Frustration, Anxiety, and Tension Part 2: A Witch's Brew of All Three

In my previous post, I discussed the way frustration, anxiety, and tension can mount as you try hard to better yourself, only to be dismissively told that you're not trying. But what happens when these demons overwhelm you and you end up doing something stupid and get into even more trouble than before?

One particular incident happened to me at age eighteen, on a Saturday morning in 1998 during my senior year of high school. I was taking a figure drawing class at a local university, and during that time in my life, I was dealing with a lot and my anxiety was like a raw exposed nerve.

First, I had just finished what would’ve been my final summer at Camp Negev. I had been in the C.I.T. program that summer, and it was clear that I would not be hired as a counselor the following year. Camp was the only place I’d ever felt comfortable, and it was being taken from me. This was coupled with knowing I would not be allowed to go on the gap-year Israel program affiliated with camp. Triple that with the stress of getting ready to apply to art school to study animation. It was becoming apparent from looking at the other students’ work that they were much better than me. Did I even have a chance of getting accepted to art school? That was quadrupled with the constant feeling that my parents didn’t understand me and didn’t support who I was. Even if not their intent, they often made me feel I had to change.

What many people didn’t understand was that I was thinking about these issues constantly, as if a little bug were in my ear whispering harsh criticisms to me: “You can’t draw well enough.” “You’re a horrible person and nobody at camp wants you back.” “You can’t spend a year in Israel because there’s something wrong with you and you aren’t fit to be around normal people.” “You’re not feminine enough and you should have outgrown that tomboy stage years ago if you want anybody to accept you.”

To make matters worse, I noticed early on that the teacher of the figure drawing class did not seem to like me, often talking to me in a condescending manner. I don’t remember specifics, but I do recall that I was trying to convince myself it was just my imagination. After all, my own parents often commented that I "misinterpreted" and "read too deeply into things"-- even when I knew damn well what I was looking at. One day when I was in the bathroom, a girl from the class commented, “I don’t like the way the teacher talks to you.” At least there I felt validated, that this wasn't my imagination. I was also glad to know that somebody was on my side.

As time went on, it was becoming increasingly clear that the teacher not only didn't like me but genuinely disliked me. I watched in resentment as she got along well with the other kids and really seemed to like them. They also seemed to like her, often laughing together like old friends. Her loud, boisterous laugh got on my nerves, as if it were rubbing in my face how the others could get along with her and I couldn’t because there was something wrong with me. What indeed was wrong with me, I wondered, that made her feel that she didn't have to be nice to me? Once, she even chastised me for arriving two minutes late for the 10:00 class. A week or two later, she assured another student who apologized for arriving at 10:07 that "seven minutes is no big deal."

At some point during the semester, something happened that made the teacher take me into the hallway in frustration. Unfortunately, I don’t remember what it was, but I am confident that if I found a record of the incident somewhere, it would come right back to me. We had a tense conversation that ended in some kind of truce, for lack of a better term. At some point during the discussion I mentioned that other teachers I’d had in other classes at the school liked me.

But the dynamic between us did not improve.

In the second-to-last week of class, I was particularly on edge, the raw exposed nerve particularly irritable from the accumulating tension over the past few months. The teacher did her signature laugh when talking to one of my classmates. For some reason, it was at that particular moment that I had reached my limit. I whispered, “Aw, shut up!” At least, I had meant to whisper it, but I accidentally said it loud enough for her to hear.

The teacher yelled, “Excuse me? Who did you just tell to shut up?”

The room fell silent, all eyes on the teacher and me.

In a panic, I stammered, “Nobody. Myself.” The teacher grabbed me by the wrist like I was an unruly child and pulled me into the hallway. Eyes narrowed into slits, she leaned forward, inches from my face. She yelled at me about every imperfection I had: speaking out of turn, getting openly frustrated with my artwork, not always following directions (I guess she thought this was intentional). At one point, she said, "I have tried putting myself in your shoes. I realize that there is something wrong with you." She also said, “You are going to fuck yourself over if you think you can go through life acting like this. I have had it with you. You make me feel like shit! Oh, you know all those other teachers who you said liked you? I’ve talked to all of them and they said they didn't like you. I have been pulling every string that I can to make sure you don’t go to this school.”

