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.