Lucky 21: a mini memoir

“It’s like I’m a piece of cheese and they’re two mice, fighting over me, playing tug-of-war, pulling me apart.”


I had to be about 6 or 7. The psychiatrist, I forget his name now, was impressed. I don’t remember how my Mom and Gram responded, but it’s the first time I ever remember feeling proud of myself. In a year or so, I’d have my very own counselor to listen to my worldview – Glenda (loads of Oz jokes there) would take me out of class and we’d play games in the school cafeteria - but this was a family therapy session.


Today, language is a big part of not only how I see the world, but how I fit into it. 90% of the time, even my close friends simply cannot relate to me - and in many ways, nor I to them. It’s only through writing that I’ve been able to sort through my life, and it’s writing which has given me any hope of a brighter future.


I’ve thought a lot about how I want to execute this short essay. I could – and have – done long, lovely, "heartbreaking" accounts of my experiences, but this time I’ve decided to tell just the facts:


1)       I am lucky beyond all reason.


2)       I was born in December of 1989.


3)       My parents are L. A. G. and A. M. E. Both have a long history of mental illness, including paranoid schizophrenia and manic depressive disorder. They never really had a relationship and never married. I knew the real meaning of “bastard” from a very early age.


4)       I lived with my mother for the first year of my life, at which point she had a psychotic episode and Social Services placed me with my Gram in Adams, Mass.


5)       In Adams, I lived with my Gram and older sister. She was 12 or 13 when I was born. The identity of her father is unknown.


6)       We were poor, but Gram was pretty good at not letting us feel it. Only in retrospect do the constant TV dinners seem at all unusual. The language of the house was a better indicator, Gram was rough. Often angry. She swore so profusely that she’d often make up her own curses. I must have been attracted to her boldness though because I still remember her growling “What do you think I am, a goddamn story teller?!” after what must have been my 100th plea for her attention. It didn’t stop me from asking a 100 and 1 or 100 and 2nd time.


7)       My sister moved out of the house at 16, and had a nervous breakdown at 18. She then married a man who she felt she was helping out. She is currently 35 and often wiggles her way into my life only to use me. “We’re sisters, we’re supposed to hate each other”, she often said. She has helped me too, when she could. It's a double edged sword, and she has her own traumas to attend to. 


8)       I lived with my Gram until I was 9, when she died. Unfortunately, I was present at her death. I have been prescribed Effexor XR by medical professionals at Ithaca College to treat PTSD, anxiety, and depression.


9)       After Gram died, I lived in foster care for a year or so. I hated it. As you can tell by now, I'm trying to spare you deeply emotional details.


10)   Summer before 5th grade, my Dad was granted custody. I was a daddy’s girl and loved living with him, mainly because I did whatever I wanted. Later it would look a lot more like neglect than privilege. Only two months together, however, I was accepted to the Milton Hershey School (MHS) in Hershey, PA.


11)   MHS is a completely free, K-12, boarding school for underprivileged children, funded by the chocolate and candy sales of the Hershey Company. Yes, every time you’ve bought a Hershey product, you’ve paid for my education, or the education of someone in even worse circumstances – of which there are many. The environment is a cross between an orphanage and military school. Students live in studenthomes of about 12 or 13 people of the same gender. Kids come from all across the United States and represent an almost unnatural (but amazing! I would even say ideal) microcosm of races, religions, and obstacles, though our poverty and horror stories connect us as a school family. We’re supervised at all times by a set of married, Christian, rule-abiding houseparents. Students do chores, attend Chapel (seeing a theme here? I was never one for religion), and we live according to a merit system. In exchange, the school provides food, clothing, housing, braces, glasses, doctors, education – including a laptop and upwards of $75,000 for college – at no charge whatsoever.  It was both a miracle and a living nightmare for me. It was a necessity.


12)   From 5th through 7th grade, I lived with strict Christian houseparents who I feel I can genuinely say mentally abused us all and set us against each other. They terrified me. I only ever wanted their love (which I thought meant their approval) and it was my own downfall. However,  all my other houseparents were perfectly well meaning people who didn't make me shake with fear, though sometimes squirm with embarrassment.

13)   Academically, I found a home in the classroom at MHS that I didn’t have at C.T. Plunkett Elementary in Adams. I wasn't a "smart kid" until I started going to MHS. It was also my escape from the student home. In 6th grade, I was introduced to reading through the Harry Potter books. They were banned in Eastmore for being full of such blatant Satanism as children being out of bed, and so I had to sneak the books in and read them as quick as I could. I’d just finished Prisoner of Azkaban when my roommate told on me, and I had to stand in front of everyone and promise never to do witchcraft. At least then the books were allowed. Later, when I studied for the SATs in high school, I re-read the whole series and believe my score was directly correlated to that. Not that the SATs, or really any external value system, holds much weight with me these days.