Humiliated from having heard my own self-criticism come out of another person, I sheepishly said, “My teachers in high school like me.” Her response was an even more exaggerated version of her signature laugh, as if it were the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard-- how could anybody like me? Then she told me I could come back into the room and work but I wasn’t allowed to talk to her. She said if I had questions to ask the other students.

Needless to say, I only went back to get my things. Then, I found a payphone and called my parents who, thankfully, had cell phones back then. They were at a restaurant with a friend. Just as their food arrived, they got my call and had to leave to pick me up. When I found out this information, I thought to myself, "God, my parents can't even have breakfast without me fucking things up. What is wrong with me?"

My parents arrived, and I waited outside with my mother while my father went in to talk to the teacher.

When Dad came back outside, he told Mom and me about the conversation he'd had with the teacher. He said that as soon as the teacher realized that the guy who came into the room was my father, she sent her students on break and vigorously shook his hand with both of hers, obviously knowing that she was in trouble. Then, when my dad called her out on saying that she was going to make sure I didn’t go to the school, she said, “Oh I just mean if she comes I’ll make sure she gets more psychological support.” Dad said, “I’m her father and I’ll be the one to decide what psychological support she needs, not you.”

In a desperate attempt to explain the situation to my parents, amid tears I said, "It's my OCD!", invoking my recent (and ultimately incorrect) self-diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder to explain why I had the issues that I did. Dad shook his head and said, "No. This is just another case of you saying the first thing that pops into your head." On the car ride home, Mom told me that what I had done was inappropriate and that I needed "to learn to behave appropriately." It frustrated me that my parents seemed to think I was acting like this because I wanted to.

Don't get me wrong-- my parents were pretty pissed off at the teacher, but at the time they failed to grasp the reality of situations like the above. I had tried so many times over the years to explain that outbursts like these were the end result of trying to contain myself and the unbelievable anxiety I felt, but they never seemed to get it. Aside from the autism spectrum being mostly unknown, concepts like "chronic anxiety" were not topics of mainstream discussion. "Anxiety" was understood to be a momentary discomfort, not something that engulfed your entire life. I didn't even use the word "anxiety" to explain myself; rather, I often invoked a rush of adrenaline and the fight-or-flight response associated with it. I only even knew what these things were because Dad once told me about something he had read about them in college.

Years later, I found some notes Dad had taken when he called the school the following Monday to talk to the director of the Saturday program. Apparently the other teachers hadn't wanted me in their classes either.

This incident happened almost twenty-three years ago, and this type of issue that I had is largely under control. But the memory still hurts sometimes. It hurts because this was not the case of a teacher who was mean to everybody else also being mean to me. And the message that I got from the incident was one that I continued to get well into my adult life: That I am just "too much". I've been long expected to understand that I have had this kind of profound and negative effect on people that violates them in horrendous ways, and that their extreme reactions, while not ideal, are understandable under the circumstances. In fact, despite how upset my parents were with the teacher, they actually urged me to go back for the final class-- which I had no intention of doing-- because in doing so I would convey the message that I wanted to be "mature". That carries the implication that my teacher's response, while wrong, was not egregious. And no, I did not go back.

It also hurts because when I discussed this incident in autism groups in Facebook and asked if anybody had similar stories, all the "similar" stories I got were ones involving them as elementary school kids missing directions or crying in class only to get indignant hell from a teacher. None of them were stories about them in high school getting in trouble, let alone for saying something stupid. I suppose it's possible that they're just not writing about them because they're too embarrassed. But I get the impression that many of them learned early on that if they just shut up they would stay out of trouble. I don't know if it means that I was exceptionally bad at masking, that it was actually a sign that I was mentally stronger, a combination of the two, or neither.

