An interesting thread...

[apolla]

So, I'm sure a lot of you have seen this thread. I don't feel there's anything I could personally add to it, but it has been playing on my mind. In fact, this particular subject has been on my mind for quite a section of the day, and was even before reading my friends list.

But I'm not going to tell you all about my horrible time at school. I can tell you that I had a horrible time and that the people around me were mean. I can tell you that, but you actually already know.

I'm going to tell you how I got over it.

There was one man above all others that made the last years of my secondary education tolerable. You might say he shaped my entire personality. A lot of people talk about how John Lennon was a genius. Some say he was a saint and some say he was a demon. Some say that he saved them through sheer force of his musical ability. I believe he helped me save myself with his humanity.

John Lennon arrived in my life at the moment I needed him. I needed a role model to look up to who was thoughtful, clever, witty and most important, one who refused to take any shit. John Lennon was many things, but he was rarely anybody's fool. He said, wrote and did whatever he wanted to do, be it sitting in a bag or planting acorns or staying in bed. If someone crossed him, he destroyed them with the written word and managed to be funny at the same time. Of himself, he said: "If there's such a thing as a genius, then I am one. If there isn't, I don't care." He was exactly who I longed to be.

So it's not entirely hyperbolic to say that John Lennon saved me. It would be more accurate to say that he helped me find whatever it was inside me that made me help myself. A little psychobabbly maybe, but it's true. In fact, my boys have arrived in my life at times I found them most useful. Whether it's fate or me subconsciously looking for the right soundtrack to my life is a bit of a chicken/egg question I think, but it started with John.

Mind you, there's only so much a dead man can do. There's only so much I could do, worn down as I was by so many years of consistent, sustained emotional and mental torment. One of the things I felt most was a kind of shame- I knew that other people had it worse than me (and this thread of The Ferret's has proved me shockingly right) and I felt terrible that I felt so terrible. I mean, what did I really have to complain about? My life was positively charmed compared to some people's and so I felt like I was a whiny little bint. Sometimes I am, but I know now that I wasn't wrong or whiny to be depressed or to feel so bad about how other people were treating me. John helped me regain my sense of who the hell I was (I was like John Lennon before I knew what John Lennon was like)... but it was not everything.

No, there is one person who saved me. Her name is Natasha and for some reason, she saw something in me that I did not see in myself. When I walked into our first Politics seminar, she saw something in the girl in the purple coat who made the occasional joke but otherwise didn't talk an awful lot for the first term or so. She saw something in me that made her hang with me when we went to California. After all, three of us from Lancaster went to Irvine, but she hung with me. She has had faith in me when I had arrogance but not faith or confidence.

And it was Natasha who made me realise that my school tormentor was not the true badness in my school life, but that it was my friends. "Well, they don't sound like very good friends, to be honest." For all my horrible experiences with them, I'd never really seen it like that before. I arrived in California with two suitcases and a shitload of baggage. I left with my suitcases and the best friend I'll ever have.

Because you see, that thread was full of examples of female negativity, cruelty and outright evil, but I know that there's something else out there, because my Tasha proved it to me. If I end up a singer like I want, it'll be because of her. And John Lennon, obviously.

Comments

[empressov.livejournal.com]

Guh, I just got back now from reading several pages on that post. I'd never complain now about what I went through and I feel awful about what I was responsible for (though, nothing really terrible but, mean enough I'm sure though to make a girl or two feel awful for a day at least.

But what it really all makes me feel awful about? That I always saw and noticed those who were sitting off the edge, alone, and outcast and though, if I were alone, I would indeed talk to someone next to me (I couldn't shut up) but really, I never, ever once made an effort to actually break out of the conformity or away from the seccurity of my own place in the cliques and befriend these people who, judging now by what I like and how I live, really were more likely to have been 'my type'.

School stories lke those make fandom look warm and fluffy.

*hugs*

[apolla.livejournal.com]

You can't be held accountable for wanting to survive. You're not the one holding someone's head down a toilet. You're not the parent saying "Oh, just ignore them" or the teacher who ignored the victim. It's not a crime to try and survive the horrors around you.

The thing I feel worst about? Knowing that I did my bit to perpetuate the sadness- that thing about the lowest picking on those they can find that are lower was, briefly, true for me. My teacher had a word and that was it- I realised what I'd been doing and tried never to belittle anyone again.

Thing is, girls will always be a bit bitchy to each other (sisterhood can go fuck itself as far as many are concerned), but at school there isn't an escape. That's the tragedy of it all.