14)   Anyway, besides mathematics, the learning environment there really nurtured me. My teachers liked me, and due to the size of the school, I gained a reputation which got me out of trouble on more than one occasion – to the resentment, it seemed, of my peers. I didn't feel like I had a lot of friends though I wished they would like me. I kept close to only a few people at a time and believed it was better that way, though I regret not reaching out more now. In 8th grade, I started sleeping a lot and feeling disconnected but I dealt with it by keeping a journal.  I now have digitized journal entries from every year since I was 12 years old. I did it just to feel like my life had some cohesion. 


15)   In high school I lost my appetite for books and saw myself stop reading outside of assignments, and then I didn’t even read those. However, no matter what I did, I still got As and Bs (again, outside of math). I was known by the other kids for being four things:


1.       intelligent (in the know-it-all, I make people feel insecure kind of way)
2.       bold (had my moments)
3.       artistic
4.       white as they come (which I got the message meant being out of touch, especially awkward and aggressively emo)


16)   My proudest memory of MHS was earning a “Spartan H” for Varsity Swimming because I knew it was unexpected, even though the sport itself would send me into panic attacks.


17)   I often wonder if the school legitmately prepared me for the world I would find myself living in.


18)   I chose my college for its a) distance from home (far as allowed) and b) writing program. I dreamt that college was where I’d always belonged and I saw it as a utopia filled with “normal, public school people” that actually gave a shit about learning and were as intellectually curious as I was without all the dysfunctional drama. Without the psychosis that gets passed on, sometimes inevitably. I have been utterly disillusioned, but I’ve also learned a lot of important things. I've learned most people - no matter their background - just don't give themselves enough credit. I've learned that we live in a culture designed to make us hate ourselves. I've learned that problems are relative, but even so, they don't define us - our reactions, our choices, are what should define who we are. If we lived by our choices, with our thoughts out in the open, we might realize we have more in common than we ever believed possible.


19)   Spring 2011 I spent the semester abroad where I earned my CELTA which allows me to teach English as a foreign language. This is what I wrote in my final reflection for the course:
     “This course has been a challenge for me, and therefore it has also been an absolute pleasure. Throughout my academic career I have seldom felt challenged, though I always manage to obtain a high grade. I’ve become accustomed to skipping homework and generally procrastinating because my intellectual abilities have outweighed my behavior. I’ve sensed for a long time that I wasn’t really learning much in the classroom – that I was missing a deeper understanding – but for some reason whatever I did was declared ‘good enough’ by my teachers and so I have carried on this way until now.
     In this course, I couldn’t rely on my writing abilities. I couldn’t rely on my memory to sponge up the material and then wring it out during a final exam. I have my own theories about intelligence. One part of it is that everyone has their own sense of intelligence. There are no stupid people, only uninformed or misinformed people. Further, those who excel in the classroom are able to learn in more various ways than the average person. They have visual, auditory, and tactile awareness of the material no matter how it’s presented. These learning styles do not necessarily translate into teaching styles, however. This course has taught me the difference between practice and theory.”


20)   On September 29th of this semester, I had a conference with ZZ Packer as part of the Distinguished Visiting Writers program. The story she read is about a 12 year old Mexican boy named Julian Ellis and his journey through foster care. ZZ really liked it. It was the happiest day of my life – I don’t think she realized it, but her validation of my writing ability was a validation of my life. My only disappointment is my need for that validation. Nevertheless, the connections between my life experiences and the elements of that story are undeniable. The idea that I had gone through shit – all this shit you’ve now read - and now it was worth something – that I have value – it was, it is, like breaking through ice.


21)   21 – my current age – my current stage in life. I’m an oddball case, and I know it. I’ve been both a bookworm and a stoner. I’ve been both a basket case and a leader. A suck up. A rebel. A visionary. A common piece of "white trash". I want to belong, but at the same time, I want to get the hell out. Now, on what might possibly be the brink of a new life – a writer’s life – I’m once again that cheese, tugged between two worlds, part of neither. So what’s a girl to do but go back to the beginning.


Fact number one: I am lucky beyond all reason.


When I was a baby, my mother could have killed me. When I was a child, my Gram’s death and foster care and MHS could have sucked out my soul. When I was a teen, the kids in school and the overwhelming authority of countless rules and policies could have gotten to me. And without MHS I may have never gone to college - at least not a private one that's for sure. When I got to college – that fact alone lucky in itself – I could have given up, and I wanted to many, many times. In Europe I could’ve let my past control my happiness. This semester, I could’ve gone home, done with it all – done with fighting an invisible monster. Be drowned by depression and stress. But I can’t. I can’t because I’m lucky. I have no reasonable, simple, explanation for being here, but I am. So I have to keep going – I owe it to everyone who deserved just as much to be in my place. I owe it to my Gram who gave up her golden years to raise her daughter’s daughters. I owe it to talented friends who just didn’t have enough to finish their degrees. I owe it to myself, because we all need hope, love, and meaning – no matter where we find it. And if I ever do “make it”, then I’ll shed light on this dark world that 90% of even my close friends can hardly imagine, one that has sucked so many worthy minds and hearts into oblivion. 

That’s my discourse, that’s where I’m coming from. That’s my story.


Any questions? Feel less alone? E-mail me: wonderverse42@gmail.com DEFUNCT