I realize that we as a society have come lightyears since the '90s and that if this had happened today, there is a good possibility that the teacher would have been fired on the spot. But unfortunately, I was a teenager in the '90s and I have this story in my knapsack. It still hurts, and it's still confusing.

I still have the same self-doubts sometimes.

Shut Up and Listen

It has bothered me over the years that when I tell somebody a story about something I've struggled with in my life, or even something traumatic, people think the way to make me feel better and validated (if that is indeed what I'm looking for, but it usually isn't) is to say, "That happens to everyone" or "That happened to me one time..." and then they tell an anecdote that is tangentially related.

No.

Stop.

It is a simple fact that those of us on the autism spectrum have problems with things that most people take for granted. So unless your experience is really that similar (and I doubt it is), then I don't want to hear your story.

So shut up and listen.

Here are some examples of when this sort of thing has happened:

When I was a kid in the 1990s and dealing with autism in an era in which it wasn't well-known, I found myself getting obsessed with movies and television shows. I knew this was weird. I told my therapist about this, and he said, "Oh, everybody gets obsessed with things. Some people are obsessed with... relationships."

Where do I even start with this one? First of all, it was considered "normal" to be obsessed with relationships, but not with movies and television shows. And I wasn't even in a relationship, let alone getting obsessed with one. And I don't use the term "obsession" lightly, and I didn't back then. The way most people use it has the connotation of "slightly preoccupied". With me, it had the connotation of "all consuming". So no, that didn't make me feel better. It just made me feel like my shrink had no idea what he was talking about.

Shut up and listen.


Over the years, before I got the job that I've been at for three years now, whenever I told people about being fired from job after job, or having a hard time finding a job, people often would respond by telling me about being laid off and unemployed, say, for a year and a half.

No, no, no! You don't tell someone who has been chronically employed for 14 goddamned years after finishing college about the time you were jobless for a year and a half. They have nothing to do with each other, especially since chronic unemployment is textbook for autistic people.

Shut up and listen.


Last year, when I was running a debate Meetup, I got into a conversation with one of the members. I told him that I was on the autism spectrum and made some vague allusion to the fact that college was "a difficult period in my life". This guy said, "Well everybody goes through a difficult period in their life."

First of all, no. I'm not going to go into a tangent about exactly what it was, but I promise that what I went through in college was fairly unusual. To add insult to injury, the guy who said this had some kind of connective tissue disorder that made him unusually short and, with no tactful way to say it, he looked a bit odd. If he had trouble with some physical task due to his condition, it would be pretty shitty of me to tell him that everyone has trouble with [insert physical task here] sometimes.

Shut up and listen.


Recently, at a writing group, I workshopped a personal essay I wrote about an obsessive crush that I had at age sixteen during my summer group trip to Israel. As the essay made clear, this crush, on one of the counselors, had been all-consuming and seriously disrupted my experience. I chased this guy around like I was Pepe LePew and did stupid things like waiting for him outside of buildings in the middle of the night. One night I was up until 1:00 AM crying over him. 

While we were discussing my essay, I said something about how 23 years later I'm still embarrassed by my behavior. Someone thought it would be a great idea to tell me that she had a crush on a counselor when she was a kid, and she tripped and fell in front of him, and it was soooo embarrassing. 

No, no, no, no,  fucking NO! First of all, did she even read my essay? Well, yes, she did, and that's why her reaction is even more ridiculous. My piece made very clear that I was dealing with something much more serious and intense than giggling over a "cute guy". Her story about being embarrassed about falling in front of a counselor she had a crush on is not in the same universe as my embarrassment about spending an entire god damned summer obsessively chasing my crush around.

Shut up and listen.


If somebody tells you a story about something they've struggled with, just shut up and listen. Don't pretend you know how they feel. Rather than making them feel better, it comes across as dismissive and invalidating. It makes the person feel even more isolated because they are seeing further evidence that you don't appreciate the gravity of what they have to deal with. I would never tell someone starving in Africa that I know how they feel because I was hungry when I skipped lunch one time, or even because I once fasted for a day. Nor would I tell a black person that I understand how it feels to be frightened around cops, because one time I was slightly nervous around a particularly nasty one. I'm not going to tell a quadriplegic that I know how it feels not to be able to walk because I broke my ankle 25 years ago.

