I Can Trust in _________

When we are young, we are taught to turn to parents, teachers, and any other figures of authority. But what if they're the ones we must fight, or if they're part of the problem? We can't turn to them, because our lives will only get worse. Or if it won't get worse, it definitely won't get any better.

Something similar to that happened to me. My main teachers of fifth, seventh and eighth grades were  bullies, in every sense of the word. They singled me out with their power, had me feel stupid at every chance they got, and any time there was blatant bullying going on from the students, they would fluff it off and say that it was normal kid stuff.

Two of them singled me out for a reason I couldn't control: my heritage. I can not change the blood flowing in my veins any more than anyone else can. They constantly said that Germans were bad people when we were learning about the Second World War, and I was the only German in the school. They said it enough times that I began to believe that I was a wretched individual for ever being born, despite the fact that I'm a pacifist, that I don't like to hurt anyone, and it takes a fair bit to provoke me.

My fifth grade teacher thought of me as insubordinate and needed to ensure that she was the teacher, that she was the boss over me. She did this by pulling me out of the room and telling me as such for silly little things - not bringing my project out to be tested when it was broken in the duration of its stay in the classroom, forgetting a homework sheet and asking for another copy so I could get the answers, and refusing to hand in an essay explaining why it was a good thing laws were broken in wartime Germany.

These things were ridiculous and she needed to assert her power so that she felt important, not because it was necessary.

Because of her, I am still scarred, and I doubt it will ever go away. My mom pulled me out of school for a year and a half because of that woman. By the time she got me out, I refused to sleep some nights because of the nightmares I would constantly get when I closed my eyes. I refused to make any more friends, because she'd target them too, for being kind to me. And I refused to try to learn because I thought there was no hope in this world that I could be a scientist or a writer or anything else.

For a full month after I began homeschooling, I refused to leave my room until 4pm due to worry that I would be sent back to school. My mom wouldn't do that to me, but that's just how fear works.

I returned in seventh grade.

In the time I was home, my mom spent more time trying to fix the mess in my head than she did teaching me what disciplines I was to know about or how people would treat me in the future. The only reason I went back was because my dad didn't like having me around the house so much, he said I needed to grow up and deal with my own problems.

The teacher in seventh grade wasn't a horrible lady, she just inadvertently did things to make my situation worse when she was trying to help. Because there was no record of my work, she stuck me in a remedial English help program, making me feel like I belonged there, with the people that couldn't pick up a novel and understand it. When she noticed I was having trouble making friends with the barbarians of my classroom, she let me eat lunch in the other class, which no other students were allowed to do, singling me out. And she was oblivious to the bullying, and I didn't feel trust enough to tell her. I really didn't trust anyone enough to say a word.

Eight grade was almost as bad as fifth, but this time I didn't even have people my own age I could talk to. And I kept as much of it as possible from my mom so that she and my dad wouldn't fight. The teacher reminded me so much of the woman in fifth grade. One day, she was showing a video based on Anne Frank. Towards the end of the period, about fifteen minutes from lunch break, I tried excusing myself to the washroom, not because I needed to use the facilities. I needed to calm down and didn't want people to see me cry. She didn't understand the urgency and refused to let me out, saying that I could wait like the other students.

Fifteen minutes later, I bolted to the washroom and curled into a corner, crying. One of my classmates found me, and she said that I was rocking back and forth. That I was whispering "It's happening again." No one could get me out of there for two hours, when I sobered up so that my mom wouldn't notice by the time I got home.

That was the start. Other things, like when I broke my ankle again and couldn't carry my own stuff around and her having the gall to say that I didn't understand disability, having me read a book for English study that I couldn't get past the first page because of the gruesomeness, forcing me to write apology homework when I was out sick the day my class misbehaved for a supply teacher. And siding with the students that were bullying me.

Any time I told my mom, my parents fought. My father was always one to believe in the Principle of Parsimony: The simplest explanation, the one with the fewest assumptions, must be the right explanation. Which meant that to him, the problem wasn't with the teachers or the other students, it was with me - I must have been doing something.

My mom wanted to give me the benefit of the doubt. And if she hadn't, if she didn't start picking me up for lunch every day, driving me to and from school, letting me take days off of school for mental health and getting to stay in bed with popcorn and movies, helping me finish my overdue homework because I spent the entire night in the hospital for another ankle break, telling me it was going to be alright someday... I would have done something irreversible.

So... I really don't believe in trusting people for the sake that someone above says I can. People need to earn their trust - be they bigger or smaller. What do you do when you can't trust anyone around you? That's what Bus People are for. That's what perseverance is for. Never give up, never let them show that you've been hurt, never let them win by having the last laugh. It really is the best way out, getting through as quickly as possible.

