The Past Creeps In

I can't sleep tonight. Got the dogs settled down and us all snug in our be before 10 o'clock, but once I turned off the television and the noise maker on, my mind began to wander. For some reason I'm being pretty hard on myself. Maybe I should be. Nobody else really ever grabs an opportunity to put me in check, so perhaps I do it to myself. As I lay in the darkness, I wondered if I was depressed. I visited a friend/classmate today and time with her always makes me sad because her health is so bad. No, today was a good visit. She was in good spirits. I did some thinking on my dad today. Sweet memories of how good he kept the magic of Santa Claus going for so long for me. I was probably the last kid in my class to stop believing. I was such a gullible child. I've found myself remembering things that are probably better left forgotten, such as how poor we were and how my mom let me know. She never hid stress well. The morning I took my high school exit exam, she told me we were probably going to lose our house. Fab Mom. She was a different person back when my dad was alive. I also thought about how she tried really hard to dress us nice even though she didn't have much money. When I began seventh grade, she bought me two fashionable crop tops. One had matching shorts and the other a mini skirt. It was 1984 or '85. They were really cute. Seriously. Allison and I had taken clogging classes the summer before. There were some really popular girls in those classes. They saw my new outfits the week before school started at practice. The first day of school I dressed out for gym class in the red, white & blue striped crop top with red shorts. The shorts had three white buttons on each side, sailor style. We had gym with the 8th grade girls. One of the girls from my class and her 8th grade sister were laughing with their friends and it caught my attention, because they wanted me to be aware that I was what they were laughing at. It was the shorts. They said I looked like Mickey Mouse. And so that set the mood for my high school experience. I was a dork. Two years later that crazy bitch tried to set me on fire twice in one night. She looks rough now. Life after high school must not have been so kind. I never owned any cool jeans until 8th grade. Well, I had a childhood friend that gave me a hand-me-down pair of striped Lee's, that were too big for me, but I still felt special in them...until she told my sixth grade class that she gave them to me and for some reason everyone felt the need to question me about it. The eighth grade jeans were purchased as a gift for winning the Jr. Miss Panther Profile pageant at school. Like I said they were the first cool jeans I ever had that were my very own, never worn by anyone else, but me and they actually fit. They were Lee's, also. They were dark denim, with a slightly darker paisley print on them. They had tight ankles with little one inch slits on the outside of each hem. I wore them tucked into Mom's black boots the Monday after the pageant with, I believe, a top my mom let me borrow. So, there I was, the girl with one good outfit, the school beauty queen. Yes, it went over nicely. Not hardly. I had a few good girlfriends, but it wasn't long before rumors that I was stuck up surfaced. I was perplexed. It's not like I began hanging out with a new group of friends. The popular girls that didn't win didn't befriend me. Matter of fact, they began taunting me and trying to pick fights with me. Ah, memories. I wish I could have handled it all differently, but I just didn't have the skills. Shit, I'd just learned the truth about Santa Claus!

When I was in fourth grade, I wet in the bathroom floor. I don't know why. I needed to go and the teacher wouldn't let me go when I needed to. The girl that was in the bathroom with me, ran back to the classroom and stood before the whole class telling everyone. I was humiliated. When I sat down in my chair, the boy I liked asked me if it was true. I lied. I only had one friend, Lori. She wasn't in my class. The next year I transferred to another school. Small blessing I suppose, being dubbed the girl who peed in the floor could have been bad, but don't worry there were worse things. I don't think we were quite so poor when we rented a small house in Oneonta. The school transfer was due to my parents building a new home in the Cleveland School district. I think my parents had money problems before, but the house payments were hard on them, I think. They didn't really have a choice though. The rental house had two bedrooms and 1 bathroom. My mom had Robin and then, oops, got pregnant with Lesley, like a year later. They needed space. So we moved and I was the new kid in 5th grade and Mrs. White announced how smart I was. I was dressed super dorky and this is the year I got glasses, from the eye foundation. Yes, they were terrible, but free. I look back at the pictures and I was so awkward, bad hair, my teeth were still finding their places and I was bug-eyed. No wonder I didn't have any friends. I didn't. Can't think of one in 5th grade. I still had my Lori back at Oneonta, but we were growing apart fast. Bear Bryant died that year.

