How I Think

Oh, The Renaissance Faire!  The one place a fat girl can get some respect!

After reading the comments on the last post, I feel I need to make some things clear about me.  I have never believed I was screwed up.  Isn’t that strange?  I only told a little of the abuse I experienced, so that you the reader would understand why I have modified my behavior.  I did not write the events to have you feel sorry for me or to have a pity-party, to me those events happened and they happened for a reason.  It doesn’t make sense to me that I am treated in a negative manner only because people are mean.  If that is the case, then humans are worthless and I do not believe that. 

I’ve known since I entered school that I think and feel in a different manner then the general population.  I know because of the reactions I get from other people.  I have a completely different take on the world and it is through others reactions that I have come to know what the basic population considers inappropriate.  I don’t know what being over-weight all my life has contributed to my problems.  In many ways I see it as a protection.  I don’t have to deal with the numb skulls of the world because I am abhorrent to them.  I have found myself grateful for not being placed in difficult situations because of my looks, for example I have never worried about any sexual abuse or advancements, a problem for any attractive girl.

I have been trying to think of a way to explain how I do see my space and unfortunately it sounds so condescending and snobby and pompous and mean.  I know this because defensiveness and anger are the immediate response to my words.  The reactions continues to surprise me.  It continues to frustrate me because all I want to do is connect to another person.  I know that is how I come off to others I meet and I really do not mean to.  I just don’t understand how others can’t see what I see. 

I have tried to soften my expectations of others towards me.  My last friend is still my friend because she is willing to go down into the deep end of the pool.  I have come to understand that this is a very difficult process for her and others, so I try not to demand the time it takes to become comfortable enough to open up to one another.  I am so disheartened by how shallow everyday life is and how shallow we must be to live in everyday life.  I believe that humans are capable of reaching for greatness, not as the world defines it, with money and power, but as a being able to feel the inner workings of the environment around them.  We have such potential to feel and yet most everyone I meet is bogged down with concerns I do not understand. 

It has taken me much thought and experience to try and come up with an explanation of how I interact with the objects in my space.  I hope this will make sense and give you, the reader an idea of what it is like to be me.  I see small threads coming off of the things in the world.  A person is a collection of emotions and wants which in turn is a thread.  Each of those threads represents a connection to something else.  It could be to an inanimate object, it could be to children or it could be to an emotion.  Normally I can tell what a person obsesses about because that is the strongest thread and most of the time, people are not concentrating on something positive like joy, and they are more likely to be in a negative state.    I react to those emotions, not to the careful constructed facade that average people used to navigate through everyday life.  I do not see the mask.  I react to the threads in a person and to those connections, so I know my behavior and what I say comes off sounding terribly wrong.  I have an example.  This event helped to crystallize my resolve in staying true to myself despite how much others hurt me.  I was able to be a Behavior Therapist for children with challenges, but were being main-streamed in a normal class.  I felt like I understood those children very well and I felt like I was helping them, but I wasn’t doing it in the way the other special Ed teachers wanted.  So I was attending the special Ed class after lunch and I let my student do what he wanted in that class.  He would manipulate the teachers to do his homework and I just thought more power to him.  We were sick of each other by that time of the day and the teachers expected this awful behavior out of the kids, so they got it.  Anyway, there was a boy in that class who I also dealt with in during the day.  I knew he had a big mouth, but I treated him like any other student and he always behaved very well for me, so I was surprised to hear that he would start brawls and bring weapons to school.  His family life was horrendous with his mother involved with multiple men.  He was only in 6^th grade and this boy had the most disgusting, dirty thoughts.  I could feel how deeply he hurt.  He wasn’t in the class because he had a brain problem.  He was there because of the screwed up way he had been treated and he did not trust adults.  I liked him, so during that 5^th period I would let someone else deal with my student and I would take on helping this disturbed boy.  I was also in his math class, so I knew the assignments and lessons of the day and would help him get his homework done.  I did not bully him. I did not yell, but I also did not give him the answers.  I tried to let him talk and I tried to let him laugh.  I thought as long as he got his work done that I was being successful, but others didn’t see it that way.  He had his feet up on the chair rail, not on the seat, but on the metal bar under the seat and this woman came in yelling at him to keep his feet off of the furniture and how dare he disrespect her by having his dirty feet on her items.  Then she turned on me for letting him do it.  My jaw dropped open from shock.  This boy was hurting every second of the day and he was attacked by an adult because of me.  This story sounds like a no-brainier.  It sounds like I am in the right and all my stories will sound that way because you are hearing my truth.  I do not know what the other adults in the room were seeing or feeling,  to them I was in the wrong.  I was accused of not doing my job because I did not yell at my students in front of the other children and therefore in front of the other adults.  I felt like he had enough humiliation to deal with and I would nod to him if he did something inappropriate during the class then talk to him afterwards.  I do not put on a show.  I do not have a facade.  I don’t know how to be fake and I don’t know or understand how to deal with those traits in other people.

