411: Money in the Meter

On my way to see the doctor this afternoon, I left a message on a complete stranger’s voicemail. Someone I have never seen before. Never have known, and likely will never encounter.

I held on to that stranger while I sat alone at the doctor’s office.

Aspergers was on my medical chart, listed under conditions.

I have this tongue thing, like a gag-reflex tongue I suppose, and a long tongue at that, and my tongue NEVER cooperates, especially with dental x-rays and the like. It truly has a mind of its own. No kidding. As it happened, the doctor lost his patience with me. He tried all ways to get a culture of the white patch at the back of my throat with this long Q-tip thing. But my tongue kept blocking the pokey stick like it was sparring. I was embarrassed, to say the least.

The doctor threw the stick away, and huffed. Quietly and professionally, but the frustration was obvious. Me, being my nervous giggly self, offered: “Are there any tricks? Something you can teach me to help?”

I think he was fed up with the tips he’d already offered throughout the procedure. He kind of snapped, “Tricks? No, I don’t have any tricks.” I felt all of twelve.

My demeanor makes me come across as a stupid-head sometimes: the posture, the anxious laughter, the inflection of my voice. And I fumble with words as my voice squeaks in all of its youngness. You’d think I had the IQ of a horsefly. My un-brushed hair and sloppy attire of the day, likely didn’t help to set the mood of ‘got-it-together-woman.’ I was wishing at this point I’d dressed up for the doctor, at least had my hair up and not all straggly in my face.

Still seeming a bit perturbed, the doc summed up I likely didn’t have strep anyhow. The chances were very unlikely: no fever, no swollen glands, etc. But I knew I was feeling super lousy; I knew when I’d flushed bright red earlier in the day, I’d had a fever, and I knew I couldn’t risk getting sicker. I had an important trip planned and my husband was out of town. I had to know. The anxiety grew.

He left the room without telling me anything except to explain it was basically a sore throat and to gargle. I opened the door and asked a nurse if I could go. I don’t think the doctor appreciated that. He seemed bothered when he explained the procedure of when I could exit.

At this point my resources of zen-being and lovey-dovey-ness, were all but empty. I had a lot on my plate and felt like crap. I don’t remember the particulars, but somehow the subject came up again of tricks. And the doctor said, very bluntly: “I know tricks for kids. I teach kids tricks. I don’t teach adults tricks. Adults should know.”

Man, that wasn’t nice. I swallowed and felt my little heart race. I retorted, “I have to disagree. I have autism and my son has autism. And sometimes adults need tricks too, because our bodies work differently.” He kind of gave me a glance, and that kind of made me feel worse.

He then said, in a demeaning tone, “Have you ever heard of the phrase: Where there’s a will there’s a way?”

He asked if I wanted to try again.

I said, “Yes,” already doubting myself, coaching myself with the silent you can do it, and feeling terribly inadequate. As the doctor prepared another culture, I offered kindly, “The reason I want to rule this out and take care of it right away is because I have to drive in a few days a long distance.”

The doctor approached with the long thing. This time after several more minutes of ‘ahhhhs’ and ‘look up at the corner’ and ‘no stick your tongue back in your mouth’ and much more, the doctor sighed saying he’d likely gotten something, hopefully.

Again the sense of not enough.

Somewhere in the time line after something or another, that I can’t recall now, I lost my equilibrium. I don’t know if it was one final shrug or sigh on his part, or my urge to speak my mind. But I kind of unraveled in a calm but definitely I’ve had enough of this way.

Exhausted, I asked: “Do you not know what Aspergers means and how it affects people?”

He responded, “No.”

I said, “I write for a psychology journal; would you like me to leave a copy at the desk, so you can learn?”

He kind of looked either perplexed or bothered or preoccupied—I couldn’t tell. He said something that indicated agreement.

I said, “You know you were kind of rude to me. You didn’t treat me well.”

His back was still mostly to me, as he stared down the culture. I was thinking this guy was definitely undiagnosed Aspie. I explained, “You sounded like you were belittling me.” I was on a roll then, like when you finally get the ketchup in the bottle unstuck, after that final hiccupping glob, and the rest of the red comes pouring out swiftly.

I continued, “When you talked about not having to teach adults tricks. And you asked me if I knew what Where there’s a will, there’s a way meant. You sounded like you were mocking. And who doesn’t know what that means? You insulted my intelligence. Did you have a bad day or something? I mean the way you were…oh I don’t know what you were. You just weren’t nice.”

