use putting ammunition in other people's cans.
Despite years of growing up and healing up, the emergence of Facebook has kind of thrown me backwards. I listen to lots of people talking about how great it is to hook up with people they haven't seen or heard from in years. They reminisce and share stories of the good old days like they were all kids from band camp. But some of us lived a waking nightmare through it all. *I* lived a waking nightmare. I was that kid that even the losers could and would pick on, not because they were particularly cruel, but because I was a complete social retard, with the ability to weird out even the weirdest of the weird and invite the scorn of even the lowest of the low.
I changed schools a lot. I guess I always hoped I'd make a fresh start and somehow figure out what I was lacking to make it 'in.' I was always optimistic that I'd get it right, eventually, and people would like me for who I am, without always feeling like I had to apologize for what I said or how I said it or who I said it to. In the beginning, the new kid is a novelty, and everyone wants to gawk, but the novelty (on both sides) always wore off. I'd flip flop between defending my thoughts and opinions, and apologizing for having them, and the people who just 'got' me were far and few between. Little by little I withdrew. It was easier to be alone than lap at the ankles of the girls who were just waiting around for someone to kick, then apologizing for making them want to kick me. Apologizing for who I was.
I remember a lot of my schoolmates not by their faces or names, but by the cruelty or betrayal they inflicted on me. Sexually immature and terrified of males in general, the boys in grade 8 who lifted my shirt and bra to poke and see if they were real ruined me for ever liking my breasts. There was boy who jammed his hand down the front of my pants while we were supposed to be working on a math project. When I politely refused him and left his house crying he went to school the next day and told everyone he wouldn't have sex with me because I smelled like fish. For two years after, no boy would even look at me, while the girls would leer and whisper loudly, "Fishy fishy," when I walked by. There was the girl who sucker punched me for I don't even remember what. The party I got invited to as a joke, and I remember was Milli Vanilli blaring in the background. There were the girls who put threatening notes in my locker, who stole my clothes during gym and guarded the door so the boys could come in, and the girls who turned their backs on me when I needed them most, and the boys who took advantage of me when I needed it least.
By the time I graduated, I was as anonymous as I could make myself. I hid in the hallways, in plain view, the weird girl with too-red lipstick, enormous tits strapped to my chest with tensor bandages, and a stack of hardcovers under my arm. I dressed in black clothes and bleached my hair out and pierced my nose and managed to alienate people without even opening my mouth. I was scary and repellent, and, in being so, invisible. I was lonely but safe in that little bubble I created for myself, no longer afraid of the rejection and pain that invariably came when I became the pariah, the one everyone loves to hate. I watched but chose not to participate in anything but debate, because debate had rules of engagement, and for this I was called anti-social and told I was intimidating, and later an intellectual snob. By detaching myself and learning to wholly separate people from their words and actions, I figured out how to forgive, but not to forget, and though I harbour no hard feelings, the hurt still lies there, just beneath the surface.
I've found lots of folks I attended school with on Facebook. There's a road-accident factor that makes me curious to know who they have become, what they are doing, if they have kids or a husband or if they travelled. At the same time I wonder if they ever spent a night laying in bed feeling bad for the living hell they put their classmates through because they were just stifled by their own insecurities and trying hopelessly to fit in too, or if they, like my husband, were just secure enough in their friendships they really never paid much attention to the people they broke along the way. I'm afraid to learn the answers to these questions, as neither would take away the hurt, and so I embrace the anonymity my married name allows me. I imagine if someone really wanted to find me that bad, they could.
Online communities also offer a certain degree of anonymity. But real life is never far off -I've bumped into a few people I know. Eventually the real and virtual worlds collide and I'm no longer protected with the on-off switch. So once again, here I am, feeling 13, rejected, embarrassed, confused. I've disappointed and hurt people, and the harder I struggle to be understood, the tighter the circle closes with me on the outside, curious why it is I even tried to pretend I would fit in in the first place. I don't like pretending I'm something or someone that I'm not, and I can only apologize so many times before I realize I'm beat. What is this subconscious need to be liked all about, when frankly, I don't give a damn? Is this just another remnant of the Catholic guilt I've been trying to reconcile with? The burning desire for someone to say, "You're a good girl, Hope," I guess hasn't been successfully extinguished or internally acknowledged.