I have a reason for my actions even if you don’t understand.  I see the connections.  I see the pitfalls.  I follow the threads and I see a problem about to happen, but nobody believes me because the problem is 3 thread connections away. 

How do I use the words needed to put what I see in perspective.  These are not concepts that I can communicate.  I am using the basest part of myself.  I don’t know why I can feel these things.  I don’t know why I know with such assurance.  I stick by what I feel and I see the line and I become immovable.  I realize I seem pompous, snobby and mean, but I know that is because they don’t see what I see.  I am just so shocked at how blinded the average person is to real connections, to real emotions.  I reach out all the time in the only way I know how and I am rejected.  I don’t care anymore.  I can’t live with the frustration anymore.  I am too sick and too tired to deal with the hurt.  The hope and belief that I would find someone who understood me is gone.  Life is pretty awful without hope, so to survive I have shut many of my feelings down.  That way I can live in a void and be fine.  And I am..., fine that is.  Fine for the situation I am in.

This has been an experiment, a way for me to connect, but I only have a little stat bar that says how many people looked at the page, to me the words that I carefully crafted have disappeared into a black void, no conversations have been spurned by the words, this blog as been a very lonely experience and I have been surprised by that fact.  Lonely in the fact that I have to continue living with the things I write.  Each time I come to this site I am faced with the posts I have written, staring at me, pushing me to remember when I just want to banish the truths to the back of my brain. I was encouraged by quite a few people to write a blog and one night when I couldn't take my thoughts anymore I did, hoping to feel some relief, but that is not what has happened. 

I Won 2nd place in the Costume Contest

I want to be as shallow as a puddle.  I want the world to just bounce off of me, to be able to feel in the moment and if that means turning off  what makes me Rebecca, then I am fine with that. 

I have plenty of fun harmless stories.  I am such a silly girl in many ways that I am sure they will provide some entertainment.  I'm not sure I want to lay myself bare anymore.  I don't know.  I feel so intensely that I would rather not feel anything at all then to feel the negative emotion that comes at me.

Of course I could be completely wrong about myself.  I have never had anyone stick by my observation.  I did get told I was right when having a heart felt conversation with a person, usually in the middle of the night clouded by exhaustion, but it is like I do not exist in the bright light of day.  But here is the kicker, I don't have any interest in trying anymore.  That maybe the wrong state of mind, but I can't help it.  The most wonderful person could be living 2 houses down and I will never know, because I don't want to go through the gut wrenching process it takes to know another person.  That means for all my complaining I am not going to do what is needed to progress and that idea is so appealing I plan to wallow in it for a while.

 

Love, A Four Letter Dirty Word

What is love?  Everyone in the whole world is screaming for it.  Can anybody define it?

So many words are used to try and explain that one little word.  Is love what I read in the "Twilight" Books of the world?  What I feel to be the teenage obsessive version or is it the happy ending of the movies with the main characters jumping into bed with one another. 

What is love, that I feel totally incapable of having it?  That is all my life has been about searching for that elusive feeling.  Others thought it was strange that I did not want the blistering heat of fame.  I never wanted that.  I wanted to be the type of actor that showed up in every movie and TV show as a little character.  I wanted people to think they had already knew me from somewhere.  All of my actions have been private and one on one because I just wanted a person that I could feel safe with.  One person that I could share my opinions with and get a conversation back.  One person who I felt heard me.  He didn't have to agree, but I need to feel connected.

I figured out pretty early that sex was a short-cut to that connection.  Sex is a strange monster, maybe a shape-shifter who starts out cute and cuddly, the problem is I would watch as it morphed into a savage soul sucking beast with sharp teeth and large claws.  I am not a prissy girl.  I hung out more with people outside of my standards and they would get destroyed by the mis-use of sex.  More pain and anguish followed the perversion then the joy of the act.  I had no desire to be broken into pieces so I did not enter the world I witnessed.  I wish I could say it was my amazing strength of morale fiber, but the reason I didn't indulge is because I didn't find anyone that I could trust.  There was no emotional connection to anything or anybody.