I felt a bit like I was in ‘Gone with the Wind,’ in an important scene. Only I was in old blue jeans and wearing socks with my sandals.

He mumbled, “Well, I’ve never had an adult who could not do a culture.”

I said, with a rising voice, “Well do you think I was doing it on purpose?”

He probably wasn’t too keen on being in a room with me at this point. Poor man. I should have given him my husband’s number, so they could commiserate.

The doctor left.

I had some time to wiggle and squirm and text a friend of my experience.

When the doc returned, indeed it was strep throat. He handed me some stick and started to explain about the red line. I said, “It looks like a pregnancy stick.” Now he was nice. He was smiling. He was more relaxed. He was finally sitting and looking at me. He seemed like a different person. He actually seemed genuine and concerned. I could have sat with this person for hours. He was much changed. I sat there hunched with a blank stare contemplating the reasons for his demeanor.

I was thinking: 1) He realizes I wasn’t a moron because I told him I write for a magazine 2) He is feeling kind of wrong for assuming I wasn’t sick 3) He is realizing he was a boob 4) He has no idea what else to do but to give in 5) He thinks I am nuts 5) He is so happy I am about to leave.

As I was leaving I said, about my strep throat confirmation, “Yes, I thought so. I usually can tell stuff about myself and my health.” I imagined I would have talked more and more, if he wasn’t ushering me out the door. I was fine then. He was like my new found friend. I’d forgotten all about the rest—the stuff before he smiled. He’d been kind and that’s all I’d needed.

I reflected back to the stranger, to the voicemail message I’d left:

“I was out of sorts when you left the note because I’d just returned from the airport. I was dropping off my husband there; and now I am headed to the doctor’s because I think I have strep throat. Your random act of kindness kept me from feasibly having that ‘last straw.’ My mother-in-law died this morning. I thought you should know you made a difference.”

When I was parked downtown earlier, she had left a business card on my van’s windshield. I hadn’t seen the note until an hour later, as I was getting into the car for the drive to the urgent care center. She’d handwritten on the back of the card: I wanted to let you know, I saved you from an $18 parking ticket.

She’d put money in the meter.

368: Dream a Dream

I sometimes dream of the maroon Mazda GLC (Great Little Car) compact car I drove when I had just graduated high school—the very first vehicle I owned. Last night the car appeared, all dressed in his muted reddish-tones, still working, and still pulling me through my subconscious. We arrived in a mall parking lot, him looking auspicious, but me thinking he was running on empty, or at the very least stripped, undesirable, old, and worn out. He took no note of my emotions; like an unattached vessel he was used to getting me from here to there. I found a spot in the crowded parking lot at the side of the mall. It was mid-afternoon, with the sun in the air, but a sense of evening setting soon. I don’t remember saying goodbye to the car, or even where I parked; only that suddenly I was entering through the tall glass doors of the shopping center. I hadn’t given a second thought to the car or where’d I left it, or how long it would be there; I was too focused on my destination and some purpose that led me on like a star dancing just out of reach.

Inside the mall, I walked a short distance before turning left. My gait was at ease, my mind relaxed. There wasn’t need to rush or plan, or even focus. I approached a room and found myself inside a banquet hall full of graduates, mostly, perhaps fresh out of college or graduate school. I was part of the celebration, but entirely separate, not really seen or noticed, but included nonetheless. People were smiling, chatting, even planning. I was more of the observer: both invisible but present.

I left the gathering with a sensation inside of me that indicated I period of completion; I had attended the celebration not because I had to or had wanted to, but because I was drawn to. I hadn’t remembered being invited or previously being aware there was such a banquet. The crowd dissipated and I was neither left alone or isolated—I just was.

I walked on, inside this gigantic mall, the ceilings quite high and filled with shops and the airport above on the second-level. There was noise, people moving about, a few handsome men I can recall, and me thinking: If I bump into him on accident we can connect. Why didn’t I ever think to bump into people before? Why do I still feel the need to be noticed?

I continued on the main floor and glanced down at a watch, which was somewhere and nowhere, existing without existing; it was a little past four in the afternoon, and on reflecting on the time, I thought: Good, just enough time to get upstairs to the airport to fly to New York. And then, as soon as I’d thought that, an inner voice chimed in: Wow, that was cutting it close, maybe you should have allowed for more time, with your flight being at 4:45 and all.