 I hope by reading these posts that you're finding consolation. There are more people in this world that understand what you're going through than you think there might be.

Contingency (Rant/Advise)

You can plan every second of your life, pencil in every detail that you want to make certain happen. Your entire life can be laid out such that nothing is a surprise. Only… it won't happen. You can aspire towards that big church wedding when you're five, imagine getting ready with five blonde best friends giggling about the cute groomsmen. But… what about the words "life happens" – do they hold no substance to these plans? And there's the equally important "shit happens", describing a lot

Yep. Believe it.

more of the life that I've experienced than I'd care to have ongoing. But it's true, shit happens, and you have to deal with it.

You basically have only a select few options. Option one: wallow in sadness that your perfectly designed future is in shambles, let the world win while you're at it. Option two: keep going at a dream that won't come true, hold on to a dream that barely exists by the last threads on this planet, and then head to option one after you realize it's fruitless to keep going. Or option three: have a contingency plan, and if you don't already have one that can work around or through whatever shit life gave you, make one up.

Option three, is, in my opinion, is the only feasible option for survival. And it's the best one to tell the world to stop screwing with your life. The world won't stop messing around with life as a general thing, but at least you won't let it win over yours. If the world consists of bullying people, then you basically are telling those people "up yours, I don't need or want this, and I can do better". If life is an accident that renders you unable to use your right hand and you're an artist, you figure out how to paint with your left, or you learn how to express yourself another way.

If you desperately love something, I'm not saying to forget about it if you've for some reason lost your talent for it because of an unexpected event. There are choices we can make, but not all of those options are presented pointblank. Many of them, more than are presented, are things you have to find out for yourself. And before you say you can't, try it. Try it for long enough that you know with 100% certainty that it will not work.

Or run and hide.

I don't really care what you do, because ultimately this is your life, not mine. Take my words for what they are, advice from a stranger. I am trying to help, but if I'm pushing you, you don't have to keep reading or do what I say.

But remember: it is your life. Crap may be piled a mile high on it, but as that old saying goes, when life gives you lemons, find something to do with them. Make lemonade if you have sugar. Or use them to clean up the rest of the mess that's already in your wake. Or just eat them whole. It is your life, take control of it. Own up to your short comings and to your mistakes. Be happy with what you've got, because no matter who you are, there are many small miracles that require nothing but a positive attitude to change your outlook around. Don't hide under boastings and trimmings, things that don't really matter in the end.

The real question is, in the end, what matters?

If you think sticking to a ruined plan will make you happy, good luck. I'm not saying that it won't work, but sometimes the planned ending is not the optimal. Sometimes it's the unexpected journey, the unexpected end that makes it the mile.

So dance in the rain, walk until you're lost and then stop and smell the salty air, experience the world for what it is. It's a mess. And despite how you may not want to admit it, you're probably not far off of that either. So embrace it.

Be a mess and wear a smile.


Reposted from here, my Fictionpress account. 

Window

Don't let the stormy darkness pull you down - Pete's Dragon

When I started grade 7, I felt as though I was a stranger crashing a party in mid run.

The school I'd left in grade 5 was the one I was returning to, so I wasn't completely the new kid. I still knew a couple of people from my first sentence at the school, and so I thought it wouldn't be too awkward. I tried to keep my reasons for the departure and return quiet; it wasn't something anyone wanted advertised.

I didn't want to be the girl that was too weak to last through a bad teacher's class. I didn't want to be the psychotic classmate or the one that no one could tolerate. I was embarrassed that I wasn't strong enough, smart enough. Wicked enough.

I kept on a mask, pretended that the witch walking those ten year old children down the hall wasn't there. But that pretense also kept me from being a normal kid, from being an interesting one that people were drawn to positively. It was my fear; the bane of my existence was a manifestation of my past catching up with me. And I couldn't help it. Not because I didn't want to, but rather because I was afraid of what would happen if I let my mask fall away.

We, my schoolmates and the teachers and I, became coinciding entities that never knew each another, never got to experience another, though knew of the other's existence.

My fear was a glass ceiling, and one I formed. People always said that victims of bullying and abuse are faultless, that there is nothing they're doing to deserve it. I don't believe that. Not that the victims are bad people, but it might be the way they talk, the sound of their voice, the things they find interesting; it could be anything. We are not faultless as victims, but that doesn't mean we should change what our fault is or be anything but who we are. It takes two for a fight, for a conflict. The victim, possibly unbeknownst why, is one of those two.