You know what thought keeps me awake, "What is wrong with me?"  I don't fit anywhere and that is wearing me down to the bone.  I have tried.  I swear to you that I have tried to fit into so many groups.  I love theatre, but I was not pretty enough to enjoy any important roles.  A little resentment, but I tend to be very realists in my logic.  It can be daunting to spend hours waiting to go on for one scene.  I knew I couldn't go very far because of my weight.  I was in band, a great place for nerds, but I wasn't ever nerdy enough to blend in with them.  I tried to be a proper "typical" Mormon, but the chasm becomes very wide when you are in a religion devoted to the family and you don't have one.  It is wonderful, but to be an old maid at 25 is rather daunting and now that I am upper thirty's there is no way or rather they are very slim, that I will ever have a family of my own.  I went to Fashion Design college where I was introduced to the Homosexual life style.  I lived with a gay man(sort of, we had an apt. together).  I watched their interaction and decided that I had no desire to be in the gay lifestyle.  I also figured out the materialist voracious appetites of the fashion world and I could not allow myself to be swallowed up in that world.

So here I am struggling to find a place.  I either reject or I am rejected. 

I read a comment to one of my first blogs and it said something like,"...I read about a girl desperate to be loved."  I felt insulted when I first read the comment because I do not act desperate.  I despise when others debase themselves for scraps and in many ways I would rather starve then bow my head to another in submission, but I am more than willing to give myself to those who  take the time.  I have had bright shinning spots of love given to me.  That is how I know what love is.  That is why I crave that form of love, not what the world says is love.  I want to be bound to another.  I want to know without hesitation that he will follow my lead as I would his.  I want my concern to be focused on another and his concerns focused on me, so that it is an active relationship.  I want too much.  I know I do.  I want accept that I want desperately to be loved, but I am not willing to give that love to just anyone.

I was listening to an LDS wedding, the kind done in the temple and it is doctrine that the two people are sealed together for this life and into the next.  That's along time.  I was listen to the words said in the ceremony and I felt myself physically jerk at the promise being asked because of the striking difficulty I was having with the concept.  The man asked the bride and groom if they were willing to give themselves to one another.  Are you willing to give up your time, talents and your will to the other person?  I felt slapped in the face because I knew that I would have to answer that question with a resounding "No!"  I felt that I was completely closed to allowing another person into me.  I knew that was a problem and I worked very hard to change those feelings.  I opened up and I was able to bend.

I believed that someone could love me, that it was possible.  I believed through all the crap that was happening to me, one person would see me and my talents and love me for them.  That did not happen.  I was not chosen despite all I did to change.  And I return to the question, "What is wrong with me?"

I am watching my life deteriorate before my eyes.  My emotional and physical health has shattered and I don't know what to do anymore.  I set up a book club back in Simi Valley and it was a magical circle in time.  I felt heard, even though my thoughts and feeling were normally contrary to the group and it was a special time to honestly express ourselves.  My mother has tried to start one here in Virginia and it really is the people who make a difference.  I sat in that room feeling frustrated and disconnected.  I went into the bathroom sat on the toilet and cried in desperation.  It felt just the same as it did when I was 15 at a church dance and all the boys I asked to dance with said No, with a couple of hell No's, sprinkled in.  The same rejection, the same frustration, the same disconnect.  I can't stand it anymore.  I don't have the strength do deal with the hurt anymore.

I am going to take a break from writing in this blog for awhile.  It was an experiment to try and connect, but this is so one-sided I don't think it is working.  I don't know if I feel safe in this forum.  I don't know if I want you to know the real pain.  I have had to go numb as a defense and I don't know if I can endure defrosting my cold heart.

Thank you for reading.

I Almost went to BYU

                                I wanted that cute face in a commercial!

I bet many of you didn't know that I was up for a full scholarship at Brigham Young University.  I don't like to discuss the events that feel like a failure or that hurt me, but this is quite an interesting way my life could have turned.