I smiled and headed toward the airport terminal; until, after a few steps later, I realized I’d come empty-handed—I’d forgotten my suitcase. I turned then, searching the mall for the exit and walked swiftly towards the doors. My mind began to race, but I reassured myself, while calculating the time, that even with a quick stop outside to retrieve my luggage, I would make the flight.

Once outside I scanned the parking lot. I saw the line of trees that appeared to be the same line of trees near where I had originally parked. I scanned the rows, some five or six thick, with multiple rows in far-reaching directions leading out parallel and perpendicular. I knew my car was parked in a similar place, something like this at least, but I had no indication of where to walk. I knew to the right was too far, the place beyond the trees sparse, with the lot partially empty. I knew the place to my left to be too far the other direction, as I’d not walked that far to the mall door. I moved briskly down the five or six rows, not yet nervous, but with a burning gnawing sensation building up inside. Soon, the first element of doubt was born and my mind began the race, as if on seeing my own self lost the first shot had been fired. I worried now, the tension building, and the time seemingly building itself as a pressure upon my shoulders. How would I make my flight, if I couldn’t remember where I left my vehicle and retrieve my luggage?

Down the end of one row, on the left, was a car that matched mine almost exactly, only it shined more and appeared newer; I was almost certain I’d left my car facing the opposite direction. I approached, peered inside, and noted the interior was different, some papers, almost like a map sprawled out on one of the chairs, the inside cleaner and crisper. I opened the front passenger-side door anyway, hoping by some chance this car was my car, even though I knew this to be an impossibility. Upon swinging the door out, a bell chimed and a masculine computer voice spoke. The words indicated I didn’t belong to this car and to proceed onward. The voice made no indication of judgment, but even so there seemed to be an underlying, unspoken echo of laughter. Perhaps a chuckle of forbidden-knowing, like a parent watching a toddler open yet again the drawer he ought not touch.

I realized then, as I walked away from the car that I was in the wrong place. That I had no idea where my car was, and that it was a strong possibility I would miss my flight. I panicked some, and searched frantically for the place I’d last seen my car, and with no luck in finding what I was seeking, I hunched my shoulders and pattered back toward the mall, feeling both sorry for myself and angry at myself, and very much alone. A few older ladies, white-haired and plump, were entering their own car; as I approached the end of the aisle, most of the cars behind me, they asked: Why are you so upset? And I tried to explain. They instantly expressed no concern, and found my dilemma rather ridiculous. For here I was planning a trip and they had their own worries that were much more pertinent and important than some destination of flight. Why did my silly trip matter when so much was happening in their own lives?

I shrugged and carried myself onward, feeling heavy and burdened in thought. Entering the mall I approached a man and asked where to go to find the banquet room. I figured if I could find the banquet room where the mall journey first began, I could find the original exist I entered through, which would lead me back to the parking lot and my car. The gentleman pointed to the left, and so I turned, finding only more stores and no banquet room. I returned to the main part of the mall, knowing there was a good chance I would never make my flight, calculating the time, the cost, the potential outcomes of missing the trip. Another person gave me directions. This time I was told to: Turn right and then turn left and go down to the first floor. I looked at him bewildered: But this is the first floor, I thought. He took no notice of my concern and just guided me with his eyes and pointing hand. It’s to the right and then down to your left, I am certain, he offered. I followed his instructions and sure enough there was a room, but I knew instantly it was the wrong room. The space was marked “Theater”—it was a stage for performers, a place I had left long ago and had no desire to return to. I couldn’t see the stairs leading down, and so I assumed the stage itself must descend.

I thought to myself: how silly to have even parked in the mall parking lot, and to leave my vehicle unattended for so long. Would it not be abandoned and alone when the night came to pass and the rest drove home. Would it not just stick out then to be found by robbers and thieves?

I mourned over the loss of my car, as thoughts of failure and further isolation submerged, most of the iceberg of wounded self now surging upward through the icy-cold waters of forsaken.

I left now, completely beside myself, close to hysteria, and found myself sobbing on an outside stairwell. Someone approached and handed me a phone. On the other end of the line there was a guiding voice—albeit an unattached, very much removed guiding voice. I explained my predicament, my fear of missing my flight, my incapacity to find my luggage, the consequences of my circumstance. The voice on the other end listened. And he answered without much pretense or concern: Why not take the flight and purchase new garments when you arrive?