Really, what is so difficult about saying, "Hey, you know what? I really don't get it, but I imagine it's rough."

Or better yet, just shut up and listen.

A Sad and Cautionary Tale that Makes Too Much Sense

Note: All names have been changed to protect individuals' privacy.

I've often written about Melanie, my ex-best friend who cut me off ten years ago when she didn't invite me to her wedding and stopped talking to me completely, all without explanation. If you're late to the party, you can find the first post about it here and the most recent post about it-- which also addresses its long-term effects on me-- here. 

In the second of those links, I tell the story about how an advertisement for a "Family Movie Night" featuring Moana was the catalyst for an elaborate and embittered fantasy that I concocted in my head: one of parents cheerfully taking their kids to a Disney movie, all the while having forgotten their identities and having excised their childfree friends. 

Indeed, this is the image I had harbored of Melanie and her husband and kids for the past ten years-- well, sort of. I had already known that Melanie's living situation was bizarre; I heard down the grapevine that she and her husband and kids were still living with her parents in their small northeast Philadelphia home. But aside from that, the otherwise pristine image of Melanie and her family remained in my mind... really, because of the way my mother initially reacted in 2008 when it had become clear that Melanie was no longer talking to me. My mother, who has since apologized profusely, had said these exact words: "Melanie is in a stage of her life where you're not invited." Mom went on about how this is what usually happens when people get married (years later I learned that she had told me that obvious lie because for some reason she thought it would make me feel better...uhhh??) and that I needed to learn to take hints. "She's trying to tell you something," my mother muttered (I could practically hear her facepalming at the other end of the line). "What?"  grunted. "She's not interested," my mother grunted back."

This conversation had made me feel inadequate-- even though I had known about Melanie's living situation and even that her mother was controlling (more on that later), I continued to imagine her in this mostly blissful, idyllic life: going to see a Disney movie in a public park on a warm summer night with her husband and kids; sitting on a bench at the playground with other mothers and talking about their kids' achievements while the kids played on the swings; having neighborhood potlucks with families that her family is close with... all the while having cast me off because I had been holding her down.

But I learned something interesting down the grapevine a couple weeks ago: Melanie has fibromyalgia. It isn't this information that shattered the "idyllic" image of Melanie's life (though it certainly didn't help). Instead, it was something else that I found out from an old mutual friend, Jenna, who I'd lost contact with around 2004 or 2005 and later reconnected with in 2015. Jenna hadn't been in contact with Melanie since about 2002 or so, and they (Jenna's preferred pronoun) also have fibromyalgia. I thought this was an interesting-- if sad-- coincidence. I told Jenna what I had found out, and they told me that they weren't interested in hearing about someone who had cut them off without explanation...

Wait, what?

Jenna said that they had thought they'd told me this a while ago. But they hadn't. Jenna then explained that around 2002 Melanie stopped returning Jenna's phone calls and emails and wouldn't even take their phone calls. What makes this even more interesting is that around 2002 or 2003 I had asked Melanie, "Do you still talk to Jenna?" I don't remember Melanie's exact words, but she said something that made it sound like she and Jenna had simply fallen out of contact. 

The fact that this has happened with at least two people who had once been close with Melanie is revealing. Why Melanie stayed in contact with me for a few years after severing contact with Jenna, I couldn't tell you. But I strongly suspect that this wasn't entirely Melanie's decision, and maybe not even hers at all. While I still think she's a jerk for doing what she did, I think her mother put her up to it, but perhaps not in an overt way. I think Melanie's mother gradually poisoned Melanie's mind against Jenna and me, and Melanie told herself that she simply "lost contact" with Jenna and possibly with me. But how would Melanie "not know" what really happened? Because, if my hypothesis is true, Melanie is also a victim in this-- a victim of her controlling mother. 