I actually wanted to act when I was a cute kid.  I didn't know about the heartless nature of the biz when I was young and resented my parents a little bit for not putting me into commercials.  I think I asked my mother once and since Dad was in show business he was disgusted with the idea,  I let it drop.  My school life was caught up in Band, but that fell apart in the 11th grade and I found myself without an elective.  I was picked to play a very small part in the school play the semester before and I decided to throw myself into Drama.  It wasn't much of a program, but I sucked all the knowledge I could from the teacher.  I was able to letter 4 times in only 2 years.  I was apart of every show with my finger in every piece of the pie.  Not only did I act, but I directed, helped the teacher pick out costumes, did the sets, helped with the props and with the lighting design.  I met some of the nicest people in that program.  I didn't feel like such a freak in the theatre, maybe because every one else had their freak flag flying.

For my graduation present my parents actually paid for me to go to a summer acting workshop at BYU.  My grandfather worked at the University's labs, so I could stay with them and he would drive me to the school, that way my parents only had to pay for the classes and not room and board.

This did put me at a disadvantage with the rest of the peers who share every minute with each other.  There are always clicks, little groups that decide the dynamics of the interaction.  This was my first time away from my parents, which wasn't a problem.  I tend to be independent to a fault, which happened in this instance.  The other students had paid to live in the dorms and eat at a special cafeteria, so for breaks I found myself alone.  The food was inexpensive and I plunged into BYU living by myself.  I do wish I had a bed to go to, but I shopped in the bookstore where I found something to read.  I lay on the grass listening to my Walkman and reading until it was time to go back to class.  Others very rarely wanted to do a scene with me, so I tried to find monologues that I liked.  It was very nice to practice in the empty black box theatre making  sure I had my lines memorized, while I waited for everyone to return.

After a week I got into a rhythm with the school.  I found another outcast in the class and we became friends during the break times.  I did stay in the dorms one night when I knew I could not get a ride to school.  I told the teacher and he was able to get me a bed rather than have me missing for a day.  It was horrible!  I laid in that hard, too small bad wondering if anybody could really sleep on such a torture device.  The bed was bad, but it really was the bathrooms that chased me away.  You could not pay me to deal with communal showers, no sorry, not going to happen!  Then the dorm was on top of the hill from where the class was.  I could not believe the hike!  Reality of living at this school was setting in and I had yet to experience snow.  People do not make a difference in my choices, sure most of the other students going to BYU would share my religion, but I didn't think that was necessarily a good thing.  I did not have a base to my own beliefs yet and going to BYU didn't excite me.

So I had this thinking when my teacher asked to speak with me.  He was professor of the drama program at the school.  He asked to see me during the lunch break, which we only had 30 minutes for.  I told him I did not eat with the other students and he followed me to the public cafeteria.  He asked about my family and what I was planning on doing with my life.  I told him what I could, I was only 17 years old at this point and not sure of anything.  Finally he asked if I would like to come to BYU with a full drama scholarship.  He had checked into my grades and this meeting had been an interview.  I was completely caught of guard that someone could give me such a huge gift.  I was very flattered and thought that something good had finally come of all my hard work.  He said he still needed to work things out and not to tell anyone what he had offered.  I was so happy that I had been chosen for once.

I am sure you are wondering what happened. 

They gave it to someone else.  The night of the closing awards banquet the teacher came up to me and said that he had to give the scholarship to someone else.  He had found out that her mother was dying of cancer.  Trump!  A dying mother gets a scholarship over a lonely fat girl any day.  I couldn't even complain.  How terribly childish would that be?  I was finally being recognized by people who did not know my past. Who had a clean slate with me and in their eyes I had been successful.  I had earned the chance to be in this program and it had all been ripped away by a girl with a dying mother.  I did not feel resentment, more like a profound sadness.

My heart harden even more that day and when the plane took off to take me home to California I was more than happy to never see that school again. 

After that summer, my mother forced me to go to the community college.  I also got an agent and began going on auditions.

A Story that has become Family Lore

I am sure every family has one story they tell whenever they get together.  Well, this is my story.  Every one of us kids was there to experience it and everyone of us has our own point-of-view to share within the story.  I wrote it down as a essay for school in 2001 and I have tried to keep a version of the story in my records.  Enjoy!

I Don't Like Jeeps

“Becky!  You better get down right…”, the words of my younger bossy brother were lost.  I literally was flying.  The problem?  I was flying out of a fast moving jeep.

            My father works as a paint foreman in Hollywood, Ca.  When I was around 8 years old, he accepted a job on location.  It was for the movie “Racing with the Moon” starring Sean Penn.  My dad was expected to go with the crew to Mendocino, Ca for about 6 weeks. There he would be a stand-by painter.