*********************************************

In reviewing this dream, I know the car was the “old” me, the way I chose to move through the world. I recognize I mourn this part of me; even though the vehicle was older and perhaps sluggish, and lacking luster, it was still my mode of transportation. The car holds the luggage I carried with me, the necessities I think I need—my cloaks/costumes, my way of being, what is familiar and known. In searching for the car, I have lost the car, primarily because the car no longer exists and really never existed. I am worried of what will become of myself.

The gathering in the banquet room and the people in the mall are all symbolic of the other travelers in life that I see around me but feel disconnected with. I love them, I admire them, I even want to bump into them, if not for connection than for direction. I am searching for myself in others, searching for guidance, and understanding. And although no one shuns me or judges me, I am in essence invisible, there but not, moving through the world unnoticed.

The only moments I do connect are when I am in my state of sorrow and panic; here in my sadness about taking flight and finding my way out of being lost strangers will listen, but they will not understand or take interest. They are focused on their own life. No one feels what I am feeling, and whether outside the mall or inside the mall, I am lost. I am surrounded by everyone and no one. The stage is symbolic of where I used to be. The place I acted and performed. This is no longer my destination; neither is the banquet room of celebration. I have moved beyond celebration and pretending, and I am ready to journey onward. However, I think I must find the old me and follow the old ways to move forward. I am lost both inside the mall and outside the mall, in a place of limbo, searching everywhere and ending up nowhere; by entering a stairwell, I am at my last stop, not in the parking lot and not in the mall. Here in a place that doesn’t belong to either world, I realize that the answers are not found in the ways of the old or the ways of the new.

The only answers are to be found in letting go of my past ways and letting go of my search. By risking flight without the answers, I shall find the answers.

354: Drunken Hostess with the Mostess

A few weeks ago I hosted a party and I was entirely wasted before the guests arrived.

This marks the second potluck in WA my husband and I have hosted since moving here, almost three years ago. The event was a big deal to me, and I loaded my grocery cart to the max to insure plenty of booze and munchies.

The last time I threw a party for my neighbors, which was also the first time, I was politely informed by my good friend’s husband that there wasn’t enough alcohol. He then left and brought back four bottles from his house. This time I was prepared. I bought the hugest bottles of Rum and Tequila I could find, and several bottles of wine. I am not a big drinker. No, sir! Never have been and doubt I ever will be. In fact, before the year 2012 I probably averaged between two and three glasses a year!

Since finding out I am aspie, the intake may have increased a wee bit.

My reasons for not drinking are multi-faceted; like everything else in my life, nothing I do is simple. I focus a lot of conscious thought and unconscious thought on the “right path;” even though I recently have come to terms with the fact there is no fricken right path and it’s all a big game, I still have that old “right path” mentality, much like a gag reflex.

Not following the right path, makes me want to gag and come up for air. Not doing the “right” thing feels like a recent ordeal I underwent at the orthodontist’s office, in which I was being fitted for a new retainer device. (The diagnostic x-ray revealed that I have unusually large sinus cavities; no big deal or of special interest. But I mention it just in case you are collecting random data about me.) At the orthodontist the lady worker gently shoved a metal contraption filled with cold grainy-cementy goop atop the roof of my mouth to take impressions for my new retainers. As she delicately shoved the banana flavored pink goop into my mouth she said, “Remember breathe slowly through your nose.” While my mouth airways were obstructed, I kept saying to myself: “You aren’t going to die. You aren’t going to die. You aren’t going to die.”

That’s how I feel if I don’t follow the right path, or rules, or guidelines. (A right I am very much aware doesn’t exist, but I have to find and try to adapt to nonetheless.) I feel like I am being gagged, out of breath, and will die. Makes no logical sense. I know this. But my brain has “follow the rules” tattooed around its frontal lobe. I am still working on the removal process of this tattoo; it’s slow going.

For me, the day of the party, the right path meant: Temperance. A word I had latched onto and deciphered and longed to apply in my life. Temperance meant no indulgences and no drinking alcohol. The party would be the perfect stage to practice my temperance and do the “right” thing. At least according to the recent “rules” I was applying.

The gods laughed at me.

