Contempt

My therapist, Mary, cut me loose when I refused to allow her to get CPS involved. I guess she told my beloved teacher that I was going to continue to need someone to talk with. She must have thought that would somehow keep me alive. Beloved teacher said that she'd spoken with one of the school counselors who could get together with me for half an hour every day.

I already knew Mrs. B. from working in the office at my high school. I was lucky enough to work there during the 45 minutes I was supposed to be taking P.E.. It was a big relief for me and for the people who had to put up with my complete lack of motor skills. No one wanted me on their team and I was quite willing to oblige. I'd figured out a way to avoid ever participating in any team sports in P.E. But that's another story. I liked Mrs. B. and I thought that since Beloved Teacher recommended her, she must be okay. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Over the next several months, I spent some time telling Mrs. B. everything I thought she could handle. She couldn't handle much. I clearly remember that horrified, looking at a decapitated corpse in a car wreck look she'd get while I related events that barely even affected me at that point. A look of disgust crossed her face and set up residence. I started dissociating the minute I walked into her office. Her reaction to me was an assault that I had to vacate my body in order to tolerate. Her solution to my problems? Oh, come now! Surely you know? That's right, turn to Jesus.

The minute the Jesus thing came up, I knew our relationship was broken beyond repair. Jesus had nothing to do with my life. If Jesus couldn't fix things up for me in the past 17 years, I didn't have any faith he'd see fit to help me now. Furthermore, since Jesus was MIA in my life, I had decided to return the favor. The really sad thing is that I'm certain she didn't recognize how contemptible I found that suggestion. It was an indication of just how completely incapable she was of understanding me or my life circumstances. Did she think I hadn't already tried prayer for years and years? I had, but not a single fucking thing I pleaded for had been granted. Screw Jesus. And Mrs. B. Nonetheless, I dutifully showed up and stopped talking about the stuff that made me want to get up every day, find a gun and kill myself. She got to feel like she wasn't a complete moron and I didn't have to subject my feelings to her idiocy. As I might have guessed, it went downhill from there.

One day, as I went from class to class, I kept having these weird encounters with my teachers. My accelerated English teacher met me at the door to her room, smiling with tears in her eyes, and gently patted me on the back. I was baffled. Then I went to my Chemistry class, which went fine until the end of the class when she asked me to stay a moment after everyone else left. After everyone had vacated the room, she started telling me what a beautiful person I was. It went on like that all day for several days. Finally it dawned on me. Mrs. B. had been sitting her fat ass in the teachers' lounge, telling everyone about the things I worked so hard to keep secret. I was enraged.

It was a watershed moment. There wasn't a fucking thing I could do about any of it. I didn't want everyone in my world to know the humiliating details of my life. I had worked so hard for so long to figure out how to appear like my life was like everyone else's. I was like an alien from a foreign land. Everything had to be re-learned so I could fit in to the normal world. Mrs. B. had just obliterated all of my work. I just knew I didn't want any more pitying looks or, for that matter, those looks that communicated just how icky everyone found the life I was living. Now that they knew.

To this very day, when I think of her, I still want to kill her. I'm sure she had quite a time at her church, patting herself on the back for winning another soul for Jesus. What an idiot.

Somewhere in that time frame, I started to live a double life. I was angry at adults, angry with the "normal" world and I stopped being such a nice girl. Not that I did anything terrible...I didn't even drink. But I felt free to give shit to people I thought deserved it and that included adults. There were teachers whose lives were made a little more miserable by my presence in their class. I refused to hide my contempt. With people I thought were intelligent enough to understand the complexity of my situation, I was still the polite, overachieving, quiet person I had always been.

Beneath the contempt, of course, was just one more heartbreak to add to list of enormous losses I'd already endured. I had been betrayed and humiliated, but I refused to allow anyone to see that they'd touched me in any way. I was forced once again to confront my aloneness in the cosmos. Just like when I was a little girl and I'd try to imagine the vastness of the universe. I rememberd how small and insignificant I was. I woke up every day with the knowledge that no one gave a happy fuck about me. Even after all I'd done to be acceptable.

Here's the quote of the day;
"At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols." ~ Aldous Huxley

America held hostage day 1303
Bushism of the day:
"We've had a great weekend here in the land of the enchanted."
—Bush, referring to New Mexico, "The Land of Enchantment"
Source: Federal Document Clearinghouse, "George W. Bush Delivers Remarks on Jobs and Growth in Albuquerque," May 12, 2003

Website of the day; John Eccles on Mind and Brain
http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/science/prat-bra.htm