It's laughable, I know. Everything is raw and right there just waiting to be nicked open and start oozing again. I try and try to be all crusty about it, putting on the game face when inside I'm turning to dust. There's one person I know who, as she reads this, is rolling her eyes at me I'm sure, scoffing at my insecurity and probably questioning her own ability to remain friends with an emotional weakling like me. I wonder how many of us, though, suffered the same turmoil and just managed to build up a thick enough crust to to keep it all in. I did pretty good all those years in between, but in the months since my father died, it's like I've lost any and all ability to reign in my emotions. From being told my Daddy was going to watch me burn in hell if I didn't accept Jesus into my heart to being asked to alter the way I relate to people, I'm feeling a little 'broken' and just don't have it in me to walk on all those eggshells and to worry if I'm doing it right. I never learned all those social graces, because I never developed an interest in being what one of my kindred spirits refers to as 'fluffy and pink.' I lack modesty and quiessence, and think political correctness is a state of mind not a way of communicating. I won't start apologizing for being who I am again.
Now that I've doffed my undies here, you probably think I'm nuts. Or maybe you can associate. Or maybe you feel defensive or superior or indignant, because you will read my experiences through the filters of your own lives. And that's OK. I'm beginning, once again, to be OK with the fact that I always have been and always will be a social retard. Let the Milli Vanilli play on, only this time instead of crying, I'll be dancing with myself.
I've never possessed the social graces that make a girl well-liked and popular. I don't wear the right clothes, live in the right house, come from the right family, or say the right thing. I find myself thrown back to Jr. High again, 13, awkward, desperate to fit in. The popular girls knit themselves tighter and even if they have over time had occasion to hate each other, it's their disdain for you that reunites them. They write you nasty notes. They call you names. They talk about you behind your back, and speak in whispers and exchange knowing glances in front of you. They put tacks on your seat and floor your sweats in the hallway. How many times did I stand there on the verge of tears, face red and hot, trembling inside, wanting to scream but lacking the courage to do it. I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt like this, but most of us would never say it, for fear of further humiliation. No use putting ammunition in other people's cans.
Despite years of growing up and healing up, the emergence of Facebook has kind of thrown me backwards. I listen to lots of people talking about how great it is to hook up with people they haven't seen or heard from in years. They reminisce and share stories of the good old days like they were all kids from band camp. But some of us lived a waking nightmare through it all. *I* lived a waking nightmare. I was that kid that even the losers could and would pick on, not because they were particularly cruel, but because I was a complete social retard, with the ability to weird out even the weirdest of the weird and invite the scorn of even the lowest of the low.
I changed schools a lot. I guess I always hoped I'd make a fresh start and somehow figure out what I was lacking to make it 'in.' I was always optimistic that I'd get it right, eventually, and people would like me for who I am, without always feeling like I had to apologize for what I said or how I said it or who I said it to. In the beginning, the new kid is a novelty, and everyone wants to gawk, but the novelty (on both sides) always wore off. I'd flip flop between defending my thoughts and opinions, and apologizing for having them, and the people who just 'got' me were far and few between. Little by little I withdrew. It was easier to be alone than lap at the ankles of the girls who were just waiting around for someone to kick, then apologizing for making them want to kick me. Apologizing for who I was.
I remember a lot of my schoolmates not by their faces or names, but by the cruelty or betrayal they inflicted on me. Sexually immature and terrified of males in general, the boys in grade 8 who lifted my shirt and bra to poke and see if they were real ruined me for ever liking my breasts. There was boy who jammed his hand down the front of my pants while we were supposed to be working on a math project. When I politely refused him and left his house crying he went to school the next day and told everyone he wouldn't have sex with me because I smelled like fish. For two years after, no boy would even look at me, while the girls would leer and whisper loudly, "Fishy fishy," when I walked by. There was the girl who sucker punched me for I don't even remember what. The party I got invited to as a joke, and I remember was Milli Vanilli blaring in the background. There were the girls who put threatening notes in my locker, who stole my clothes during gym and guarded the door so the boys could come in, and the girls who turned their backs on me when I needed them most, and the boys who took advantage of me when I needed it least.
