7:40 p.m. - 01/23/03
why would I want to let a good thing pass me by?*
I said I'd write it; I'm not sure I want to. I might not post this right away. Maybe it can start as something I share with myself. Damn, if only I was a gold member; that new lock-at-your-discretion feature rocks.

My. Relational. Autobiography.

Let's see. The first friend I always think of is Brooke, but that's not true. My first friend was girl named Blaire that I met at day-care who didn't make the mistake of thinking my hair was black (huge offense...), whose father was a car mechanic, and who always offered to take me as trade for the service constantly needed on my parents' car(s.) I don't remember much about Blaire. I know that I went to her seventh birthday party and felt out of place because by that point, she and I went to different schools, and I didn't know any of the girls or share any of their experiences. At one point they all sang songs from their music class, which we'd never sung in mine. I felt like an outsider. She came to my first birthday too, and I assumed she had a great time, even though I worried maybe she felt as odd as I did. After first grade, I didn't see much of her.

But during kindergarten I made two new friends, Ashley- who had curly brown hair and rode my bus home- and Trisha who was even shorter than me but far more outgoing. We were always basically a trio; I assume now that I felt closer to Ashley because she and I remained friends for years, hooking up again every time we had a class in common, though she became an athletic superstar and I took to the stage. I don't know if that was true then, though. I do remember being a little jealous of Trisha, though. Maybe I'm making this up, but I seem to remember wondering why I wasn't enough, just myself. It's not clear enough to confirm, though.

Then, in first grade, I met Brooke. She tells me now that this happened because when we came in the first day, we all set our backpacks down before heading out to the playground to wait for the first bell. She liked my backpack so she sat hers next to mine, and we became friends. I said, "Wow. So if I hadn't had such good taste at the time, we might never have been friends!" "Nah," she said. "We just wouldn't have sat next to each other." This is one of many examples of why Brooke is cool.

We became basically inseparable. Trisha fell out of my life a little, and Ashley and Brooke didn't always get along. I remember being upset about the lack of connection between the two of them, feeling torn. By second grade, I know I considered Brooke my best friend; we didn't have the same teacher that year, but we met in the hallway at every recess, no matter what. We ate lunch together, and we tried new foods in the cafeteria (the first year all we ate were the "ham"(soy)burgers. We weren't so keen on branching out.)

Brooke and I were still best friends in third grade, even though her classroom was in a different building from mine. People looked at us as a duo by that point. We both had friends and were liked well-enough, but we tended to avoid joining any cliques or groups. I guess for the first time, I really felt like all I needed was this one other person. And I loved it. She came to visit. We played Trolls and swung. We played figure games, and she had Dream Phone. I thought the premise was silly, but I enjoyed the game anyway. We ate ravioli by candlelight at my Fisher Price Table, and my grandma loved her.

In fourth grade, she took it upon herself to show around a new student, a girl named Lindsay. I had a new friend also, Ann. Ann and Lindsay became appendages of some sort to the exclusivity, and both developed other friends. Ann's were common with mine; Lindsay's went more toward her cousin's "preppy" clique, and when Lindsay disappeared into the other group, Brooke looked terribly grieved. I was hurt by her hurt. I wanted to know why I wasn't enough anymore, but couldn't make myself ask. Instead, I followed her as she, too, joined this clique, and watched from the sidelines (accepted, I felt, only because I was an understood extension of Brooke, who had actual merit) as she adapted- in my perception- a whole new personality. The way I saw it, these girls were pressuring her to engage in horrific acts like teasing. One of the girls was Brooke's cousin (small town, lots of cousins)- a girl that had always been villified in my education. She grew up in Brooke's shadow, with the "why can't you be more like her" syndrome taking its toll. In second grade, she called me Bloody Mary, and my stomachaches got worse; I missed more school. I couldn't believe we were associating with such a crowd, but I didn't want to lose Brooke- I couldn't lose Brooke...and so I went along with it. When I wasn't ethically uncomfortable, I was bored. They talked about all going shopping together and picking out the same sort of outfit (bodysuits were "in" that year), then wearing it the next day. Was I ever invited? I didn't go. I didn't care to dress that way, to be that way, and what's more, God knows my parents did not have the money for a spontaneous shopping trip. It became clear to me that I didn't belong. It came clear to me that I was fighting a losing battle.

So I started spending my recesses alone, for the first time in my life, without friends. Our playground was up this large hill from our school, and I used to stand at the top of it and look impatient, hoping people would assume I was being stood up by a friend and not realize I was just completely friendless. The ten or fifteen minutes began to feel endless. I got desperate. I went back to Ann, to Shannon and Leah, developed real bonds with them, felt like I was a part of a group. Did not feel the same. Did not feel alive. I wasn't hungry to eat lunch. I was scared and sad, upset all the time. People worried. I didn't know what to tell them. Eventually, I did. I told my friends, never my parents. I told them I couldn't handle having lost Brooke. I just couldn't handle it. They taught me how to play line tag, and to move through the pain. When Ann's birthday came in the Spring, I bought her a best friend's heart necklace, and she gave the other half to someone else. I realize now what an awful position I put her in, giving that gift at a party, but at the time, I thought it was obvious. I thought it had to be me. When it wasn't, I felt sick.

