Loving Powerful People

[Hopalong]

Hi Sealynx,

I am moved by this post, and it causes a lot of reflection. Just to be complicated, it can be a mixed bag.

When I was little, I was reading early and funneled straight into first grade when I was barely 5. (At a snob school, also.) My experience through 9th grade (which I flunked out of pure depression and repeated) was utter despair, daily heartbreak. It hurt so much that if I'd understood what suicide was, I would likely have tried it. I was at the bottom of the pecking order. I was what the smallest chicken pooped on, frankly. The viciousness of my peers, particularly but not exclusively the girls, was devastating.

I still have the scars. At 59, small things with women can sometimes bring the whole thing back. I'm watchful so I don't let little incidents take me back there, but I carry it.

Yet. As a genetic accident, I look like my dimpled Dad and have other features that fit this culture's mode of "beautiful". (Heck of a lot less interesting to anyone now that I'm 59, and that's fine with me! I dress down and don't do fashion, though I am vain about my hair.)

Anyway, the way I thought of it as a young woman, by which time I'd forgiven the girls of my childhood and had fallen in love (metaphorically speaking) with the joy of friendship with women, had become a feminist, the whole electrifying sisterhood consciousness-raising enchilada...was that I knew I got "pretty points" that women who didn't fit the cultural "formula" didn't get. It was just like racism. A form of sexism. Whateverism.

Yet, I had spent more of my life at that point being hated. Bullied. Picked on. And hurt. Dimples didn't help...

Because of this, I try not to be "stopped" by what we label beauty, ugliness, wealth, race, gender, when I want to feel like part of the human community. I have to extend my welcome, is how I feel it...in my heart. I have met lonely beauties, suicidal millionaires.

Just wanted to say that there is pain and need, even among those who "look lucky". So usually just being friendly carries me past my memories into a chance to be "present" with a new person.

Thanks for writing this...it can be hard to remember to set the baggage down.

Hops

[Sealynx]

Hi Hopalong,
Thanks for sharing your story. I know that every life has its struggles. I can see where one friend of mine is rather confused at this moment and spends a lot of her time reminiscing and trying to contact people from her past as if that will bring back the "old days" when new people were an easy commodity. We are all in our 50's now and even though they still command attention, the admirers are fewer and farther between. The quality of the people has also gone down. More of the single adults looking for friends are in the market because of issues they have that are much worse than mine. In many ways I'm more prepared for this stage of life then they are. At the same time there is a sadness that "the good ole days" they look back on were never there for me and that active social time has passed me by.