Girl on the run

Well, now that I have sullied the good name of the drama club, I should make it clear that I wasn't specifically avoiding them. I wasn't enjoying acting in junior high. A lot of it was vanity--I had not yet learned that there are no small parts--but maybe there was also too much waiting around for someone with a frantic need to keep busy. My friends were all still nice to me, and we still frequently ate lunch together and had classes together, but I most of our social time happened during the school day.


If that wasn't the problem, what was I avoiding? Well, there were the internal conflicts which I covered already. That was two years ago, actually, but I don't feel a strong need to revisit. In summary, I had seen myself as fat since I was 6, and as unworthy of being loved romantically since I was 14, and I could not bear to even think about those things, which was unfortunate because there were some fallacies that became self-fulfilling prophecies. There was also an external issue.

I have also written about getting into a fight with my father over driving, where he stopped speaking to me for two and a half years. What I probably haven't mentioned is how sometimes I get confused over which birthday that happened on, because I get confused about other times when we fought and he was not speaking to me.


So technically, I was already a year and a half into my relentless pace when the big rejection happened, but even before that being home was no fun.


When my father first got caught cheating on my mother, and attended his one counseling class, he wrote a list of things she did wrong, and ways she could change. One thing was wanting her to get a job, which resulted in her taking a night janitorial position and then adding house cleaning during the day. There were good and bad results to this. She did learn more independence, which would come in handy, and it's the only reason she has any social security income now, but it is also probably a factor in her severe arthritis and other aches and pains.


When this first started, Julie and Maria were only four, and had a hard time with her being gone at night. By the time they were thirteen, they joined her at the night job, earning some pocket money, bonding with her, and making their own escape from the house.


I can't blame them. Dad had a talent for casting a pall over the place, and we reacted by giving him a wide berth. Perhaps it was not the best reaction, but it felt like the only possible one.


With my activities schedule, I hardly ever had to be home. If that was helpful before my seventeenth birthday, it was an absolute life saver afterwards. In soccer and basketball season I had two games a week, and then I started helping at practices. The track season only had one meet weekly, but then I worked any nights that I did not have games, so it was all good. Sometimes I only had time to change between getting home from afternoon stuff and heading to work. Of course, I neglected homework a lot, but I had a history of doing that.


Sometimes it was too much. I think McDonald's was a good learning experience, and kids were coming in from school all the time, so it was fun in that way, but I was always closing, getting home at 12:30 three nights a week, and then at 2 am on Saturday nights. I knew it was too much when I fell asleep at my desk after finishing my Spanish mid-term. (At least I finished.) I gave notice, and then after resting a few months I got on at K-mart. They were only open until 9 on any night, so that helped a lot.


I didn't have any of this self-awareness at the time, but considering how much I loved curling up at home with a book, it was amazing how rarely I did it during that time period.

Beginning Belly Dance (30/30)
Wall sits
2nd Nephi 8 - 2nd Nephi 2