In other posts I've alluded to Melanie's mother being a control freak. She wasn't someone who I would call abusive, not by a long shot. However, she did shelter Melanie in bizarre ways, squashed her individuality, and did not give her any tools to function as an adult. Growing up, both of us complained about our mothers for similar reasons, often to the tune of, "I'm unconventional and my mom is trying to change that." In the case of my mother, she was trying to help me be happy but did it in a tragically misguided and ultimately hurtful way, which she now realizes and regrets. In Melanie's case, her happiness was not part of the equation: Her mother had an image in her mind of what Melanie should be like and was determined to realize it at all costs. How do I know that her motives were different? Well, technically I don't know that, but I look back at a lot of incidents from when we were kids that support this theory:

1. When Melanie was a teenager, she told me that she had recently been at a gathering in which she had been playing basketball with a group of boys. Her mother called out to Melanie and said, "Come sit with the women." Yes, Melanie. Stop getting exercise with kids your age and come over and sit with middle-aged people whose genitals look like yours (sorry, but that's what it comes down to). My mother would never have done that! In fact, she would have been happy that there were finally other kids who wanted to hang out with me -- regardless of what was in their pants -- and that I was getting exercise.

2. One time when I was seventeen and Melanie was eighteen, I said something about someone being a nutcase. Melanie told me, "Oh, I'm not allowed to say 'nutcase'. My mom says it's too sexual. She tells me to say 'nutball' instead." No, this absurdity was not a line out of Ralph Wiggum on The Simpsons. 

3. I wanted combat boots, and so my parents got them for me for my eighteenth birthday. Melanie wanted a pair too but her mother wouldn't get them for her because they were deemed too masculine. Never mind that plenty of teen girls in the '90s wore combat boots. 

4. When Melanie finally met the guy she ended up marrying, at age twenty-one, she had to sneak him up to her room to fool around because she wasn't allowed to have boys upstairs. That's right-- she was in her twenties and this rule was still there.

5. The very last time I saw Melanie was in the summer of 2005, when I was twenty-four and Melanie was twenty-five. We met at Six Flags Hurricane Harbor in New Jersey. Melanie had originally planned to come back to New York City with me (where I'd been living at the time), but her mother had already planned a "girls' day out" for the next day-- and told Melanie about it at the last minute. Additionally, her mother said she wanted Melanie home at 8:00. Yes, a twenty-five-year-old had a curfew. 

6. After Melanie had gotten engaged, her mother had started bugging her about grandchildren. I don't mean the typical, "Oh, are you going to have kids?" or even "When do you think you'll have kids?" It was relentless pressure to the tune of, "I wanna be a grandma!" Melanie's comments that she had wanted to wait a couple years after marriage before having kids apparently fell on deaf ears. 

You get the idea. Melanie remained under her mother's roof into adulthood. Even when she went to college, she commuted (I realize this could be a financial issue, but I'm not convinced of that in this case). She met a man, married him, and gave her mother the grandchildren that she'd demanded. Oh, sure, she and her family live with her parents, but otherwise she has found true happiness, right? And because she's married and has children, she must be a true adult, right?

No. I doubt that "true happiness" is the term to describe Melanie's adult life, and not because of the compromising condition of fibromyalgia either. The above examples strongly suggest that Melanie's mother not only groomed Melanie to grow up to be like her, but also that she probably expected Melanie to continue living in her childhood home through adulthood: At the time that Melanie's mother pressured Melanie about wanting grandchildren yesterday, Melanie had been working at Macy's for a mere $8 an hour.  

Melanie had complained about her mother trying to squash her unconventional personality over the years, but she stopped in her early twenties. In fact, when she first started dating the guy she ended up marrying, I saw a radical transformation: This rambunctious tomboy who'd been my best friend for years turned into a demure, 1950s woman who even said, "Oh, my sweetie knows about that" when I asked her what kind of computer she had. And no, I don't think this change was for her husband-to-be; I met the guy and I liked him, and I find it difficult to imagine him trying to make a woman into someone passive. Rather, I think Melanie did this for her mother. I think the message Melanie's mother had given Melanie was subtle but clear: She could either conform to her mother's expectations and they could have a good relationship, or she could tell her mother to fuck off and they'd have no relationship. One or the other. No compromise. Melanie did not want to lose her relationship with her mother, so the choice was very clear. Part of the choice involved cutting off any friends that her mother deemed "weird". I personally think her mother's issue with me was that she thought I was going to do something inappropriate at the wedding and also be a bad influence on the eventual grandchildren. She couldn't have me ruining the 1950s-white-picket-fence-wholesome image she was trying to create. She probably would have seen Jenna as a similar threat to that image.

Maybe you believe I'm overthinking this. I realize I very well might be. I could be wrong about a few things; I could be wrong about everything. I get that this is all speculation But despite my mother's initial comments ten years ago, you cannot seriously tell me that Melanie is an adult just because she is married and she has children. She has never left her parents' house, and I don't think it's for financial considerations either; her husband is a computer programmer. She is probably still under her mother's control and likely has adopted her mother's sociopolitical views simply because she hasn't had much exposure to anything else. She lives in Philadelphia, but it might as well be rural Kansas.

What makes my hypothesis, if true, even sadder is this: My mom believes that Melanie is on the autism spectrum. I'm not convinced that she is, but I think it's possible. I initially rejected that suggestion for a couple reasons: 1) People on the autism spectrum don't tend to be swayed by peer pressure, and 2) Melanie called me out on inappropriate behaviors a number of times when we were teenagers, and 3) Melanie had a lot of friends in high school.

My mother, who is a retired teacher, made me reconsider. She pointed out that while a number of her autistic students are very independent, there are many others who are just like their parents, but in a very superficial way that doesn't seem to reflect the child's true self. In fact, Tony Attwood, the kingpin of Asperger's experts, has pointed out that many autistic girls in particular mimic their peers or parents. They see that these people are socially successful and believe that in order to have friends and a happy life that they have to imitate them. The sad thing is that many of them, when they do this, end up repressing their true selves. In adulthood this catches up to them and leads to a major identity crisis. 

If this profile of autism does indeed describe Melanie, then it could be that she learned how to superficially mimic her peers in order to make a lot of friends in high school. It could be that she also commented on my behaviors simply because she saw that I didn't act like her peers, and yet her comments may have lacked any real insight. Or it could be simply that her mother told her to call me out on these things. It wouldn't surprise me at all. In fact, if I remember correctly, when Melanie related the story about her mother telling her to say "nutball" instead of "nutcase" because the latter was "too sexual", there wasn't a hint of irony in her voice. She said it matter-of-factly and with a straight face. It also makes me wonder: Did Melanie have kids because she honestly and sincerely wanted to, or did she just think she wanted to because it was what her mother and society at large expected of her? 

Melanie was a talented visual artist and singer. Even though the arts are not usually marketable skills, Melanie could perhaps pursued freelance work (at least prior to the fibromyalgia diagnosis, which I understand was very recent). At the very least, she and her husband could have moved out; her husband is a computer programmer and there are many affordable, nice apartments in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She could have found some other type of work and done her art on the side. But the last time I saw her, she was no longer drawing and I don't think she was singing either. Melanie had so much potential, but I think her mother crushed her.

Ultimately, I have a very different perception of what exactly happened between Melanie and me. While I do believe Melanie needs to take responsibility for what she did to Jenna and me-- she is an adult, after all-- I realize that it's likely that she is also a victim. It is indeed sad.

Parents of Asperger's girls, I'm watching you.

The Perpetual Clean Slate

I left my public school at the end of 5th grade (age 11) and and spent my 6th grade year (age 12) at a K-8 private school, where my mother was teaching.

A fresh start; a clean slate.

Then Mom got a job in the public schools and could no longer send me to the private school, as it was too far away.

An entire year had passed since I had been in the public school system, and since a year is a long time in childhood, 7th grade (age 13) was another fresh start (sort of).

Another clean slate.

