Here are some things that will randomly go through my head on any given day, at any given time:
IDIOT. THAT WAS STUPID. YOU'RE FAT. THE ONLY REASON SO-NO-SO LIKES YOU IS BECAUSE OF (INSERT THING). IF YOU DROPPED OFF THE FACE OF THIS PLANET NO ONE WOULD NOTICE. JUST STOP TALKING. YOU'RE A HORRIBLE ACTOR. JESUS YOU LOOK LIKE SHIT. YOU'RE SUCH A LOSER. YOU'RE SO STUPID. WHY CAN'T YOU JUST BE NORMAL. WHY DO YOU EVEN BOTHER. YOU DON'T ACTUALLY HAVE ANY FRIENDS. YOUR TEETH ARE TERRIBLE. YOUR FACE IS TERRIBLE. YOU'RE TERRIBLE. YOU'RE A HORRIBLE MOTHER. LESZEK IS GOING TO LEAVE ANY DAY NOW. NOBODY CALLS YOU BECAUSE NOBODY LIKES YOU. NO ONE BELIEVES IN YOU. YOU SHOULD JUST GIVE UP.
I try really hard to stay off the scale.
I do this because about ten years ago, I became obsessed with it. That, and working out. I realize now that there were a lot of crazy things going on in my life at the time (taking care of my youngest sister, grad school auditions, a special needs two year old, and others), that my weight was the one thing I could control. Quite a few of us do it.
So many people complimented me on how I looked. See? Get thin, people will like you more. But about a year later when I put about 10 pounds back on and saw those same people, I was told how much better I looked, and that back then I was starting to get way too thin. So you guys just lied to my face then? But you know what? They were right. I did kind of look like shit. And I still didn't feel good about myself.
And I'll say this: I was a shy kid.
I say that and people kind of look at me funny. But really, I was a shy kid. An introvert. I had an invisible friend and all that. Read encyclopedias on the living room floor for hours. Greek mythology mostly. When it said "See Also," I did. I spent hours alone riding my bike around my small town. I really was kind of trying to track down my older brother, but he hid himself pretty well so mostly I just spent hours by myself.
I spent a lot of time by myself actually. Sure I had some friends, but for various reasons we changed schools a lot. And all this in a small town of 32,000 people: K-2, Catholic School. Divorce (and a domestic violence center), so 3rd grade Public School. 4th was back to Catholic School, and I'm not exactly sure why. 5-7, Private Born Again Christian school, but sometime in the 7th grade there was a fight between my Stepfather and the Pastor, so off to Public School. And then being the somewhat new kid, and a quiet one at that, you should have just put a target on my back. Or there was one, because that's when the bullying started.
Eighth grade we moved across state in the last quarter of the year. New kid again. My brother, who was about 15 at the time decided to not come with us and went to live with my mother's second husband. And boy I wish I had done the same because that's when the bullying and ostracizing kicked into a higher gear. At school, and at home.
And GOD aren't the years from 13-15 just the WORST. For girls especially?
When we moved to Altoona, Wisconsin, again, the LAST SEMESTER OF MY EIGHTH GRADE YEAR, I had done some little theatre things here and there, but I would say there is where I really started to become a theatre geek/junky. I got into an understudy cast, and began participating quite a bit in high school forensics, and things of that sort. But on the very first day I got there, the principal had one of the popular girls take me around for the day, and she was nice and all, but by the very next week I was shunned by the "cool kids." To this day I still don't know what I did to deserve such behavior, and again, it wasn't outright nasty bullying, but the passive-aggressive non-explainable kind that really ate at me.
And I was getting bullied at home by a grown man known as my Stepfather. Just really a tyrant and control freak who had married my mother about two years before that. Doing all sorts of things like reading my letters from friends back home, following me around town to make sure I was going where I said I was going, keeping track of my period (or so he said) to make sure "I wasn't pregnant." And he yelled A LOT. Just a lot, a lot. And random punishments for no reason -- mostly being forced to read chapters from the Bible. Sometimes spanked with a big wooden paddle (at 14 years old). And being called stupid, and dumb, and having your weight questioned, and everything about your existence questioned, and all those things to really just devalue you as a person. To make you feel like you have no control over anything in your life. That you're not even a human being.
And just as I had found a group of friend and started to manage a little bit: We moved. Again.
The summer after ninth grade we moved into the city of Eau Claire. Right next door, another school district. The new kid. Again. Bigger school, more kids, I was basically flat out ignored. No one wanted to be the new girl's friend. Alone. Quiet. A Weirdo. New. Alone.
So I spoke with my dad, my mother's second husband, and after some legal wrangling I was back in Manitowoc by about the start of the second quarter of my 10th grade year. There were some kids who remembered me, so that was nice, but they were not "the cool kids" so again I immediately had a target on my back. And not too long after, I nestled in with the theatre crowd, sealing my fate. BREAK THIS ONE.
Name calling, intimidation, outright threats. There was one girl name Jamie (ha ha!) who just really had it out for me and made every day just miserable. Some class on the third floor. American Lit with Golembeski maybe? I can't even remember specifically what she said, I just was in fear every single day of what she was going to say or do. I didn't have to say or do anything, she would just seek me out. An outright bully. Just like my Stepfather.
And that's basically my feelings about my entire experience at Lincoln High School - I just hated going every single day. By the time I hit my senior year, there was a stretch where told my dad I was too sick to go so much, he made me go to the doctor. The first question he asked? "How are things at school." And yet it was my senior year where I started to push back. Break out of my shell. Give the middle finger literally and figuratively. I began defending other friends who were also picked on. I dyed blonde streaks in my hair. A friend's sister who worked in the mall got us in after hours and pierced my nose with a gun (shattering the cartilage, of course, so it left a scar on the left). I walked around school with a t-shirt that read, "Please Do Not Tease or Feed the Straight People." In 1996. I was putting on my armor. And it's lasted for years.
I started high school with a 4.0. I ended with a 3.2. Not bad considering living with my dad was basically living on your own. I went to school on my own, went to work,went with friends wherever. Drove up to Green Bay without permission to just drive the strip. There were days I didn't get home until 3am and then turned around and left for school at 6:30am. I've told people before, I'd rather live with a drunk than a megalomanic narcissist abusive bully.
If I had to make that choice. Which I did.
And It's all these experiences, all the abandonment, ostracizing, and bullying that built that soundtrack in my head. And that soundtrack helped me to make some incredibly questionable choices between the ages of 18 and 23. Some as little as underage drinking, others as, well. A story for another time maybe. If at all. wink. But suffice it to say those questionable choices only served to amplify the soundtrack.
So then at 23 when Aurora was born, sure I had to change my focus, but I also yelled a big ole WHY ME? to the sky. And don't for a second think sometimes I still don't. I've tried more as of late to really focus on telling myself positive things about myself. It's REALLY hard. At the same time, for as difficult a process my last show, "The Beauty Queen of Leenane," was, it really gave me an opportunity to look at myself and how good I am at times at pushing through adversity. And now that I'm writing out more and more of these stories, that seems to be a running theme: Pushing Through Adversity.
But I'm still not even close to having a well rounded self-esteem. Don't even think about it. The struggle is real.
Yet it is this pushing through that's giving me opportunities to improve my self worth, thus, improving my self-esteem. Although, to be honest, there are days when it's still painful. When the soundtrack is INCREDIBLY loud. When I'm thisclose to not getting out of bed.
Then I think of Aurora. And Leszek. And all the things I haven't done yet. And I put a big middle finder to the soundtrack, tell it to shut the fuck up, and it dies down a little. Not completely, but a little. And I put one foot in front of the other and get on with my day. If that's the best I can do for that day. And there have been times I've been surprised to wake up. Mostly when people ask me how I'm doing I'll say, "I'm still alive." Facetiously. Or not. One foot in front of the other.
The sun will come out tomorrow.
Thoughts?