This was around the same time that whatever happened with Chelsie happened. My journal in third grade flips over the course of one entry from scrawly kid handwriting to tight, neat letters. But it was popular to write absolutely tiny that year, so who knows...I managed to forget about it or convince myself I had. I managed to think it was unimportant...

In fifth grade, I met Natalie, and Nat and I were best friends almost immediately. Ann and I fell out of contact, but Shannon, Leah, and a new girl- Melissa, all became my friends. Natalie and I were insanely close, a best friend again, finally. Maybe I could be ok. We called each other every night and spent hours checking our homework against each other, chatting, even reading to each other if it was the only way to talk. We were partners in the fifth grade science fair but didn't finish our project ("Which Liquid Makes An Ice Cube Melt The Fastest") and again in the sixth grade (visual versus auditory short-term memory) when we did. I shared a lot of the same friends in sixth grade. Melissa and I became closer; Shannon moved away. Some newer girls started talking to me, but sometimes they made me uncomfortable. Crushes were developing, nothing they would actually act on, but things they would talk about together. The newer girls, and even my long-time friends, made me feel uncomfortable, ashamed. (I traumatically hit puberty just before sixth grade, and "Bloody Mary" had a whole new meaning.) Once, Leah had a party; we all played Truth or Dare; there was talk of "bases" and boys. A newer girl asked me who I had a crush on (Truth). My friends told her not to ask me; I didn't go in for that stuff. I got a nice safe question about books and felt like a freak of nature. The funny thing was, I had an answer for them. I had spent weeks attempting to figure out who I had a crush on (because of course I had to have one) and by the time I finally did, my friends had accepted me as the odd one, the asexual. The identity stays with me among Neverland friends to this day, though they occasionally fight it now. They tell me it's impossible, but they tell other people it's true. I hate it, and I find it safe among them. At least, I thought, it kept most of the boys away.

The boy I decided on in sixth grade was Matt, who I of course barely knew, but who walked with me to Vision, our gifted class. He would ask me about the project I was doing with the science fair, keep up the small talk, make me feel like I wasn't invisible. It was new, since there hadn't been any real mingling of the sexes prior to sixth grade; it was nice that I existed to him, and by default, to myself. His only competition (it was an exceedingly laborious logical process) was a boy named Jarrod who rode my bus, and who got mad when I tried to share his seat. He scared me away because he used bad words, and even though he seemed nice, I knew bad words were immoral, and I couldn't be around that kind of a hellion.

In seventh grade, the crushes became active relationships (junior high relationships, but still) and I became even more uncomfortable. My friends constant chattering and chasing of crushes bored me, isolated me. I didn't understand why we couldn't just talk on our own, why we had to run around trying to find out from the friend of the guy if he liked this person. Wiping tears when it turned out he didn't. Comforting friends for something I didn't even understand. I went to my first co-ed party in seventh grade, invited to it at my second dance, which involved much of the same tear-wiping and "he's not asking me to dance! I'm worthless" craziness as the schooldays. I went to the party and enjoyed it. They played Spin The Bottle and two other kids and I abstained, sitting over by the bonfire and playing a game of our own. Story-sharing mostly. They were Christian; I was terrified. And moral, too. I think it had something to do with morals. There was drama that night, too, of course. I came home and wrote in my journal, something along the lines of, So this is growing up. I was trying to like it; I was. I was always trying so hard.

Seventh grade was also when I became really close with Shandi, who had shared her eraser with me (and thereby lost it for days, until I finally remembered to return it; she didn't fine me- all was well) in sixth grade math. We'd been in fourth grade together, but I didn't remember her much. In seventh grade, we were close enough to be best friends (we thought), but I kept fighting her on it because she had another friend she'd been really close with the year before, who was still hanging around, and I couldn't bear to wreck that. I didn't want to play the role I still thought Lindsay had played. In my heart, I still thought that if she hadn't come into our school district, Brooke and I would still have been inseparable. Shandi tried to convince me that she was growing away from her best friend on her own terms, and we had more in common anyway, and eventually I came into their friend group and stayed by her side for years. I also met Heather, who kept me laughing even in my worst depression, and managed to break me out of my goddamned perfect-angel-mode just a tiny bit.