When I started going to Camp Negev in the summer after 8th grade (age 14), it was another clean slate, another fresh start. Since I didn't realize that I would be zoned for a different high school (10th-12th grade in my district) from most of the kids at my middle school, I was sure my camp would be my last clean slate until college.

My last clean slate until college? Yes, what a lot of pressure to work under.

As stated, I was zoned for a different high school from most of the kids in my middle school.

Another clean slate, another fresh start. 

I went to college.

Another clean slate.

I went to grad school.

Another clean slate.

I took a job at a library in Maine. I got fired. Then I took a job at another library in Massachusetts.

Another clean slate.

I got fired again. I decided was done with libraries.

So what happened to all these clean slates? I went to the small private school and generally got along well with everyone else. But then I had to go back into the public school system. I was bullied relentlessly, verbally and sometimes even physically. I didn't feel safe going to school. My parents and brother didn't seem to really understand that I was being bullied. Back then, people didn't really take bulling seriously, and the term "bully" meant "the school bully", as caricatured on The Simpsons, for example: The kid who indiscriminately shakes down everybody for their lunch money. Not a group of kids who targets one person. No, my parents and brother told me that I brought the treatment on myself with my relentless wiseass comments and because I didn't dress and act feminine enough.

I went to Camp Negev. At last things seemed to be going right. I was with a group of kids who understood and appreciated me. But then in the CIT program, I learned that many of the counselors were wary of me. They said that I was inappropriate. It's true, I was sometimes, with my jokes, etc. Part of the reason I sometimes acted inappropriately was that I was rebelling against my parents because they never let me do anything irreverent, even with my cousins around. I felt asphyxiated. So the dam burst, so to speak, at camp. But I did come to the CIT program prepared to "grow up", as I was no longer a camper. However, it was too little too late. And I should note that the other counselors' concerns about my being inappropriate were hypocritical as many of the counselors didn't care about the kids. They belittled the ones who were different, left them alone in cabins, and smoked weed in the staff lounge. Sometimes they even came to activities while high. They were just inappropriate in more socially acceptable ways. I wasn't given a group of kids until second session, and despite the ways that I had toned myself down for that summer, I wasn't hired as a counselor the following year.

I found another camp to work at. I made some stupid mistakes and got fired, so then I found another one.

I got a fresh start in the summer of 2000, working at a camp in Michigan. I was hired again in 2001, but in 2002 I had to come back as a volunteer, as they wouldn't rehire me.


As for high school? I was very quiet because I was so worried about screwing up. The result? I wasn't bullied, but I was too timid and didn't make any friends. You can't live like that. Remaining withdrawn in high school is one of my biggest regrets.

In college? I made friends but starting junior year, most of the teachers didn't like me. I wasn't used to this; in high school teachers generally did like me. When I went to grad school, I got a fresh start and fortunately the teachers liked me.

At the library in Maine?

The parents were wary of me and constantly reported me to the director. I was fired. I read books about child development and came to the library in Massachusetts, armed with more knowledge to help me work better with little kids. Not good enough. I was fired again after four months, although this time there were only two complaints. The rest of the staff liked me, but my boss didn't. I knew by the end of the first week that she was avoiding me.

Mom told me, "You'll get a fresh start" when I entered 6th grade at the private school and 7th grade in the public school system that I grew up in. She told me that when I went to summer camp, to high school, to college, when I worked at the camp in Michigan, and when I started at the library in Massachusetts.

I cringe about "clean slates" and "fresh starts". A clean slate is only clean so long as you can disguise who you really are. Ultimately, it's less about learning to stop telling inappropriate jokes and whatnot (although it may seem that way superficially) and more about not letting who you really are come out. Whether or not my parents realized it, when they told me, "You'll get a fresh start," they were really saying, "Try again to be someone you're not and things will go well." And as you can see, many of these "fresh starts" (though not all, by any means), ultimately failed.

It is for this reason that experts advise parents of bullied kids not to change schools unless it's to a private school or some kind of "special" school. You bring who you are to any new situation, and when the results are the same, the message that one gets is that they've failed, over and over again.

Imagine what it feels like to go through life like that.