Some Painful Background Info...

Okay, so I don't usually get serious in this blog. Actually, I've been trying to avoid it. I guess I don't like putting out things for complete strangers, but I need to get comfortable with it.

So. Coming back to Houston was very emotional for me. Not just because of my recent split (which is something I will NOT go into here, it's not the right place for it), but because of my childhood years that I spent in this city.

Let me just say, I was not the most popular kid in school. Actually, I was probably one step ahead of the smelly kid or the kid who wasn't "all there." I don't know if I can overstate this point. I was pretty much reviled by a lot of my peers for a really long time. Probably about second grade to... well. 'Til college, pretty much.

At my 8th grade formal

Growing up in Houston, things were fine when I was a little kid. But as the social stratum began to divide out, I realized I was on the lowest echelon, in a group of friends with the girl whose parents didn't bathe her, the extremely Catholic friend, and the girl with the lazy eye (all of whom I considered my dearest friends, and who I still love to this day). The school was very competitive (we had textbooks for the grade above us all through elementary school) and my severe A.D.D. was treated aggressively with Ritalin at the urging of the school until my mother put a stop to it after sleepless nights and weight loss I couldn't afford. When I was eleven, my mother made the decision to move us to Crested Butte. It was a small town that I loved when we were able to visit as tourists in the summers, and I thought it was a godsend. I was disliked in Houston, might as well have a fresh start! I thought bullying and being made fun of were a thing of the past.

Well, I was wrong. Kids are kids, anywhere you go.

I was skinny, gawky, awkward, wore glasses, read a lot, completely uncoordinated, socially inept, pale as a sheet, and taller than most of the boys during puberty. I was also really sensitive. I cried pretty much every day in middle school. So, of course, I wasn't well liked in Crested Butte either. But it was Houston that I dreaded.

Crested Butte is beautiful, and it was a bit of a haven for me. While the school situation wasn't much better, I really connected with the area (I am convinced that the faeries I saw as a kid on hikes were real). Crested Butte itself saved me from a lot of pain, I was able to make friends with people older than me who recognized what I was: a very intelligent girl with a good sense of humor that was more interested in literature and theatre than how well jeans hugged her ass (I was OBLIVIOUS to that stuff until the age of 19).

Though it still hurt.

But I soldiered on. I finally blossomed at about 20. I got Lasik surgery (hello, I have cheekbones!), and started to grow into my face. I figured out how to wear clothing that fits and how to do my makeup. Things really changed in terms of other people's perception of me, though I know now it had more to do with my peers growing up than it did with my transformation. Even before then, toward the end of high school and directly after, people started apologizing. I accepted apologies from the same people that made life so awful that I ate my lunches in the science room so I could avoid any interaction that wasn't blunted by adult supervision. Houston was where I placed a lot of the blame of my sad childhood, though I know now that that was a coping mechanism. It was a shitty (social) childhood, not a town, that left those emotional scars. And besides, I wouldn't recognize the kids from my school in Houston if I saw them again.

And now I'm back.

So how did all of this come up? Today a friend of the family did some energy work on me. She asked me if there was anything I wanted to focus on during the session, and I said no. I didn't want to forcibly bring up my recent split, so I thought, hey, I'll just let it come out.

Something else came out, though.

I ended up on the table at the end of the session (all she did was push my arm, wave a pendulum, place cards around me and prod at certain parts of my body) sobbing and trying to love my eight year old self; the same self that believed in magic and faeries, who thought that she was one with the universe and who was continually crushed by her peers as well as certain teacher (f*** you, Mrs. Small). The woman who did the energy work had asked me to look back seventeen years to 1995, and imagine control and emotional pain. She then asked, "What does that bring up for you?"

It was all I could do to come out with the answer. It brought back the teasing, the shaming, the realization that people wouldn't love me for who I was. They would actually HATE me for it.

And I ended up hating myself, too.

I have tried to kill that part of my self in the intervening years through various means (another thing I won't get into here). And maybe that is part of the reason why I'm just coming back to Houston and embracing the experience now. I'm old enough to take it for what it is, not what it used to be. Though I do still drive by my old school and feel a twinge of dread like I used to every morning as we drove in.

But I got by. And while that painfully awkward little-girl part of myself is very damaged, she's still there and I'm going to work on healing her. I have confidence issues which stem from my experiences as a kid. I guess the first step in getting better is realizing what needs work, right?

I ended my AMAZING session by envisioning protecting my little eight-year-old self. That protection was one of the things that makes me feel the most confident and safe: a leather jacket and a pair of boots. In my vision of her, she laughed, and made a Lisbeth Salander glare.

I'm done with my tirade. Sorry I didn't talk more about Houston and what's going on... but this is kind of what's going on in my head now.

Cheers!

Oh, I also wanted to send you to an amazing link. While this is an initiative for LGBT teens, I really liked this video. It's a great message to anyone who is being made fun of or bullied. I definitely teared up watching it.