For by the time the first guests arrived I had downed three glasses of port wine. But trust me, I had good reason!

In the end it turned out fine, except for the time the one guest mentioned how her memory is bad and then she laughed in jest saying, “It’s because I’m a genius.” Totally joking she was. And then I, being so very much beyond tipsy, blurted out: “The funny thing is, I am a gifted-genius, a professional just recently verified this.” And then, after slapping my knee, and elaborating about my big brain and Aspieness, I went into a full confession about how I was trying to release ego and be filled with humility. I ended this, I think, with telling my neighbor, a woman I barely see anymore, “You know you want take walks with me now; a gifted, published genius I be.” I’d thrown in the whole publishing story in there somewhere, I suppose.

As I have mentioned before, I don’t drink much. I am an extreme light weight. A half-glass of pear-cider at the local pub and I am saying to my husband in a very loud voice, “That guy is checking out my butt.” I try to curb my alcohol intake, not so much for the constant records that play when I am drinking: Destroying liver, destroying liver, destroying liver and/or you’ll become an alcoholic. But because I become a dang fool. I really do. I lose all inhibition and feel like I am freeeeee. One of my (drunk) relatives once got onto my aunt’s electric wheel chair and flew up the freeway onramp to take a ride on the freeway. And I think that’s me. I think when I drink I take a ride on the free-way! WEeeeeeee.

So I don’t drink much.

But that evening, an hour before the guests arrived, as I was putting the freshly made salsa into a pitcher, I began to burn. At first I didn’t notice. I just kept rinsing my hands under water, thinking the burn would pass. But, no! The burn did not pass. It grew increasingly worse, like my hands were in the snow without gloves and the frostbite was setting in; it was a deep, unreachable burn, penetrating and erupting from the inside of every finger, and the guests were to arrive in less than an hour.

My husband was not home, and I was in a pure panic.

I rationalized and reasoned, and then concluded the culprit was the Serrano peppers! I had used my bear hands to not only cut the Serrano hot peppers for the salsa, but when my food processor stopped working (as all electronics like to malfunction around me) I had dipped my hands in the freshly ground peppers to scoop out the remains and transfer the mixture to the blender.

Oh, my gosh! I had soaked my hands in hot pepper oil!

I quickly went to the internet for help. Google God to the rescue. I soon found other people who had been as dim-witted as me. The remarks were reassuring. There were some helpful tips to end the horrific pain.

Eventually I tried everything listed as remedies: butter, milk, yogurt, sugar scrub with olive oil, etc. But nothing decreased the pain. I thought for certain my flesh was going to peel off. I was going to have fleshless fingers! And still the pain intensified. At this point, my feet broke out in hives from the stress. Yes, with the guests arriving in less than a half-hour, I had burning flesh hands and hived up feet. Glorious!

When my husband came home with some cortisone cream the local pharmacist said would stop the pain, I shook my head nooooo. My husband insisted, and I gave in. Soon I was screaming at a high pitch and downing wine as fast as I could. The cream had only served to intensify the burn. Dumb pharmacist.

My husband at this point is saying, “You are like Lucy from I Love Lucy, you know?”

That didn’t help.

At last I found the answer in one of the comments online: “Called ER (emergency room); there is nothing they can do. The pain will last four to six hours.”

Really? No one could say that from the start.

What should have come up on the top of the comment section was: You are so screwed!

And that’s how it began, how I began slurping the port wine. The pain-relievers I took did nothing.

The wine really didn’t decrease the pain much either, but by the time the first patrons arrived, I didn’t really care. And eventually the margarita helped to ease the ordeal to a hilarious event.

As our first friends arrived, I confessed, “I am already drunk. Let me tell you a story….”

And towards the start of the party, to another couple I said, “I am not rinsing my hands under cold water every minute because of OCD, just so you know, let me tell you a story…”

And by the end of the night, three hours of hand rinsing later, shortly after my gifted-genius, I am zen and ego-less spill, I said, “And you know what the best part about being drunk before any of you arrived is and especially about being in so much pain?!” I paused, dipping my hands further in a bowl of cold water. “I really honestly don’t care what you think of me.”

And that was that.

(another funny story)

335: I Whisper Death

I Whisper Death
3/4/13 Samantha Craft

Beneath the forest floor, where roots meet and entangle, I wait, my hands stretched out in the shape of destiny, each limb bent in the design of fate. My face shines there, in the bleeding darkness, the soil rich, the harvest collected thusly so and set down at the imagined feet of one.

