Sixteen Bombs

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 6 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My subject is: You are a senior in high school again and graduation is upon you. What are you looking forward to? Vacation? College? Career? Moving out of mom/dad's house? Plans?

It was submitted by: https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

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I have had a few prompts now about going back to high school and reminiscing in that part of my past, and honestly, it's straight up not a good time, bro. I didn't enjoy my high school experience. Overall I have very few fond memories from that time and even fewer people I remain in contact with from back then. And I'm perfectly okay with that. You won't see me singing "thanks for the memories" any time soon.

It kinda feels like a downer on what is supposed to be a fairly lighthearted prompt, but who am I if not a chronic oversharer whose third favorite topic of conversation (after murderers and abolishing prisons) is her own personal trauma??!?

I surely wouldn't be me so here we go.

I didn't attend school on campus my senior year. I was enrolled in a program that let me take college courses that counted as credit for both college and high school, and even though my counselor advised against it as most students took 1 or 2, I went to college full time that year. Why, she asked...

Maybe it was the fact that I saw the person who raped me several times a week in the hallways? The person who got away with it, who stole me of innocence, killed the me that I had been? The one who had no bad memories and no PTSD and who didn't care about justice?

Or maybe the bullying? The death threats in my locker about being openly queer and protecting other queers? The fat jokes? The crazy jokes? The physical threats that used the word "dyke" like it was a dagger? Weirdo. Bitch. Lesbo. Carpet Muncher. Fat cunt. Stupid whore. Ugly. Gross. I heard it all.

Or maybe just my shit mental health from having one abusive and two mentally ill parents who finally divorced and went off the fucking rails crazy at each other and us and with new partners, having no support from either one especially ESPECIALLY for the rape and my weight and no access to mental health care on top of the rest?

No couldn't be that. I just wanted to be too grown. I needed to be a child while I could.

Guess someone should have let my parents know that 🙃

so the best part of my senior year experience is that I actually didn't have to go to high school at all. No bullshit lunches being mocked endlessly and having to stand up for my friends. No classes with the same people all day long every day of the week. No getting up early. well, except for that one physics class i took and even then i didn't go half the time. my absences there didn't count for anything unless the professor included it in their grading. It made my life a little easier, but it didn't do anything to ease the pain of everything I'd gone through until then. It just meant I didn't have to spend 8+ hours 5 days a week watching my back at school just to go home and do it some more.

I don't know what it was like for other folks, but when I was accepted to a fairly large University, my first choice and still in Georgia, that would have almost entirely been paid for by the Hope scholarship, my mom screamed and cried and threatened me about leaving her and how I must not love her if I wanted to leave. I couldn't even look forward to moving away from here. I was never going to be allowed. At least not to go to college and even now, when Im a mostly grown ass adult, the fallout from moving even within a 4 hour radius would be huge. Suicidal threats and tears...and here's the thing, it's not even about me or love for me or wanting what's best for me. It's about rejection, imagined or otherwise. It's about control, about knowing where I am. it's not the least bit healthy, and it's the boundary I have yet to be able to put up--to just pack things up and move. I'm fucking 38. It shouldn't be this way.

Here's the thing...

I cannot tell you how many times in my years at high school, in college or not (where I still got called a dyke btw), I wanted to die. That didn't stop in my senior year, and it certainly didn't give me anything to dream about or plan or look forward to. I was barely hanging on by the moment. I lived one hour at a time. Sometimes minutes.

Do you understand how hard it is to be absolutely torn down by almost everyone around you, to be damaged and beaten and assaulted and bullied, just to have your only out ripped away from you? To know beyond a shadow of a doubt that going away to college wouldnt be the last dream ripped away from you because of someone else's inability to be supportive and loving and encouraging?

What would I look forward to if I had to do it all over again?

Still breathing? I guess? I'm still here. I suppose that says something.

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Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.BakingInATornado.com

Spatulas on Parade https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

A ‘lil HooHaa https://hoohaa.com/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

The Dopest Lesson

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 11 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My “Secret Subject” is:

Fall is upon us! With the start of a new school year, do you think back on any particular grade you enjoyed? Or hated?

