Humans are tricky, and we are rarely all one thing.
Without ever thinking that the people who hurt me were good people doing good things, I mostly did not let myself get angry or blame others for my hurts. I mostly accepted the pain as my due, and I mostly kept things inside.
Mostly.
I do remember about every six months or so having a really weepy and angry weekend. Family would be irritated because nothing out of the ordinary had happened, but the ordinary was exactly the problem. Sometimes it spilled over.
I can also remember four times when I seemed to allow myself to get angry, back during the period when I avoided it. It may be productive to go over those now.
Two were essentially cases of self-defense. The other two were cases of making big changes for which I had very logical reasons that were probably not the whole story.
Yesterday I did a disclaimer about common names. For the self-defense stories, there is one common name and one not common one. I guess I will just call her "this jerk".
On the last day of 2nd grade, our bus driver said we could have a water gun fight on the way home.
(There probably needs to be a post on adult conformity in upholding existing power structures, even when it goes against what their job should be.)
I didn't own a water gun. I was just going to sit it out, until Jason stationed himself in front of me and started shooting at close range. That sucked.
I used his hair to pull his head down against the seat and held him there until we got to his stop. He got up with a red face and quickly exited the bus.
Mentally I knew it was not a nice thing to do. It probably would be something that needed repentance, because it was most likely at least a little painful and definitely embarrassing for him. I still know that now, along with understanding that him taking the cheap shot was not at all unusual for his age and maturity level.
I was still so proud of it. I loved that I did it.
I am still not sorry.
Then, in junior high, this jerk makes a crack about my weight. I think it must have been not long after the other junior high incidents, like maybe I was just fed up by that moment that I could not and would not take at.
I looked at her and said -- very smugly, matching the contempt she had shown me -- "I wouldn't talk with that face."
I believe she wanted to kill me. I was kind of looking for a fight, and positive I could take her, but her friend pulled her away. Technically, this jerk had started it and her friend knew that.
My behavior here was more questionable. This jerk wasn't really that ugly. I mean, I didn't think she was particularly pretty, but there was nothing really glaring about her and she was quite slender, which counted most from what I could gather. I didn't think her haircut was very flattering, but it was in style.
So, I was being dishonest to be mean, both things I considered wrong. I also was supporting patriarchy with the obligations it puts on girls and women to be aesthetically pleasing and potentially damaging the self-esteem of someone who was also an impressionable young women, even if she was kind of a mean one.
An unarmed girl successfully defending herself against a boy with a (water) gun is arguably feminist; while insulting another girl for petty revenge clearly was not.
Still not really sorry.
If I had just told her she was a jerk, it would have been true, but it wouldn't have made her as mad.
Could I have befriended her? Usually, the people who were mean to me were not really people I hung out with. Could I have won her over and helped her be a better person? That didn't seem like an interest of hers, but maybe.
Still not that sorry.
Whereas being on the playground with Suzy or at the lunch table (or just outside of the school) with Jason, Matt, and Steve left me feeling worthless and were always there as bad memories, the memories of standing up for myself are good ones. Maybe I am worth something!
And, possibly if I'd had more help believing that I was worth something, I wouldn't have needed to be mean to accomplish it.
(A friend remembers me burning someone impressively after a different crack about my weight, but I don't remember it, so that one didn't shatter me, but it didn't fill me with pride either. Maybe that time was too easy.)
I don't know that the important thing about these memories is the anger. The value was treating myself like someone worth standing up for, but anger wasn't the only path to that, and anger was what made that path meaner.
Anger could also make me more unpredictable.
It is more recent that I have made a connection to what happened with Jason, Matt, and Steve to my leaving behind drama, and all of the changes that happened after that. That's more for next week.
Then we will get into my father disowning me (the first time) and those repercussions.
I now find it interesting that I quit my job McDonald's just a month after that.
I responsibly gave two week's notice and I had logical reasons for quitting, like the schedule and being tired all of the time from closing. Shortly after that I started working at K-Mart, which closed three hours earlier so that was a big help. I had risen as far as I could at McDonald's, unless I waited a year to turn 18 and be eligible to be a manager, whereas there were so many different things you could do at K-Mart that there was a lot to learn, and so it stayed interesting for longer.
I know all of that, but looking back now, and remembering that shortly after the incident my father came through my line at McDonald's, and that a boy from school was right behind him and it was all so awkward and sick...
I am not sure my reasons for leaving were logical.
Maybe sometimes you change things because you can't change other things that hurt too much and you can't think clearly about, because you have reasons to be angry but you can't let yourself deal with those reasons.
Related post:
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-power-of-hate.html
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