Like dusk blending with dawn, the daylight hours disappear, and time spreads thin, one hour yielding to the next, and falling faster than the dying star. For death himself is here, beneath this earth, where this child rests her heart, a loving seed for one.

And near this death moves life, effervescent in her appearance, her gown golden-weaved in delight.

Though death be near, his shadow thick, his breath heavy, life—she dances in a play, a widowed partner pleading for Mercy to bring her mate. And how life sings, her voice the holes of flutes, both carrying and holding the beauty that comes with creation. She bows, her hands echoes’ shadow, her arches the very threshold of his coming.

In an instant she is here and then gone, and then returns again, a spinning image of self, reappearing with the turn of merry-go-round; lost and then found; lost and then found again. Unattainable she remains, her platform chance, her shape fortune.

Please come, I call out from below, my chariot less driven then wished upon. Please come, I call out again, the pleading heard by the chambers of my soul.

Though my voice be nothing in comparison to life, in all she offers.

I am but invisible, hidden like the worms that burrow forward to the core of something.

My voice unheard, my face unseen, I cry out and then cry in, calling on the very goddesses of fairytales past in hope of capturing the heart of one.

He doesn’t come. He doesn’t hear.

And if he does, if by chance my wishes scurried across the broken channels of connections, and voice he found, then voice alone is turned down and dissolved by his wanting naught.

Unfound, I weep.

Unfound, I turn.

And thusly I wander in the deepening depths of feverish want.

In dreams I ride the cloak of death, draped in his darkness, the sorrow and suffering removed. And there, from my own tombstone risen, fine seedling is spat forth.

To bloom again and touch the daylight with green.

For if it be death that must come, then death I call upon, to release me from this bitter-thorned suffering.

Cometh death to my bedside of garden. Unlike the soldier before, find me, your shadow seed, your princess, your warrior made choice breed.

I whisper. I whisper.

I whisper death.

Death rises, without desire. He drifts in with the victorious gait of one who knows defeat by scent and scent alone. And takes me from the grip of forbidden grounds, and shapes me down deeper, trumpeting his mark into me, a brander by trade.

And I am slaughtered, a sow made sweeter for the taking. Bled out to be made ready for sup and fed upon, one mouth upon the other. Until all parts vanquished, I am free. Spread verily thin, a rail to a speck.

How thankful then I be, the sum of my parts scattered and forgotten.

How thankful then I be, for the agony released.

Until I hear his name.

The one I claimed mine. The one I called, whom before never came.

Until I hear him call out to me, his lost maiden found.

Until I watch his search, this one, for my mystery. His dreams taking him not to me but to the essence of whom I might have been: the sun per chance, or at least the rays, the warmth captured by his tawny skin and creasing edges.

And a part remembers, from somewhere lost, that I am no longer here. A part remembers that instead I be a flower in disguise, reformed and taken by another. Burst out of the darkness to reclaim the sky, yet in the same making hopelessly hidden.

While in solid form he stands in promise, searching the fields for what was once true, when all about lost memory dances with death.

And life, she gently laughs then, her voice cascading through twin-windowed souls, bringing forth the blistering wake of nevermore.

303: The Girl in the Cheer Skirt

It was when I was seventeen that I first learned what it felt like to seek revenge.

I was captain of the cheerleading squad that last year in high school. I’d poured my heart and soul into song-leading (what we called our squad) for two years. Cheering was my fixation, the place where I found a sense of normalcy, security, and stability. I liked that the cheers stayed the same, that each word or two had a movement that matched, and that those movements, too, stayed the same.

By the time my senior year in high school came along, through much trial and error, I’d developed skills for social survival. I’d learned how to blend in for the most part, how to keep a friend, and how to not make waves. I imagine that I still said a lot of “inappropriate” things at “inappropriate” times, but always, as now, from a place of innocence.

It was when I was elected the captain of the team my senior year that I was to receive one of the deepest wounds of my school years’. Perhaps not as detrimental as the outcomes that resulted in my over-trusting of predators, but equal in measure in the way the event tore me to bits, and further enforced that the world I occupied was unsafe and unmanageable.

I learned young that grownups could not always be trusted. Understanding the fallibility of adults led to a feeling of deep uncertainty, one of standing on a rickety-foundation, like the swaying playground bridge that I sprinted across as a child—a place where the people would cling on for dear life and scream for rescue.

At my age, a year before college beckoned, even though I had been burnt time and time again by peers, I still had this unyielding trust and faith in human beings. Of course this added to my risk-taking. By risk I mean my tendency to be myself.

To this day, grownups call me “brave” for being me and speaking my truth; this compliment, this concept that somehow being whom God made me to be is a form of courage, still alludes me.

It isn’t hard for me to be honest.

I remember when I was on the squad that last year, the cheerleading advisor, a mother of one my fellow peers, saying all the girls wanted to order new cheer skirts for the spring season. I remember announcing in front of the whole squad that I thought it was silly to order another skirt when the ones we had were perfectly fine. I spoke further and explained my truth: my family couldn’t afford to spend forty-dollars on a skirt.

I remember specifically not ever once thinking I was saying something that would be perceived as wrong. I hadn’t yet learned, then, that people sometimes take joy in scorning one’s truth. I hadn’t yet learned that some feed of the innocence of others. That some take pleasure in mocking.

My first two years of cheering were filled with good memories, as happy as memories could be for a dyslexic cheerleader with Aspergers.
I wanted to be the cheer captain so badly from the get go. I tried out each year. Leading and teaching had always come second-nature to me; the structure and rigidness both suited and soothed me. Having finally earned the title of captain my senior year felt a dozen elevator-levels better than grand, at least for the first week. Until I realized the few girls that tried out for the team were in it for the pure fun and pleasure of being on stage. They were jokesters, kidders, and clowns. None of them having had cheered before. And none of them interested in being a serious team member.

Though their same age, I was the opposite: a rule follower and serious. Soon, I realized the girls weren’t going to listen to me at all, no matter what skills of persuasion I incorporated. If I turned my back for a moment, they were poking fun at the way I stood. If I spoke, they were poking fun at the way I talked. All my hopes of being a “real” captain were lost in their fickle ways. They reflected, to me, what would be the mountainous peaks of my life, the highest altitude of pain: the ridicule and rejection by my peers.

Despite the challenges and sense of pending doom, I didn’t falter in my want to succeed. Perhaps a part of me thought I might pull these girls up from their place of dilly-dallying. Perhaps I thought they would grow to like me, and eventually listen. But, of course, they didn’t change. And neither did I. My innocence remained dutifully intact.

I told them once, these girls, that I would be late to practice because I had to make up an English test from when I was absent. I was absent a lot then, so much so that my mom had been threatened that if I missed one more day, I would have to repeat my senior year. I didn’t skip school or sneak about. I just woke up many a morning too tired and exhausted to face the day. Sleeping was, and has always been, my great escape.

That same day when I showed up to cheer practice an hour late, after taking my test, the chubby cheer advisor was there, standing with her hands on her hips. The advisor’s daughter was there too, a friend to all the girls on the squad but me; their mascot-like-sidekick wherever they went.

I was informed straight away that my tardiness had cost me the title of captain and that now the silliest of the girls would take my place; a girl, like the rest on the squad, who’d never cheered before that year.

And so, it was that the girls had all secretly devised a plan.

They told the advisor that I had missed practice on purpose, with no excuse, and that I couldn’t be trusted as this had happened before. They told her other things too that I don’t remember. But I remember their faces.

Things kind of tumbled then, emotionally speaking. I was so humiliated and shocked by the deception that I quit the team right then, without second-thought. I quit the only thing that had held my inner seams together. I quit that which brought me esteem and a sense of purpose. I burst out of the cackling crowd alone and fled down the street. I was screaming in pain. I can still see the sidewalk and where my tears fell.

As I thought and thought, and processed through the pain, I tried to think of why they hated me so. I knew they were still angry from the weeks of practice they missed. No one told me where two of them had gone. And so, since I cared about the squad, and as them as members of the squad, I had asked about school. I had asked, “Do you know where they are?” No one knew, and if they did, they wouldn’t answer me. When the two girls returned later, they were livid. They tracked me down and spewed mean words. They accused me of spreading rumors, of telling everyone where they had actually been: Getting nose jobs. I hadn’t had a clue. And if I had, I wouldn’t have thought to tell people. Their ways had confused me, and I had stood there dumbfounded denying their claims—unconvinced as they were.