We were kids. That's what I chalk all the misunderstandings, broken hearts, and slit wrists up to now. When I think back to most of the girl fights and most of the being used by boys and using them back, I just say to myself, "We were kids." Kids make bad decisions. Especially me, I was flying blind. When it came to dating, my mom just said don't do bad things, you'll go to hell. Good talk, eh. Now there are a few exceptions, people I don't excuse. My second boyfriend, was a creep that used me, took advantage of my naivety, then made fun of me behind my back, causing a fair amount of damage just before I turned 16. I don't wish him well. The guy that I was engaged to right out of high school, another winner (sarcasm), needed "time with his friends", a line I'd heard from my previous boyfriend who broke my heart, so I handed his ring back. Haha about the time Robin ran around the house with the hose pipe and sprayed him down! Not funny at the time, but hilarious now. Come to find out, he needed the break so he could bang this chick we'd been going to church with. How did I find out? When he came crawling back, I asked if he'd dated during the month we'd been apart and it all came out easily enough. Now he's still living at home with his parents at 40 trying to get disability. I've often admitted that, growing up, if there was a loser within a fifty mile radius, he'd end up on my parents front porch. There were a few good guys. The ones that I will accept a friend request from.

My wandering brings to mind a few sweet little fellas I had some fun with in college. I cheated on my non-attentive boyfriend with them. One was a great friend to me. We just weren't on the same page. He visited me after I transferred to Montevallo. I'm not sure what he wanted. I think a relationship, but he should have said something before I changed schools and got back together with someone that I'd just end up cheating on again. I know I sound awful, but around this time I had absolutely no morals. I really do feel bad about the other guy. I met him at a "ART" party. He was soooo sweet and smitten with me. So, I took him home, then saw him once more. I didn't mean to hurt him. My roommate said the rejection did hurt him. I wasn't remorseful. I had become cold. I was happy to hear he was dating a cute girl later that year. I decided to focus on my studies. I had good roommates and we shared an apartment off campus. I'd never been a drinker and I'd never done drugs, but I found myself alone every Wednesday night, because I had to walk to school so I didn't schedule night classed, but my roommates did. Broke as I was, I had a little party all by myself with iced tea and a splash of vodka. Then, I'd clean the apartment. It was the end of the semester when all four of us girls hung out one night and Wednesday night drinking came up. My neat-freak roommate said she'd noticed how clean everything looked when she came home from school on those nights. She was constantly gripping about how untidy our roomies were. All she did was complain. The one that roomed with her decided to move out and she told me to make my roommate move out. Pissed me off, cause we were close. Then, my dad set me up with Mr. Wrong and we eloped and I moved out and she was so mad because she had gotten rid of her backups.

And here I say, I regret dropping out of Montevallo and believing that jerk loved me. I hate that I believed his lies for 5 years and was stupid enough to try to have a baby with him. I regret putting myself, my body, through over a year of fertility treatments. Clomid makes you crazy, running sperm specimens to the doctor before they get cold is a treat, artificial insemination makes you feel like a lab rat, and finding out that it didn't work every month is painful. It breaks you. When I asked for a break, he decided I needed a boob job. I guess to make me a value. I didn't feel that I needed one, but I did it anyway. Not caring was a mistake because I let him choose the size. He told the doctor to make them as big as he could, short of being too big for my frame. Proportioned. I was supposed to be getting a full C, but I'm a D. I wish they were a little smaller, but it's nothing to quibble over, Lee loves them. Oh, I got the boob job for him in February of '98, told him I wanted more time before resuming fertility treatments in August and he left me for my new friend/coworker in October. They harassed me throughout the divorce, stole my tags, she had loud discussions at her desk so I could know she was talking to him, put pictures of him and his family on her desk, and drove my car to work, until one faithful day when she rear-ended me in turn lane on the way to work and management transferred her to another office. But it wasn't over. She picked at me until I left the company 5 years later. I'll be damned if she didn't show up in front of the office where I next worked. Crazy bitch! I've heard they had a messy divorce themselves, that involved the child they conceived, probably in celebration of the divorce being final. One thing. I didn't care...about any of it. I had Lee. When asked about when we got together, he laughs and says "I helped her husband move out." He did. I win!

Lee believes in me. Lee loves me. Lee thinks I'm special, and not in the retarded way :) My past made me who I am. Lee likes who I am, in spite of it. He's the best person.

Gosh, it's late and I'm not even sleepy. I'm going to be pissed at myself tomorrow morning. But I got some stuff off my chest. I didn't disturb my Lee at all, he's been snoring away beside me all along while I ramble about things that were quite possibly better left in my head. Well, there's always a delete button. Whatever, I didn't even dredge up the real dirt. Another time, then.

Below: 5th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade