7:45 p.m. - 08/05/02
you've always been a good girl, smart girl, pretty girl, lucky girl, happy as the day is long...
Once in the building, I wanted so badly to be among them, but I needed the safety of distance, of obscurity, so I tried to look at the walls and halls as one being first introduced. I didn't want to be someone they didn't know, but rather, someone they didn't know yet. A mystery, but not a stranger. Once inside, I remembered that school is basically the only environment in the world which offers the opportunity for meeting *so many people* and seeing them every weekday for a year. And I wanted it. Badly. I wanted to know that girl with the hand-sewn patches on her black purse, the girl taking AP psych, and the other one with the long hair and the strong arms. I wanted to have them shout my name across the corridor so I could run to them and we could hug enthusedly and traverse the hallways together. I wanted to have an identity worthy of their affirmation...
Socialization isn't the issue. I'm more certain of that than I ever have been. Set free in a social situation I would find friends. I would find a relational niche. I would have a group again, as decent as my group in Neverland. I would intrigue and be intrigued by people and I would not be overwhelmed with panic to the point I could never get an introduction in edgewise. Socialization is not the issue; it's hardly *an* issue, and I never knew that until tonight. Tonight standing in the hallways going, "I want this! I want to be here! I want to walk through the door and sit down next to you; I want to laugh over my shoulder as you run to your next class. I want this."
But then I have to think about what it really means. I have to think about when the classes have gone on for months, and I'm struggling too hard to compare the importance of agrarian development in ancient civilizations with the technological advances in modern culture and the consequent struggles faced by both communities in the wake of said progress. I have to think about what it would be like to not just hug the strong shoulders of that girl but to weep on them. To have panic attacks and "shame attacks." To end up cutting in a practice room or skipping a semester's worth of lunches. To panic because I answered a question wrong or because I only managed a C+ when the rest of the AP class got perfects plus the extra credit. Or maybe I only managed a D. To convince myself at the onset of a test that I am completely worthless and stupid and therefore lose access to all information in my tiny little brain and turn in a blank paper. To be stared down by an unsympathetic teacher because "I didn't know how to lift my arm last night, and I couldn't turn the light on" is not a good enough excuse for not finishing my homework.
Some of this would be different, I think. I'm better at fighting my way through the illness. I would be able to take the test, and I would have more information in my head because most likely, I would also have been able to study for it. I might not do as well as I have homebound, but I would maintain decent grades, and if they started to slip it would only be because my world outside school was starting to slip, and that kind of regression would mean a reevaluation of whether I should be in school *anyway.* But this doesn't mean I would be ok in school. It doesn't mean I could get through even one class period a day without ending up in tears. It doesn't mean I wouldn't have panic attacks, or be digging keys into my arms below the desk...It doesn't mean I could stay safe.
And that's what kills me. Is that I do want to be in school, to the point that I want to be normal, I want to be good enough, and I want to have friends. But I can't handle being a mess, I can't accept the possibility that I might be just as much a mess as I was two years ago, and I don't know how to clean myself up enough to live among them. That's it really. I want to *live* among them. I want to be a teenager, in a classroom, with friends. I don't want to be a girl struggling to keep herself together long enough to give a presentation and then curling up into a ball to sob and shake for the rest of the hour. I don't want to be the girl pulled aside every other minute for weeks because people are worried and then never stopped again because people are conditioned to expect her instability.
It isn't fair. So many things aren't fair. It isn't fair that socialization isn't the issue, but I can't socialize because there isn't a friggin social situation on the planet that doesn't have other triggers and minefields involved. I'm so ready to set fire to N*land. I'm so ready to destroy the entire town. I can't believe what they did to me, what they did to Shandi- what they *let happen* to all of us, and what they actively did. I want to go back and beat it into their skulls, or simply beat their skulls in. Because it isn't right to treat a child this way until she can no longer return to school. It isn't right to let her disintegrate the way they let me. It isn't fair to teach her that people who aren't on top of their classes are stupid and lazy, so that when, after taking a semester and five classes off, she is only 1.5 credits short of what she needs to be a senior, she feels like a complete failure. She knows she could blow them out of the academic water, that she has plays being produced in Manhatten, and will be teaching three days at a college next fall, but she still feels like an idiot. Because you taught her to feel like an idiot. Because you taught her to overlook how much work she had done and feel like she was worthless all the same.
There's a writing exercise that asks what one crime the character would commit if they could do it without any consequence. I would commit arson. I would burn down the school, literally, metaphorically, and forever. I would make them start from scratch and do better. I would tell them they could have, should have, and will do better for the next people to come through their doors. Because they nearly killed me and they're still taking away how much I can do.
I have the equivalent of a mental illness regarding school. I have school disorder. It means that every aspect of my depressive/anxiety/eating disorder is also evident in school, that every symptom has a parallel symptom in the school environment. It means that returning to school feels the same as relapsing into bulimia, anorexia, or anything else. It means that it might be another year before I meet and maintain a friend close enough to hug me.
And that isn't fair. I was supposed to be one credit short of graduation by the end of my junior year. Right now, I'm not even senior status at Bumblef*ck high school. I'm a bright, interesting, dedicated, lovable girl-in-progress and no one can fucking care because I can't walk into a classroom and introduce myself. Because I have school-disorder. Because I went to Neverland. Because such brutality as what I endured for however many grades is allowed.
When I'm empress, we're outlawing school and instating a revised apprenticeship / independent study program. And there will be chance for socialization, but abuse will be strictly forbidden. The priorities of school are fucked, and so, accordingly, is a large part of my life.
Even now.
chord
�
�
