The Soundtrack Of My Life, Mirror Mirror On The Wall

I recently finished the book Wild by Cheryl Strayed. The book was about two things 1) What it's like to walk thousands of miles on the Pacific Crest Trail, and 2) How you heal the holes in your heart by doing something like walk the Pacific Crest Trail.

I've spent a lot of time in therapy the past two years tapping out all of this garbage (my own version of the Pacific Crest Trail). Much of what you're reading here are Significant Events in my life that before tapping felt just as devastating in the present as the past. Fortunately, that's no longer the case. I recognize it sucked, and it shaped many of the (bad) decisions I made later, but it doesn't feel like a stake in the heart anymore. (Good thing, people. It's progress.)

Anyway, after reading Wild it gave me another means of understanding these things. These events all created holes in my heart. Lots and lots of holes. (Some of the biggest holes we have are things we believe about ourselves, but aren't actually true. It's just something someone else said that we accepted as true. And that is what we're addressing today...) So much of what will come after this is all the things I unknowingly did to fill those holes I didn't know I had. I tried to fill them with people and various things. None of that works. No person can fill that hole for you. No thing can fill it for you. Only you can heal that shit up. From this place where I am now... it astounds me that the greatest damage in most of our lives occurs in middle/junior high school and high school. We spend so much time after that trying to fill those holes, but often just making more. What a freakin' mess.

Circa 1978, a few years before this incident, but still... so damn unpretty.

On to the story for today.

When: Sometime in junior high school
Where: Some class I can't even remember, but wasn't mine
Why: I don't even remember

So what happened? I brought a note to a teacher in a class that wasn't mine. Maybe it was from the library, since I worked in the library in junior high. I walked in the door and several boys started making barking noises. You know, like I was a dog. Ugly. As in not pretty.

The whole thing lasted maybe thirty seconds.

Of course, those boys weren't the only people in that school who made me feel that way. That happened on a daily basis.

But that one incident filled me with shame and humiliation YEARS after the fact. I'm positive those boys don't even remember it. Probably forgot it before the class period ended.

The one thing I'm certain that junior high school does is make people feel so damn unpretty. This feeling leaves a hole that many people spend their entire lives trying to fill. I've spent more time than I'd care to admit. Even now, I find myself looking in the mirror not liking anything from my hair to my shoes. It's only in the last few years that I've come to realize that voice is 13-year-old me still feeling insecure, unloved, and unpretty. I have to constantly tell her to shut the fuck up. (Pardon my language, but those negative tape loops are pervasive and only respond to vigorous language.)

One last thing before the song. I know some people didn't care for the movie Pretty Woman... for reasons to large to elaborate on here. However, I loved that movie if for nothing else, this one bit of dialogue that occurred somewhere in the middle of the movie. It spoke to this gaping hole in my own heart (that shockingly enough I didn't realize was STILL there). Now it says to me that way too many people allow negative tape loops to take over the brain. We allow other people and their cruelty to become our own way of speaking to ourselves, thinking about ourselves, etc. And that voice drives our choices. That voice convinces us to make terrible decisions. So, what was the dialogue?

Since you asked so nicely:

Vivian: People put you down enough, you start to believe it.
Edward Lewis: I think you are a very bright, very special woman.
Vivian: The bad stuff is easier to believe. You ever notice that?

(Courtesy of IMDB.) Bolding mine.

Did you feel unpretty in school? Does the 13-year-old inside still sneak out and sucker punch you? Have you healed up the holes in your heart?

If you're enjoying these posts, feel free to share your own Soundtrack. This isn't a hop. No requirements at all, but a suggestion to do it one song at a time. (If you participated in the hop several years ago, you can still do this. Just post them one song at a time, with the freedom to add more songs if you'd like.) I'll link to all participants at the bottom of each of these posts:

StMcC Presents BATTLE OF THE BANDS

WHERE IS THE OFF SWITCH?

Okay, this is my last post about high school in terms of me and my therapy. Yeah, I am still doing my internal work that led to my bad decision making later in life.

If you will recall, I mentioned three junior high schools: Wilson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt. Well... my mom and I went round and round about this before I wrote that blog. I kept saying to her that there were four junior high schools, but I couldn't think of the name of the fourth. She couldn't either and she knew the locations of the above three.

She says to me, "If there was a fourth, where was it?"

This was not a fair question. I didn't know where Lincoln and Roosevelt were located. I still don't. Let me put this into perspective for you. After I got my first car, I did minimal driving. I drove from my house to school and back. I could drive to my various friends' houses. However, one night at the dinner table, I said this, "I don't know what I am going to do tomorrow. After school I have to go to Somewhere (on the other side of town) and run some errands and then I have to go back to the high school for play practice (or some sort of practice, I don't remember)." My brother laughed out loud. He was four years younger than me and could easily do this. My parents looked at me like I had grown an extra nose on my face.

Finally, my mother says, "You are kidding, right?"

I say that I am not and they go over the route with me. The only way I knew how to get to school was from MY house. I was having to come at it from another direction and I was clueless. Yeah, this dysfunction created a lot of problems for me for a long time. In other words, I spent a lot of time being lost. It took about ten years for the concept of north, south, east, and west, to actually stop being conceptual and actually be REAL. Once that happened, driving got a lot easier. Yeah, I know. Sometimes book smart and street smart are two really different things. One other thing I learned. Being lost isn't always all bad. You can find shortcuts. Moving on...

I thought of the fourth junior high: Kennedy. I have no idea where it was located, in case you were wondering.


Anyway, our high school was huge. My graduating class was huge. The best thing about the merger of all of these junior highs was that they filled in that socio-economic gap that we had at Wilson. It no longer existed. When that happened, all of the rules changed. In fact, the kids on the hill didn't feel quite so entitled anymore. They were outnumbered here. So, the things that brought people together changed. Of course, people that grew up together and had been best friends stuck. However, a lot of new friendships formed based upon mutual interests. For instance, people who played sports could actually become friends in this environment. At Wilson, that wasn't really possible if one person lived on the hill and the other person didn't. Now, it was. Like I said, the rules changed.


As for me, my friends became 1) choir people 2) theatre people 3) smart people. Yep, I was taking all enriched classes for college, so I had a lot of classes with the same people all day. Guess what? A lot of those people were kids from the hill at Wilson. However, the switch had flipped. Why? Because I was one of the smart people. The rules had changed. Our class had about 300 people in it. I graduated #23 with a 4.0 GPA. I actually got invited up to the hill to study with some of these people who previously wouldn't talk to me. We become pseudo-friends. Study buddies. You know geek stuff. Same went with choir and theatre. Although that was more fun and the friendships were more real. In any event, all the disdain and disrespect that flew at Wilson evaporated at Newark High School. I don't know if it was like that for everyone. But that was what it was like for me.

So, Robin, if life was so freaking awesome in high school where is the therapy coming in? Well, it is that darn tape loop from Wilson that would still play in the back of my head. I didn't understand about tape loops then. I sure didn't know how to turn one off. So, it didn't matter how good things were going, there was always a lingering feeling of doom.


1)You're not enough. You'll never be enough.

That one liked to kick in when things were going really well. Things would go good and that tape would start to play. Suddenly, that urge to look over my shoulder. Check and double check. Just an ick feeling. Something bad is going to happen today.

2) Unpretty.

Boy, that one was completely unshakable. I was an expert at self sabotage. Anytime I thought someone would ask me out, I managed to make that not happen. And if it did. After we were going out for a couple of weeks, the feeling of insecurity ran so deep, that I would break up with the guy. I am too busy with music, theatre, etc. No time for you. Adios. Heaven forbid someone actually make me feel good about myself and pull that tape out of my loop.

3) I am not good at sports.

We only had gym sophomore year. Maybe just one semester. It is funny because I just don't really much remember it. By this time, I really wasn't good at sports. My brain had won this battle. And I read most of the time, etc. I was out of shape. I truly no longer was good at sports. However, this must not have been as traumatic as Wilson, b/c I hardly remember it.

As I said, I was really involved in theatre. I know that I wrote a blog about when Mrs. Booher took over the theatre department. That was this huge blessing for me. We always did a musical in the fall and a straight play in the spring. My junior year we did OKLAHOMA. That was fun. I didn't have any sort of big role. The seniors got those. However, it was fun being in the chorus. I auditioned for the straight play, expecting the same. It was UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE. I hoped to maybe get the role of a student. I actually got a pretty big part. Not the lead, but the other teacher, Bea. I was shocked.



My senior year, the musical was L'IL ABNER and I got the role of Mammy Yokum. That has to be one of the best parts ever. I still have the corn cob pipe. That character was a hoot to play. In the spring, the straight play was ARSENIC AND OLD LACE. There are only three female roles in that play and two of them are the old ladies who keep killing people off with arsenic. It is a comedy, for the record. Had I not just played an old person in L'IL ABNER, I would have been totally jazzed about that. As it was, I was meh. My unpretty tape loop kicked in. The thing is that I was also in Acting Ensemble, and we were putting on shows, and I wasn't playing old people there, and I should have sucked it up. However, my unpretty tape loop was playing.


The worst thing in the world happened. Mrs. Booher asked me what part I wanted to play in ARSENIC AND OLD LACE. She asked me what part I wanted to play. Me and my unpretty tape loop. And I told her Elaine. That was the smallest female part in the entire play. However, she was young blah blah blah. And that is how she cast me! And that wouldn't have been so bad if one of the actresses playing one of the old ladies hadn't sucked lemons. I mean she just couldn't act. Mrs. Booher worked with what she had. She cast a plump girl and a thin girl to play those parts. The plump one was good. The thin one was not. My best friend's brother came to see the play, probably because he had some friends in it, and he actually said to Jennifer, that it was a relief every time I came on stage because that is the only time that play didn't suck. Keep in mind, her brother didn't like me. He found me annoying. So that really was a compliment!


I know that Mrs. Booher had to have regretted asking me what part I wanted once rehearsals began and she saw that this girl couldn't carry her weight in the role. I know that I regret it now. In fact, I have regretted it for years. It never occurred to me that in high school and college would be the only time I would get to play old people until I was actually old. It was a gift. An acting gift. I was so blinded by my unpretty tape loop I couldn't even see it. I wish that she had dragged me into her office and explained to me what a gift it was. Or cast me in the part I was meant to play because it was the right thing for the show. And then say it just like that if I asked why I didn't get the part of Elaine. I feel certain that she asked me what part I wanted to play because she respected me as an actor, and she wanted to give me the gift of a choice. How many high school directors do that for their kids? Not many, I am thinking. I love her for it, but I wish she'd just cast me in one of the lead roles, because high school kids don't have a clue as to what they are doing. Besides, how do you explain you want a small part because you feel unpretty?

Don't forget to turn off my music player at the bottom.

I CAN'T TELL YOU WHAT IT REALLY IS...

I can only tell you what it feels like, and right now there's a steel knife in my windpipe. I can't breathe.

If those words sound familiar it is because I borrowed them. Or stole them. Or copied them. Maybe I plagiarized them. I don't know. Ask Purple Cow. She wrote a blog all about this and seems to have a handle on it. I want to get back to the topic at hand. Oh yeah, I borrowed them from Marshall Mathers. It is the opener from his song I LOVE THE WAY YOU LIE. Which is about abuse. Well that is appropriate for this blog. Moving on...

I wrote this blog on Wednesday. It was about my first day of school at Wilson Junior High School. I also wrote this blog a while back to help you gain some understanding, if you want further understanding, of all the things spiralling out in my life and making me feel like crap back then.


I have spent two days trying to get a handle on why my junior high school experience was worse than other people's experience. I have decided that it was not worse than everyone's experience, obviously. Wilson was just the worst junior high school in my town. There were two other junior high schools that didn't spit out kids who felt like they walked through a war zone. Why? All of those kids were, more or less, living at the same socio-economic level. In other words, they were more the same than they were different. It was only at Wilson that they took kids from the bottom of the food chain and kids from the top and threw them together. It was like expecting community fish and piranhas to live in harmony. Ha.

I think I mentioned that I wrote several blogs about junior high on facebook and got this unexpected backlash of comments and emails. It turns out that it was torturous for everyone that went to Wilson. The kids from Lincoln and Roosevelt were like, "Whatever. It kinda sucked." The Wilson kids aka adults read that, got drunk, and sent me crying emails. So, no, this horrible, miserable, three years were not just mine. The pain was spread around. However, I can't own other people's pain, and I don't know how it affected their futures. I can only speak for me.

So, Robin, what did Wilson do to you?


1) It gave me a certainty that I would never be enough. I would never have enough. I would never be able to keep up. Even if I saved and saved for the right brand of jeans to fit in, as soon as I bought them, they would go out, and I would be wrong again. Or they wouldn't matter because my shirt would be all wrong. Or my shoes. Or my coat. Or my hairstyle. It didn't really matter, because there was nothing I could do to ever be enough. I was all wrong and I couldn't change it, fix it, or accept it.

2) As a non-person at Wilson, that also makes you unpretty. Your wrong clothes with your wrong haircut combined with the glasses you have to wear... that all adds up to unpretty. Even when you get contacts, the unpretty feeling remains. Once unpretty, always unpretty.


3) You are not good at anything athletic. This is because you are small and unpopular. You are unpopular because of #1 and #2. You are small because you are small boned and naturally a small person. The super athletes at this school are not going to give you a chance to see if you can play any actual sports. Instead, they will knock you down to get to the ball. You get knocked down enough times, you are smart enough to step aside and let them play your position and theirs. The gym teacher never once calls them out for this behavior, because he thinks that you can't play sports either. This is confirmed by being picked at the end or near the end for teams. In the beginning, there was this thought that ran in my head, "If they only knew I am a gymnast and I can out play their ass if they would let me." That thought lasted until I picked myself up off the ground the fourth or fifth time. Then it became, "I suck at sports." Don't ask me to play sports, because I really do suck at sports now. I hate effin sports.

4) Fear. I learned all about fear at Wilson. Unfortunately, I didn't learn what to do with it. I worked on my invisibility skills without a lot of success. There was this one girl who I thought was just bullying me. Turns out it was her mission to terrorize as many people as possible. (That was one of the things I found out on facebook.) It was daily. Pokes and jabs. Small things. The irony is that I never saw them coming until they hit their mark. How do some people do that? Her best ones were always when I thought she would overlook me that day. Or when I thought I was in a safe zone like class.



We were in Home Ec. In hindsight, I should have taken Shop. Careerwise, it would have served me better. It was the cooking day. We had made our Whatever. It was all up at the front and there was a line. I already had mine and was sitting at my table. Kellie (yeah that's her real name), my tormentor, was walking back to her table with food and drink and decided to stop right behind me. Not good news. I only knew she was there because she started talking to me. She was holding her cup of red juice over my head. She says, "I could pour this whole cup of juice over your head and nobody would care." She gives that a long pause to let it sink in. The nobody would care part and the fact that she's contemplating such an act. The cup is still dangling over my head. "You're no one in this school." She let that sink in. Cup still dangling. "I could say I slipped. No one would question me." Finally someone came back to my table and she moved on. She and her cup of red juice. And I said nothing. Not to her. Not to anyone at my table. Maybe not to anyone. Well, probably to my neighbor, Robin, who got to hear about each and every horror that I lived through at Wilson. Not sure anyone else. Well, all of you who are reading this.

It probably wasn't long after that I read THE OUTSIDERS and it changed everything for me. And I wrote about that in this blog. Matter of fact, on my trip to the library today I checked out that book again. I haven't read it since I was a teenager and I wanted to see if it would read the same now. Probably not quite.


Wilson. The place I lost my voice. The place that a whole lot of people needed to be told to fuck off (pardon my language, but there really is no nice way to say it). I wish that I had seen PRETTY IN PINK sooner. Of course, that was impossible, because it hadn't been made yet. However, there was my answer to problem #1. If you can't keep with The Jones's you don't try. You think about this problem and decide on YOUR STYLE and then you create it. It might mean you spend some time in Goodwill and places like that, but you get creative.

My point is this: I thought I kicked that negative tape loop when I went to high school, because I loved high school, and I have an awesome Kellie story (later gators). BUT... somewhere in my head that tape loop is still running. Or it was. Or it can. When I feel under pressure or something makes me feel like I am back at Wilson for some reason, that switch gets flipped. I need to burn that tape once and for all.


and before I make any more copyright infringment mistakes....
all images found at www.weheartit.com