Eighth grade stuck with the same relationships, except that I was isolating to the point I barely saw them, no longer joining them for the main social point of the day: lunch. Instead, I hid out in practice rooms, and with our band and choir directors. I was particularly attached to the choir director we had that year, a new addition to the faculty, a first-year, woman who smiled at me and talked with me like a peer and didn't kick me out when I broke the rules to hang out in her room. At one point, my mom referred to her as "my surrogate Sarah" as my sister had gone to college when I was in seventh grade, and I remember being really infuriated over the comment. I loved this woman in her own right, and she cared about me, too, and it wasn't some stupid ploy to survive the loss of my sister. I remember feeling really shitty over that.

But she let me talk on her level and complimented me in class. I'd spent all of seventh grade trying to be enough of an angel (after all Heather didn't *fully* dismantle that shield) to convince the director that I was worth her affection, and when it failed (miserably) I was devastated. So, when the following year, a new director took real interest in me (I even learned to sing that year; the first time I ever felt like I had a voice...I became section leader at one point) it meant the world. She wasn't the first, though, and she wasn't the only one, even then. I'd always been an infamous teacher's pet, preferring to stay in at recess and talk with my teachers (all female prior to seventh grade) and craving their affection/ favoritism desperately. I remember most my fourth grade (and really fifth grade) teacher on. Sixth grade was when I started to hate school, and I felt less connected to the teacher, but our gifted teacher made me feel alive and well. She left halfway through my sixth grade year, and I wrote her a prose piece and bawled. I had no idea what was going on, but I knew I needed her. That's the same way I felt in seventh grade (when affection was rare, even from the most compelling of teachers) and eighth, when it was rampant. There was Chas who made my heart skip and Mandy who made me feel warm. There was the social worker who made me nervous in a way that I could pretend was excitement, and there was the music department. I felt safe. I avoided my friends, but I never missed the moment when the teachers filed into the building again after lunch. I'd stand there, alone in a nearly empty school, and if one of them would throw me a smile, a nod, a greeting, I'd feel like my whole day was worth living. I was desperate, yes, but there were truly beautiful people in the desperation. I was depressed, and they could make me float.

Eighth grade was also when I finally became friends with Jarrod, the boy who said to many cuss words in grade school. He was a laugh riot in my English class, he actually talked to me, he was a favorite of Chas's. We connected a bit, and he wasn't scared off by my "moods." He could make me laugh even on my darkest, quietest days, and I was grateful for that. We were friends freshman year, too, close to the point that everyone was pushing us (or at least me) to date, despite our absolute insistence that it was platonic. Silently, I thought about it. Of course, I liked Jarrod; I spent all this time around him. Of course I should want to be dating him. But when I thought about spending time with him on dates, of having him walk me to class, of a quick kiss before we went to our separate classrooms, it all made me feel sick inside. I didn't want it. Sophomore year we spent less time together, and when I came to my last school function after a few months of being homebound, he was dating a girl who wasn't me. He gave me slightly more than the time of day and then went off with her, and I remember feeling awful, thinking, "Why wasn't it me?" because even though I knew I didn't want it, I wanted to know I could have had it. I wanted nothing to do with it, but I wanted to know that someone could feel something for me. Could pick me. I still wanted to be someone's favorite, to secure that title.

By freshman year, nearly all of my friends were dating (heterosexually)- and by sophomore year they all were, with the exception of the two people who managed to come out in Neverland's crazy fucked-up world. Freshman year was also when I met Katie, who also had a history of being second choice, who quickly became my first choice. I spent every waking second with her, driving around late at night, telling her my secrets. She was a bouncy, energetic girl, who could listen like a shy one. She was amazing; I even went to prom that year (on her invite) to have just one more night with her. She was a senior, and I knew I'd lose her in months. We spent all the time we could find together, and my parents asked my siblings if we were a couple. They laughed hysterically, as Katie was what we called "very Christian"- traditionally moral to the point she needed an adverb. There was no possible way we could be a couple, but the talk among my family had begun and wasn't about to stop. When I got sick, it increased, and became perpetually linked to my sickness. I constantly denied it. What else would I have done?

I briefly considered it, of course, in my confusion over why I didn't like guys, but then I realize that of course, I'd never been attracted to a girl, either, so there was no reason to consider it. I didn't think about all my weird ass teacher-student relationships, the girl friends who were enough for me, whose boy-seeking confused me. The idea of even calling someone "hot" - of sexual attraction was entirely separate from what I was feeling. Maybe I was overly educated about what sexual was. I never got far enough into a relationship to see if those feelings were there. I didn't feel them, so I didn't enter the relationship. In fact, the relationships I did have, and the people I did care about (specifically teachers) compelled me not to be sexual. I knew that was bad, and they wouldn't want me to be that way. I stopped so as to be worthy of them. I cut myself off, and I felt better because any starting sexuality- even one so undefined as mine- made me feel shameful. Ridding myself of it was cleansing. That was probably fifth or sixth grade, maybe later. Which means I was simulatenously shutting off feelings and inventing them. Weird.

