We all see life from our own unique perspectives, based on
our experiences. You, me, people who achieve
fame, people who don’t live up to their potential, people that go down the
wrong path….
My perspective, it comes from a place where I’ve known the only
so called “cheese” in our refrigerator coming from the government, life in an
alcoholic family, my own cerebral palsy, a sibling’s ADHD, an uncle’s severe
Autism, and, luckily, parents whose intelligence was kind of off the charts,
which may have been my saving grace as, well, that got passed to me too.
My experience, it made me grow up fast, when I was little,
maybe 11 years old, I was in charge of making sure my entire family got up for
work and school and that there was coffee made before I even woke anyone
up. That coffee had to be mugs in my
hand to hand to my parents in bed, with orange juice in glasses sitting on the kitchen
counter for my siblings. One of my biggest memories from childhood is when I
dreamed my alarm went off and woke up my whole family at 4 am for the day. They didn’t think it was funny, it still
makes me laugh. I also loved that I could
pretend I drank that crappy, cheap orange juice that tasted like the can it came
in before anyone got up, and didn’t really have to drink it. There is a silver lining to everything.
I’ve dealt with coming home from an event with a drunk father
driving, who, on our street, got upset that one of the kids went out into a
street with a Big Wheel. My dad pulled
into the driveway, told us to get out, and that he was going to go back and run
that kid over. My mom grabbed the keys
out of the ignition, ran in the house, and hid them in my bedroom. My bedroom, which 10 minutes later was a
complete disaster of every physical thing in it being picked up and thrown,
shattered toys, broken furniture. I still
remember falling asleep that night crying, looking at all my broken things on
the floor. I hated the world, and
wondered if that was what a nervous breakdown was.
My dad and I, personality-wise, we were very similar. Smart, introverted, artistic, with the same
love for music and horror and crime novels.
I thought I could “fix” my dad. I
thought I could just make him enjoy his life with us if he saw what a great daughter
I was, how much I was like him. The cost
me being accused of by my mom of trying to break up their marriage, making him
like me better than my mom. I was maybe
12 years old.
I got moved around several schools during my late elementary
school years. I was always the new person,
and I was who got bullied. I don’t have any
fond memories of those years.
A few years later, when my mom was crying one day over
something my dad said, when he left the house, I’m assuming to go to a bar, I
asked her why did they not divorce. She
said it was because of us, my siblings and me.
I told her we don’t want to deal with the fighting. Well, she started divorce proceedings. My dad had visitation during the separation,
and one day my brother did not want to go.
My dad smashed in his bedroom door with a walking stick, as my brother
ran away out the window. I think my brother
actually hated me for a few years, knowing that I was the one to tell my mom to
do this. I went off to running camp,
where I for the first time felt connected to some of the girls I went to my expensive
all-girls private school with, a school I only got into because of my score on the
entrance exam which gave me a scholarship.
A camp I only went to because the coach called my mom and told her I had
a lot of promise, and someone from the school paid for me to go. We couldn’t
afford real cheese, there was no way I could have gone there otherwise.
I felt like I finally fit in, much in part by a wonderful
classmate and teammate who was my roommate at camp, who a few years ago died
from a brain tumor. I am very grateful
for social media, as I was able to tell her how much she meant in my life
before she died. What I’m not grateful
about, I got picked up from running camp, with all my belongings packed up in
the station wagon, and moved to Florida, no warning. I never got to say goodbye
to any of my friends. I again felt
completely alone, and this was compounded by the fact that friends were mad at
me for not telling them I was leaving.
Why am I telling you all of this? Because I want you to know what it means to
someone to have someone reach out to them, to make them feel like they belong,
how that can change their lives, and possibly impact the lives of others. To let you know that my opinions on things,
this is where it arises from. I’m not
guessing what it is like to have a rough life, a life where you suffer from
depression and anxiety and feeling like you are on the fringe, I’m talking from
actual experience.
Luckily when we arrived in Florida, we moved in with my
grandparents, and I knew a girl on the street my grandparents lived from my visits
who helped me fit in when I went to the first day of my new school. She likely has no idea how much that meant to
me, but it did. I went on to have a great
2 years at that high school, and graduated with some lifelong friends.
I was lucky. I was
lucky.
When I grew up, I did go to therapy. I was on antidepressants and anti-anxiety
medication for a while. I worked on
skills to be able to get through my life without the meds, worked on my very
eroded self-confidence. I got degrees in
psychology and sociology, and I worked with severely mentally ill people in
both a group home setting and as a case manager. I had no trouble empathizing with their
situations, and I have a really good insight into knowing their feelings, and
did a darn good job at turning some people around from looking negatively at
their lives to finding the positives. It
was the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done in my life, something I would still
love to do, but since we place so little care on mental health in our society,
I couldn’t continue to afford to live on the salary I was paid. Unfortunately, that extremely low rate of
pay, much lower than even our teachers, means that there are a lot of people
who could really make a difference who just can’t afford to do that as their
job.
There are so many kids who feel they are not accepted, who
feel on the fringe, who do not have the best family lives. There are kids who suffer from mental
illnesses like depression or anxiety, or neurological issues like ADHD and
Autism, who are outcast. They are not
only made fun of by other kids, but parents of other children tell their kids
to stay away from them. We fear those
with issues, and only marginalize them more.
My own child, he has ADHD and some other neurological
issues. He was born prematurely, my
miracle, because if I hadn’t had an ultrasound that day he wouldn’t have been
rushed for an inducement. He wasn’t breathing
when he was born, after being suctioned out with the cord wrapped around his
neck, you could see the fear on my doctor’s face. He’s had to deal with his own issues. He has
some developmental delays. He got suspended
once in third grade because he stood up to someone who had been bullying him.
As he got older, he really struggled in school.
He’s been on baseball teams where he sits on the end of the bench in the
dugout and no one spoke to him. But he’s
never felt alone, because that was something I was never going to let
happen. Never. Even if it was just me, he was going to know
he was loved and a great person, and how it was OTHER PEOPLE’S problems if they
were not nice to him.
What I have is a well-adjusted son, who has a good number of
friends, who will go out of his own way to reach out to the person no one else is
talking to. I’ve reached out to some of
these kids personally too. I’ve been the
person that some of the kids we knew, children of drug dealers, children of
parents they had visitation with after they got released from prison, children
who just weren’t fitting in for whatever reason, and given them love and
acceptance, in addition to food and whatever else they may really need.
Do you want to make a difference, see if we can stop the
senseless violence in our country? Reach
out. Understand that there are so many
people that have it worse than you do.
Understand that they really, really crave love and acceptance. Stop the perpetrators of crimes, you will
stop the crimes.
That’s why they have wine.