            My mother was happy for the money, but not with dad being gone so much, plus being alone with 4 kids doesn’t help.  There was me, Becky, the 8 year-old middle child and only girl.  The older twin boys Ben and Caldie, who were about 12 years old and my 5-year-old brother Charlie.  We kept mom busy.

            One day, mom put the 4 of us in our tiny Honda and started to drive.  I remember fighting over the front seat.  I always lost.  One of my favorite memories of that trip was a dense forest.  “Return of the Jedi” had just come out.  My brothers were convinced that we were standing in the exact spot a scene had been filmed.  Exact spot, no ifs, ands, or buts.  The exact spot.  Never did it occur to our child minds, that we could be wrong.  It turned out, my mother was taking us up the coast of California to visit dad on location.  We were so excited to stay in a hotel room, go on set, and to eat in restaurants for every meal.  Everything was new to me.  My 8-year-old senses were reeling.  I was having a terrific time.  Then it happened, mom woke up sick.  Not just feeling queasy, but ill.  We couldn’t turn on any lights or make any noise.  Dad thought it would be best to take the kids on an outing.

            We poured into a very old army jeep that dad had been given on loan from the crew.  I fought for the front seat.  Ahhhh, gypped again!  I decided to sit on the edge of the back seat and hang onto the crossbar overhead.  Off we went to conquer the local mountain.  Up, up, up, we trudged, occasionally I would look over and see the road give way to nothing.  A thrill of fear, terror and strangely, excitement would zing through me.  Here I was in the back of a vehicle that had no roof, climbing thousands of feet on a California mountainside.

 

This was the look of the jeep.  It was big and loud, but I remember that there was a roll bar between the front seats and the back.

            Finally the sun was starting to lower behind the treetops.  We started back to the hotel.  Here is where family lore takes over.  We began to follow the road down.  I was talking to my brothers, when Charlie noticed the jeep was gaining speed.  He began to tell me to get down on the floor, becoming more and more insistent.  Little did I know that the antique’s brakes had given out with the constant use.  Dad was controlling the speed of the jeep through downshifting. 

Three events came together at precisely the same time.  We were going about 30 mph when we came to a sharp curve in the road.  Charlie huddling in the corner of the jeep decided to tell me at that precise moment to do the same.  Incensed at my younger brother telling me what to do, I released my grip on the jeep’s crossbar to put my hands on my hips, planning to tell Charlie off, when it happened.  The speed, curve and my release of the bar sent me flying.  I was flung out of my seat like a rock from a slingshot.  Thankfully, I flipped and landed on the cushiest part of my body, my butt.  I began to scream.  Not because of my recent trauma, but because of my new view.  Absolute horror filled my soul when I saw that the Jeep was not stopping.  I watched the back of that old rust bucket disappeared from my view with my family inside.  I honestly believed they didn’t know I was gone!  I found out later that my first thought was correct.  They didn’t know I was gone.  A couple camping on an embankment heard my screams and rushed to comfort me.  I remember thinking, “They don’t look so bad.  I guess I will be going home with them.”  I was resigned to the fact my family wouldn’t be able to find me.  The couple had no idea what to do.  The three of us sat in the dirt on the side of the road, an old man patting the back of a screaming 8 year old.

            Meanwhile back in the jeep my brothers went quiet.  Nobody wanted to tell dad I flew out.  “Where’s Becky?” was asked.  Charlie broke down, “I told her to get down.  I told her she would fall out.”  Dad couldn’t stop.  No brakes.  He had to come to the base of the mountain before he could stop and turn around.  When Dad did gain control of the jeep, distraught Caldie pleaded, “No. No, don’t go back.”  He didn’t want to see what was left of me splat on the pavement.

            Eventually I saw dad appear from around the curve of the mountainside.  Relief flooded through me.  Embarrassed, dad jumped out of the jeep.  Together, we realized I had escaped major injury.  I only suffered a twisted ankle, plus some cuts and scratches on my back.  Dad picked me up, cradled me in his arms and at last I got into the front seat.  It was the only one with a seat belt, which was securely fastened around me.

            This event in the family has become one of lore.  To this day Charlie has to say,” I told you so!”  It will be told at every reunion and every family get together.  It will be passed to nieces and nephews, sons and daughters.  Many who hear the story are not surprised to when I say, ”I don’t like Jeeps.”