Freshman year, links to female teacher continued. There was one male teacher who was also really good to me, but who I rarely felt comfortable enough to talk with. A handful of others though were constantly "running into me" in the hallways after school, talking to me while I waited for John to finish his latebird class. Around them, the nervousness felt like a high, rather than a fear to shut down over. I would be terrified and shaking afterward, but I was addicted. I wanted it; I kept coming back. They would listen to me ramble and laugh at my jokes...They would talk to me like I wasn't a kid, like I was just me. Sophomore year was higher levels of sickness and still the desperation, mainly fueled toward my algebra teacher, who was terribly kind but not particularly affectionate. Eventually, I went homebound, and had a scary old man to tutor me. My friendships fell apart a little.

There were other things, too. I read a short story about a girl who fell in love with a boy only to discover the boy was a girl; it was talking about sexuality as prejudice, and I thought it was beautiful. I saw some movie about gay women in the army; Glenn Close was in it, and I fell in love with her from that point on, defending her as an actress, even though I'd never seen much else of her work. Stories about gay relationships came into my life the way that rape/abuse stories had- bizarrely, obsessively. I needed them, but didn't understand why. I couldn't look at why, and when I tried, I couldn't answer my questions.

There were guys too, after all. Guys who were interested in me, but were fucks I pushed away. Guys who were genuinely wonderful, but never went through my defenses enough to act on my friend's suspicions. ("It's sooo obvious. You'd be so cute together!") Guys that I tried to fall in love with and maybe did. There was Billy. There was (a different) Matt, the same Matt who invited me to the party (though different then my attempted sixth-grade-crush-Matt, and did I mention Matt was also going to be my name if I was a boy?), and Andy, who eventually started dating Heather. I had so much fun with Andy, similar to what I'd had with Jarrod, but with the added joy of theater and lit interests and random showtune seranades. When I found out that he and Heather were dating, I felt stepped on again, even though when I was told he liked me, I was terrified. I didn't want it, but I wanted someone else to. Someone who wasn't controlling and needy and homicidal. Someone who wouldn't trap me in a car or break off their "engagement" to talk with me. And there was Billy, also. There was Billy who made me think, hey, maybe I'm not so confusing after all. But then, he promised it was platonic, and I felt safe in that. Later he would say it was as "platonic" as it was "erotic" and I would realize the truth in that. It was hugely intimate and bizarrely asexual. It was two very confused people sharing something. I still don't know if it was real...

Junior year meant Rogers. And at Rogers there was Brea and, hell, over half the female staff. I loved Dwight, too, but differently. Like a brother or a father, a savior or a cousin. I loved the female RCs hyperactively. And I loved Jenna, too. Jenna, who finally meant that I didn't have to shut up about alternative sexualities. Who talked about them, too. Jenna who had also loved a teacher- a woman, who listened to Ani and talked about how addictive it was not to wear a bra. Jenna who hated to be touched and made me feel alive when she held me, when she brought down that wall. Who never did. Who wrote me my first real love letter. I have one from Billy, too...but it stopped counting somehow. Jenna's still counts, as of right now. Jenna still factors into nearly all of what I do. She pushed me a way a lot, and I wanted so badly to force myself in or to take her lead and go away, have her come after me. But she didn't seem to need me as much as I needed her. And we were sick, after all. It wasn't the time to think about such things. I never even asked her how she called herself or if she was interested. I was too scared to hear her answers as my own.

I came back from Rogers to D!@#$%^, and have been officially out-of-relation since. Though I do remember being really excited when a younger woman started working with our IOP group. Oh, and Ruth/ Rebecca at the YPI conference. And I was desperate to leave someone on my treatment team to regain someone like an RC. But otherwise, it was just wondering. Each person I met...would they ever be interested? Did I even want them to? Feeling like a freak because having certain boy-parts in the house felt to me like owning a gun; I equated them with weapons. Feeling like a fraud because God knows I can't be gay. I'm such a faker, etc. I don't know. I see which way the tally goes. I know which one feels safer, though sexual fears remain. I know which one can have some sense of throwback to my childhood days. I know which one never involved scary boys or cars off roads or controlling-ness. Not a fair barometer, but an honest one. Not accurate, but my real experience, all the same.

And that's where it stands, I spin back and forth. I'm afraid to know who I am. I'm afraid people will think I'm a liar. I'm afraid I'll decide wrong. I'm afraid I'm something completely foreign, don't fit anywhere. I'm afraid relationships can't happen on personal terms, that they're all the same shitty sex-forcing painfullness. The same shut-off, confusing, unrecquited bullshit.

I'm afraid, in all honesty, of myself.

chord

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