I supposed this was there way of getting even for an imagining they created in their minds.

Back then, I did not know how to defend myself. I actually didn’t know how. I feared confrontation and I feared adults. And I’d felt so deliberately humiliated by the adult advisor that I could not collect myself enough to even form thought. And so I ran and ran, until I ended up in the arms of a past boyfriend. For that is how I learned to seek comfort, through watching my mother turn to male companions. And so in turn, feeling displaced entirely from my world, I found my man. I knew using the boy was wrong. Guilt gorged and severed my soul; and soon the self-blame for all that had transpired with the squad began.

I cried for weeks, as I wandered the halls not knowing my place in the strange land of school. Weeks passed without me telling anyone about what had transpired. Without my protesting. I would be forced to face the clown-squad, wearing their new spring cheer skirts and obnoxious-belittling smirks.

I wept all through high school, so I cannot truthfully say I cried more that last semester. Yet, I do know I ached more.

How a person, how people can be so cruel still escapes me. I wasn’t born with the manipulation gene, or with the gene that enables others to tear another’s reputation apart. I don’t think I have ever felt true hatred before. But I think, if I ever came close, it was with the clown squad, and their sidekick, and that lady advisor.

Eventually I formed my own plan of sorts. I think, through my actions, I was finally taking a stand for all the times I’d been wronged in life. I think those girls symbolized to me the proverbial “last straw.” I decided that no one would ever hurt me again in the way they had. I did what I’d seen in movies and on television shows, and what I’d seen other girls do. I decided to play the game. I would isolate them, like they had isolated me. I would make them bleed the tears that I had bled.

It was the most unsettling and unnatural feeling I’ve ever felt: that of being set on revenge. I hated every step of it, every taste, every motion. It all felt foreign and unreal, and like some chapter from a teenage age novel in which I was the imposter. But I forced myself through. It became my new fixation, to make these girls know hurt.

I would plan the biggest senior graduation party at my house. I would plan every last detail. And I did, pouring all the energy I’d poured into the cheerleading into the planning. My mom’s roommate owned a huge copying machine; it was housed in the utility section of our home. I used newspaper clippings to form letters and printed out personal invites for my classmates. The last week of school I passed out an invitation to each and every person, except those three girls. I was sure to write on the invitation: By invitation only.

I thought for certain that night of the party, despite me not handing those girls an invite that they would crash the party to spite me. But they didn’t. And my party came and went; successful as any party that year.

The next morning at the traditional bonfire at the beach, I was watchful. As the three girls entered the circle of seniors, I took note of their soured faces and shifting eyes. I heard them ask about the party. And I waited. I waited to feel better. I waited for my pain to be erased. I waited and waited.

I spent the next years waiting, and several years after that, but the only thing that happened was a tremendous feeling of remorse and wrong doing. I’d thought at one point that by joining their “team” so to speak, their ways, that I would then be made normal. I thought that by doing what others do, I would then feel right. Instead I felt entirely broken. I’d dishonored myself, my belief system, and my god. I’d ultimately lowered myself to their level.

It took me a very long period to process this event—decades. I often revisit the day I was rejected and the day I succumbed to their tactics. In the end, I had more compassion for them, then for my own self. In truthfulness, I probably didn’t really forgive those girls until my late-thirties. And I still don’t think I’ve forgiven myself.

Today, I can see how this one event changed the essence of how I would walk through life. The rejection I felt, and displacement from losing my footing in high school, would be magnified and revisited each and every time I was ridiculed, rejected, and/or abandoned. I would replay the day over and over, thinking of what I should have said to defend myself and how I could have proved them all wrong. I would punish myself for being cruel in return.

I think the main difference between them and me is that they probably never once thought about the damaged they caused me; whereas I thought about the pain I caused them since that June day in 1986.

Because of them, I learned early on that there was no sweetness in revenge.

I think I am ready to thank these girls now. I now understand that I was different than most high school children. I understand in many ways I was likely an easy target, so very gullible, and odd. I understand that my drive and determination was in strong contrast to others that were my age. I understand that acceptance of differences did not come easy for them.

I understand and accept that the little girl I was so very long ago is still divinely perfect and beautiful, and that she resides inside of me, cheering me on in her red-and-gold pleated skirt, knowing that with everything that has passed, we carry on.