Unable to ask

When I was 14 everything exploded. 

Actually, I guess it was more of an implosion. It was largely internal, and even if some of the results were observable, they wouldn't have an obvious meaning to anyone else. I didn't really understand what was going on myself.

By the time I was done reacting to that, I think my identity was pretty much set. When my father disowned me a few days before my 17th birthday, it was traumatic, but it was more that it capped off everything that had already happened, rather than sending me in a new direction.

Later, a few things that happened on my mission (and one right after) reinforced what I already felt, but were also steps toward eventual understanding and healing. At that point we will start the unwinding of the tangled knot. 

A lot of the healing was very painful too. It probably will not all be treated strictly chronologically, just in case anyone is wondering.

I will treat the event that caused the implosion next, but -- like other things -- its impact was largely due to my foundation. 

A key part of that foundation was not believing that I could ask for help.

So I want to tell you about my 8th grade math teacher. 

We were never a great match. She played favorites a lot, more than most. Most teachers liked me, but she didn't. I think it was at least partially because I did not do homework, which we were not graded on or required to turn in for her class.

I was never a big fan of homework. There was usually a book I wanted to read or a show I wanted to watch, or something. I went through multiple periods of reforming and trying to emulate good study habits, and then slipping back, all the way from first grade through college.

Part of that was that most academic things came really easily to me once I learned to read. That started the new habit, but it is also how I picked up a lot of things. 

It is possible that one thing that aggravated Mrs. Darling was that I was still passing the class without doing the homework. It was only passing with a C, but you were supposed to see the value of the homework in how it prepared you for the tests, I guess. 

One test was right before Christmas break. I know because I was wearing a Santa hat, and I had one of those foil-wrapped chocolate ornaments hanging from the hat. I also had a newspaper article on my desk that I had written some notes on, because we were allowed to have some notes during a test. Yes, it would have looked better if I had found a blank piece of notebook paper and copied out what I wanted neatly, but I was probably in a hurry. It was almost Christmas vacation!

During the test, she came over and just started yelling at me. 

It was scarier because I could not understand the source of the rage. At first I thought it was the hat and I took that off but she was still yelling. Apparently she thought the article was a form of cheating, but if cheating was only having the book or looking at someone else's paper, then whatever paper I had there shouldn't have mattered unless it was the answer key or someone else's test.

It was really scary for me, but I don't think I was the only student who was scared; I would have been freaked out about someone else being yelled at that way. 

If I recall correctly, at about the same time I realized she was complaining about the article and I showed her the note writing, she also realized that she was being scarily unprofessional, and kind of backed down. There wasn't an apology or anything, but we could finish taking the test.

It was so unprofessional. 

As sure as I am that if I had complained to my parents about people being mean to me about being fat, that I would have been encouraged to lose weight, it does seem possible now that someone would have cared about a teacher blowing her top in class. 

I am sure my school counselor at the time would only have chuckled and tried to smooth things over. School counselors were useless to harmful more often than I like to think about. 

But maybe someone would have gotten mad about that. Seeing some anger on my behalf instead of at me would have been really good. That was something I had to work out later.

Maybe someone would have wanted to do something about a boy ripping my shirt open on school property.

It's too late to find that out now.

As it was, I finished Algebra with a C, and was still not passed, and had to repeat it the next year. 

The bad part of that is that if I had finished Algebra Trig a year earlier, I could have stayed in Physics instead of dropping down to Intro to Physics, because that was the math I needed there. A few months after the drop, all of those formulas were familiar.

The good part is that if I had gone on to Geometry, Mrs. Darling taught that too. The last thing I needed was another year of her.