It was submitted by: http://thelieberfamily.com

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"All I’m saying is that if I ever start referring to these as the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself." –Randall “Pink” Floyd, Dazed and Confused

That pretty much sums up high school in a nutshell for me. I mean, it surely wasn’t the peak of my existence. In those 4 years, the couple before it, and the couple after it, I dealt with more than someone my age should have to go through, and the high school “experience” did nothing to help those problems.

I was raped at the age of 13 in my own home by a friend. I grew up in a home where my alcoholic, drug-using father was, on his best days, emotionally/mentally abusive, and I really don’t want to talk about his worst. After my parents divorced, I lived with him for awhile and got into drugs and alcohol to numb the world. I dressed weird. I acted weird. I submerged myself in 90s grunge and metal because reality had too much hurt. I was discovering my own queerness and completely out of my element in rural South Georgia where football and hunting reign supreme as pasttimes and people ask about where you go to church before they ask you your name.

It was impossible to traverse the social hierarchy even without my inept attempts at conquering my own demons. I wasn’t from a football sort of family. My dad didn’t hunt or do much of anything really but work and get fucked up, and we certainly didn’t spend Sunday mornings in church. So even if you could flip a switch and magically take away the violence of my youth and all the lasting effects, I would still have been an outcast. Of that, I have no doubt especially when you add in what a nerd I was. Straight As. Honor graduate. I lived in books, and my grades effortless. In every conceivable way, I was an outsider.

I’ll be honest—I’m kind of bitter about it despite how often I’ve tried to let it completely go.

I’m not bitter in a way that comes up every day or even often, but if tasked, like I am currently, with the thought of picking out a best or even a worst year, all I can do is let out one of those slightly disturbing, ironic laughs that doesn’t quite reach my eyes and lets you know you might’ve well have asked me if I think the Harry Potter movies are better than the books. It’s just not going to end well for you, man. Those years left an imprint and ultimately helped shape the me I am now.

I’m not alone in this. I mean, there are dozens of movies, iconic ones even, that detail the high school experience, and for many of the individuals on screen those years are some of the roughest possible. That sentiment came from somewhere, no? If Randall “Pink” Floyd, a jock with a horde of friends, too many girlfriends, and the run of the school had issues with that period of his life then it’s safe to say there’s a problem. He was, in fact, pretty fucking dreamy, wasn’t he?

Coincidentally, I watched one of those movies the other night called Dope about a 90s nerd growing up in one of the toughest neighborhoods possible—Inglewood, California in an area called The Bottoms. It’s crime-ridden with most of his peers either belonging to gangs or slinging drugs. He is constantly accused of being an Oreo (black on the outside but white on the inside) to the point he makes his own punk band named Awreeoh. He’s extremely intelligent and is on a mission to get into Harvard. Even his own teachers call him arrogant for ever thinking he could do more than be the norm for his hood. I related so hard to his story and especially this quote:

“For most of my life, I’ve been caught up in between who I really am and how I’m perceived, in between categories and definition. I don’t fit in. And I used to think that was a curse, but now I’m slowly starting to see maybe it’s a blessing. See, when you don’t fit in, you’re forced to see the world from many different angles and points of view. You gain knowledge, life lessons from disparate people and places. And those lessons, for better or worse, have shaped me.”

It’s a mixed bag really. Even while I’m bitter, I see the blessing for what it is. There may not have been a best year (or even a worst considering they were all equally unbearable), but understanding the blessing was certainly the best lesson.

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Here are the other contributions to the challenge. Hope you will check them out!

Baking In A Tornado http://www.BakingInATornado.com

Not That Sarah Michelle http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com

The Bergham Chronicles http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com

Spatulas on Parade http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

Dinosaur Superhero Mommy http://dinoheromommy.com/

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver http://www.thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html

The Lieber Family Blog http://thelieberfamily.com

Confessions of a part time working mom http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Southern Belle Charm http://www.southernbellecharm.com

Never Ever Give Up Hope http://batteredhope.blogspot.com

Climaxed http://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com           

Not So Happy Reunion

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 15 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My “Secret Subject” is:

High school reunion. You are not only expected to attend but to get on stage and talk to your former classmates about real life after school. Share your speech with us!

It was submitted by: http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch

Just so you know, this probably wasn't the kind of prompt that goes well for somebody like me. Consider this your fair warning. 

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Growing up in rural South Georgia as a bit of a weirdo, a social outcast, didn’t necessarily give me good experiences in high school.

Allison from John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club was my teenage spirit animal. In a way, she still is.

I had hippie parents growing up that had been more into records and drugs (the latter part was true for my dad not my mom) than Jesus and football. We didn’t spend Sundays dressing up to go to social hour at church only to dress down and worship the pigskin afterwards. It was a bit of anomaly here in the Bible belt where high school football teams get police escorts and the principal of our high school openly talked about Jesus at every pep rally.

I can’t say that I didn’t have friends. I did. The lot of us had very little in common and looked, at least on the outside, like the Misfit Toys from that old Rudolph Christmas special. Our common bond was the fact that we didn’t fit in anywhere else. We weren’t nerds though many of us were intelligent. We weren’t jocks though some of us could play sports. We definitely weren’t princesses though some of us had a little queen in us. And, there was a little bit of a criminal in a few of us. Weirdos. That’s what we were and in a lot of ways that’s what I still am.

In school that mattered more than it does now. I made a conscious effort to make sure everyone knew I didn’t want to fit in. I rebelled. I wore black lipstick and laughed when someone asked me if I was a witch. Rumor had it that I sacrificed goats at lunch. I was a vegetarian at the time, and I let the rumor get to me. The times that I was called dyke bothered me. The note that was stuffed into my locker featuring crudely drawn dicks and magazine cut-out letters that told me to take my fag friends to San Francisco where they belonged bothered me. Every time my friends, who did happen to be gay, were mocked and threatened, it bothered me. The whole thing was a massive trial in just how much a person can be tested, I think. I was coming out of an abusive home and recovering from a rape that took my virginity, and none of the people, you all, that pointed and laughed and spread gossip on a daily basis bothered to get to know that. The more you pointed, the more outlandish I got like it was a competition to see who would break first.

There is some part of me that would like to think I won, but the truth of it is that it just stopped mattering. I started going to college full time when I was a high school senior and never really looked back.

I had friends that would have probably walked by my side in school if I had shown up in an alien mask and an Elvis jumpsuit, and I still have some of those friends today. Outside of learning and increasing my knowledge, the only thing that matters are those friendships I made, the connections I still have, and the fact that I know in my time there I took up for people around me I loved whenever they were as heavily picked on as I was. That’s what I learned about life after school—that the things that happened there really were inconsequential. I was already going to be the strong free spirit I am today, and no amount of hillbilly finger-pointing was going to change that.

The thing of it is, a lot of us still live in this same town, a lot of us see each other on a regular basis running errands and picking up groceries, and I smile and wave and accept the friend requests on Facebook because life is a lot more complicated than bullying and high school dances and football games, and sometimes we have to play the part even when we don’t want to. But, I don’t have to stay here and party down at this reunion with people that never gave a shit to know me when we were kids, and I’m not going to. Who wants to celebrate with a bunch of assholes that I never should have let bother me in the first place, assholes that, once high school was over, really didn’t make an impact on my life whatsoever?

Now you guys can all go fuck yourselves because life after high school doesn’t involve giving a shit about what you all are doing.

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That's the way she goes. 

Alright, be sure to check out the other contributions to the Swap below. Enjoy!

http://www.BakingInATornado.com Baking In A Tornado

http://themomisodes.com The Momisodes

http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/ Spatulas on Parade

http://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/ Sparkly Poetic Weirdo

http://www.southernbellecharm.com Southern Belle Charm

http://thelieberfamily.com The Lieber Family Blog

http://batteredhope.blogspot.com Never Ever Give Up Hope

http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch Confessions of a part time working mom

http://www.someoneelsesgenius.com Someone Else’s Genius

http://www.clutteredgenius.com Cluttered Genius

http://www.smalltalkmama.com Small Talk Mama

http://www.renasworld.com/ Rena’s World

http://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com Climaxed

http://dinoheromommy.com/ Dinosaur Superhero Mommy

http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com/ The Bergham’s Life Chronicles