I’m back!

Sorry I’ve been gone for so long. I think I was using all my creative energy on the show, and had none left over to even think about this blog.

But the show’s over, and I’m ready to do some writing, babe!

 THE PROMPT: WRITE ABOUT A CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCE THAT MADE YOU CRY

Sometimes she’s still there, still with me, the kid who hid her head on her desk and cried until the snot embarrassingly managed to smear itself all over the desktop. I remember her frantically trying to figure out how to get her head and the snot up without undergoing further ridicule, and the impossibility of it, and the roars of laughter by the other kids. I went from being the youngest kid in the school and the skinniest to being fat. But that skinny kid, the one who was all insecure and who got made fun of, is still in there. And sometimes she makes her presence known at the most unexpected of times.

Like when I see a kid being picked on. It all rushes back, then. I see the kid’s hunched shoulders and the fast-paced walk past the tormentors, and remember taking that very same walk in that very same pose.  Back then I just thought they hated me and I couldn’t figure out why. It haunted me. I spent more hours than it was worth trying to answer that question, before I grew up and forgot, before I grew up and understood, before I grew up and realized the conflict between the strong and the weak.

There were so many times that made me cry. I’m an emotional person, and always have been. But I think most of the tears stemmed from the bewildered why-me-ness of it all. Why did the guys run home so that they could throw rocks at me every day as I walked past? That made me cry, and my tears fed their scorn. The rocks grew bigger and their aim grew truer. I hated that year.

Why did Angela pretend to be my friend just so that I’d take her to my house? I was so excited. She used to beat me up, and now she’s my friend? Wow! So she went home with me and we played at whatever 5th graders play at. I thought it was fun. The next day when I arrived at school, though, she and everyone else were laughing and pointing fingers and mocking me. It turns out she’d made up a whole bunch of shit and shared it with everyone. That may have been the day that I got the snot all over my desk.  Maybe not. They kind of blurred together.

And there were the boys. Rhett. That really was his name, you know. And he had the long shaggy blond hair that was so popular with kids my age back then, and I worshiped him. And I got up my nerve, some how, to go to the fucking Halloween party that year. My mom was thrilled, because I always avoided parties, and she could never figure out why. I dressed up as Pippi Longstocking (see, even then I couldn’t help marking myself as a dork), and we used wires to keep my pigtails sticking straight out. I can’t remember what happened at that party. I know it was bad, and I know it involved my crush on Rhett being ridiculed before everyone, but I’ve made myself forget the rest of it. There were tears that night.

I grew up on old books. I particularly remember the old Childcrafts, which were full of stories, and facts from science, and party ideas, and I got the brilliant idea of having my own party one day. I was so excited, and the girl who sat in front of me and was so nice to me pretended to be excited and promised to come. And my mom, once again, poor thing, was excited, and we got decorations and refreshments and planned party games and no one came. Finally the kid who used to mow our grass showed up, because he was just a nice guy like that. And we contrived to have a little fun, but it was horribly embarrassing. It was even worse on Monday when the nice girl who sat in front of me said, so sarcastically, “So how was your party?” I don’t think I cried then, because I’d already done all the crying, but I hated her at that moment.

I’ve got a tender heart. And people with tender hearts tend to get them drop-kicked, stomped, squished, stabbed, mutilated in every way conceivable. I’m older now, wiser, stronger. If you fuck with me, I’ll probably at least verbally give you as good as you dished out. But the heart still bleeds, and my eyes still weep when I’m alone again.

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