By the time I graduated, I was as anonymous as I could make myself. I hid in the hallways, in plain view, the weird girl with too-red lipstick, enormous tits strapped to my chest with tensor bandages, and a stack of hardcovers under my arm. I dressed in black clothes and bleached my hair out and pierced my nose and managed to alienate people without even opening my mouth. I was scary and repellent, and, in being so, invisible. I was lonely but safe in that little bubble I created for myself, no longer afraid of the rejection and pain that invariably came when I became the pariah, the one everyone loves to hate. I watched but chose not to participate in anything but debate, because debate had rules of engagement, and for this I was called anti-social and told I was intimidating, and later an intellectual snob. By detaching myself and learning to wholly separate people from their words and actions, I figured out how to forgive, but not to forget, and though I harbour no hard feelings, the hurt still lies there, just beneath the surface.
I've found lots of folks I attended school with on Facebook. There's a road-accident factor that makes me curious to know who they have become, what they are doing, if they have kids or a husband or if they travelled. At the same time I wonder if they ever spent a night laying in bed feeling bad for the living hell they put their classmates through because they were just stifled by their own insecurities and trying hopelessly to fit in too, or if they, like my husband, were just secure enough in their friendships they really never paid much attention to the people they broke along the way. I'm afraid to learn the answers to these questions, as neither would take away the hurt, and so I embrace the anonymity my married name allows me. I imagine if someone really wanted to find me that bad, they could.
Online communities also offer a certain degree of anonymity. But real life is never far off -I've bumped into a few people I know. Eventually the real and virtual worlds collide and I'm no longer protected with the on-off switch. So once again, here I am, feeling 13, rejected, embarrassed, confused. I've disappointed and hurt people, and the harder I struggle to be understood, the tighter the circle closes with me on the outside, curious why it is I even tried to pretend I would fit in in the first place. I don't like pretending I'm something or someone that I'm not, and I can only apologize so many times before I realize I'm beat. What is this subconscious need to be liked all about, when frankly, I don't give a damn? Is this just another remnant of the Catholic guilt I've been trying to reconcile with? The burning desire for someone to say, "You're a good girl, Hope," I guess hasn't been successfully extinguished or internally acknowledged.
It's laughable, I know. Everything is raw and right there just waiting to be nicked open and start oozing again. I try and try to be all crusty about it, putting on the game face when inside I'm turning to dust. There's one person I know who, as she reads this, is rolling her eyes at me I'm sure, scoffing at my insecurity and probably questioning her own ability to remain friends with an emotional weakling like me. I wonder how many of us, though, suffered the same turmoil and just managed to build up a thick enough crust to to keep it all in. I did pretty good all those years in between, but in the months since my father died, it's like I've lost any and all ability to reign in my emotions. From being told my Daddy was going to watch me burn in hell if I didn't accept Jesus into my heart to being asked to alter the way I relate to people, I'm feeling a little 'broken' and just don't have it in me to walk on all those eggshells and to worry if I'm doing it right. I never learned all those social graces, because I never developed an interest in being what one of my kindred spirits refers to as 'fluffy and pink.' I lack modesty and quiessence, and think political correctness is a state of mind not a way of communicating. I won't start apologizing for being who I am again.
Now that I've doffed my undies here, you probably think I'm nuts. Or maybe you can associate. Or maybe you feel defensive or superior or indignant, because you will read my experiences through the filters of your own lives. And that's OK. I'm beginning, once again, to be OK with the fact that I always have been and always will be a social retard. Let the Milli Vanilli play on, only this time instead of crying, I'll be dancing with myself.
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