With this question a year ago, I reflected on how I should feel proud of myself but I just couldn’t. The anger of all that I had been through lately was keeping me from feeling something positive about myself. That has changed.
And funnily enough, I just became aware of what makes me proud of myself yesterday…thanks to my 25th high school reunion. I recently wrote about why me going is Not Happening. To be clear, I still didn’t go. Seeing pictures from the event of the people from that era that I’m friends with on Facebook just reinforces to me that I made the right decision. The people I hung out with back then weren’t in the pictures. Out of more than 600 people who graduated in our class, it looks like only about 50 or 60 people went to the reunion.
I was right too, in knowing that people who made school difficult for me would be there. Age made their faces a little less recognizable, but the name tags they wore confirmed their identities.
Though it was because of the bullying I endured from these people that made me not want to go, I also realized yesterday that it’s not just that. It’s that I’m a completely different person now than I was then. And I don’t want to be remembered as that person I was.
Granted, we are all different than we were in high school. We grow, we mature, we change. But how much? Those people I avoided surely would not bully me now. I mean, they could, but probably not for the same reasons they had back then. But deep down, there are things about them that are the same as they were in high school. For me, I don’t think much of anything about me is the same.
This retrospection is connected to my journey through my journals from that time. I filled more books during the high school years than any other time in my life. I’ve read all of the passages once and am now on my 2nd read of passages that I specifically marked the first time.
As I’m reading and processing and doing what I’m doing with these entries for my writing project, I say things out loud to teenage me. Most of the things I say are incredulous. Like, why did you let him do that?! Why are you letting them talk to you like that?! Why did you answer that question?!
She and I are incredibly different. I am nothing like her now. I’ve written a lot about my newfound ability to use my voice, which, to answer the prompt question, that’s what I’m most proud about right now. Back then, when people would say horrible things to me, I felt dejected, sad, embarrassed. I never said anything back to them. I internalized their words and shrunk myself down.
I was thinking about why I did that. Why did I let them talk to me like that? Why did I answer their demeaning questions? Why didn’t I stand up for myself and tell them all to fuck off? Simply put, I think it was because of my father. And my mother. My father got mad at me all the time and yelled at me and made me feel stupid for existing and doing normal things. The criticism was intense. Because he was my father, I was powerless to stand up to him. I couldn’t respond. My mother didn’t either. She kept silent through it all and didn’t defend me once. I learned that silence was safer. Letting him rage at me without protesting was the easiest thing to do. Because of that, it made me defenseless against everybody else. Thanks dad.
And people at school saw that I was like that. How embarrasing for me. All around. Would they see me like that now? 25 years later? I still see them as bullies. Why wouldn’t they still see me as a victim? We didn’t stay in touch after graduation. I made sure of that. Social media wasn’t a thing until a few more years after that. There was no opportunity for them to see how I changed.
But I have.
People don’t make fun of me anymore. My father doesn’t yell at me anymore. However, people that I encounter at work make me mad sometimes. Phone calls from the public get under my skin sometimes. Even my sisters, sometimes they’ll say something that really doesn’t sit well with me. My husband too will make comments that I don’t like. (I’m not impatient!!)
The big difference about those comments now, is how they make me feel. If I’m being criticized, it no longer makes me want to cry. It doesn’t make me wither and shrink. It doesn’t give me anxiety. It makes me angry. It’s that making my blood boil kind of feeling. I’m irritated by it. And then I respond.
If it’s another employee at work, I shoot off a well-composed email that responds to their comment or question. Professionally of course. If it’s someone from the community that I’m on the phone with, I don’t back down and give in to their demands. I don’t change my stance or what the resolution is simply because of their nasty attitude. In fact, it’s the nasty attitude that keeps me from bending the rules in their favor just to please them. You don’t like the answer, try asking nicely next time. If it’s my sisters, I will share my opinion, unpopular though it may be. I will not hesitate to disagree with them, even on the most sensitive, let’s-not-talk-about-it topics. With my husband, I’m more delicate, but I’ve gotten better at not going silent if he says something that makes me feel a certain way. And let me be clear, he’s not mean and his comments are few and far between. More like, observations than anything. Or even jokes. I am not as sensitive to them anymore. If a comment of his goes sideways in my brain, I am much better about responding to it with a comment of my own. I think sometimes he sees it as me arguing with him like a teenager, and that may be true, but I’m new at this. I don’t know how else to voice my disagreement yet.
Bottom line, I don’t back down anymore. I respond. It almost makes me wish I could experience high school again with this new super power of mine. What would the good ole’ high school experience be like if I really didn’t let people talk to me the way they did? How would those people see me 25 years later if I stood up to them every time they tried to knock me down when we were young? For one thing, I know I wouldn’t see them as bullies, because I wouldn’t have let them bully me. Maybe I would have even gone to the reunion.
I’m not the same person I was. There is very little about me now that I can recognize in the person I was then. I didn’t like teenage me. She was the person she had to be to survive. I’m not in survival mode anymore though. I am now who I should have been. Who I was always meant to be. And damn that makes me proud.
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