Today’s not done

Looking back, through my childhood, is difficult. In fairness to all parties, it was a different time. For context, I was born in 1986 in southwest Louisiana. Lake Charles, Louisiana to be exact. It was the same town that my mother, aunt and uncle grew up in. In fact the Smith’s had lived in that area dating back to the 1700’s. Evidently my ancestors were removed from France. After refusing to fight a war against the British. They were relocated to modern day Nova Scotia, Canada then once again displaced in the mid eighteenth century to be dropped off in the bayous of Louisiana.

When I was young, my mom would tell me stories of the pain that she endured when she was a child. An alcholic father with severe PTSD. They once found him using the living room furniture to barricade the front door in the middle of the night. It wasn’t clear if he was blacked out from the whiskey, or having a flash back from the war. She would tell me, as the youngest of three siblings, all of the mean tricks and pranks my uncle and aunt would play on her. She shared these vulnerable moments with me not to connect or empathize but to prove to me how good my life was. More to the point, she said, ”You don’t have anything to complain about, if anything you’re spoiled”. I suppose that I couldn’t fault her for a lack of clarity. And in any case, she was correct. 

I grew up in a three bedroom two bath house that sat on a quarter acre of property. I wasn’t beaten at home, and I never went hungry. My parents didn’t fight, and to this day, I don’t believe that I’ve ever heard my dad raise his voice. I was aware of substance abuse with in the family, but I’d never witnessed it first hand. It wasn’t to bad really until school started. Up to that point, as an only child, I’d only ever interacted with adults. It would be no understatement to say that the southwest Louisiana public school system was a culture shock for me. The other kids seemed to know and have opinions on things. I would over hear conversations predicting the outcome of the next football season. What patches of land had the best chances for shooting a buck. And there was something called a supermodel, one was named Kathy Ireland and she was hotter than Cindy Crawford but there was no reason offered as to why. This really confused me because if they were both given the title of supermodel, wouldn’t that mean that they were equal? I had a lot to catch up on.

I didn’t know anything about sports, hunting or supermodels, but that didn’t stop me from trying to chime in to their conversations. I added absolutly nothing of value, effectively announcing my ignorance to the class one conversation at a time, it wasn’t long before, I would try to contribute, and one of the boys would stop me, saying, “you don’t even know what you’re talking about do you”, “yeah shut up fag”, “what’s wrong with you”, “go away, no one wants to talk to you”. 

I was hurt but there are multiple potential courses of action when being bullied, and much like supermodels they are not all equal. You can learn the obvious lesson you’re being handed which is, not to speak on subjects that you are uninformed on. Or let an adult know that your being called names, i.e. ask for help. My first grade teacher, Mrs. Morgan, told me to stay away from those boys and to stand up for myself if they did it again. Ok, I felt a little better now,I could do that. I’ll stay away from them, and if they call me names again I’ll tell them that they can’t do that, simple. That will put an end to it.

THAT DID NOT WORK! One day Mrs. Morgan stepped out of the class for some reason or another and immeadiatly all of the students started talking amongst themselves. I didn’t want to sit in my desk alone so i got up and walked to one of the groups of boys. Having learned my lesson about not speaking on subjects on which I was uneducated, I didn’t say any thing. I just stood there looking at them. What? One of the boys said to me. Nothing, I replied. He looked around at the other boys then stepped forward and slapped me in the face harder than I’d ever been hit in my young life. I forgot to tell him that he couldn’t do that because tears started welling up in my eyes. I turned around and went back to my desk, putting my head down so that they couldn’t see me cry. 

I didn’t understand why he would hit me. None of the adults I’d interacted with acted like this, none of them were this mean. Infact this is in direct contradiction to how I was told to behave. Maybe, I’m standing out because I’m not acting like them. Maybe if I were more mean, I would fit in more. That must’ve been what Mrs Morgan meant by standing up for myself. So, I wiped the tears from my eyes, looked over at the boy and said, at least my haircut doesn’t make my head look like a dick”. Of course, that was exactly when Mrs. Morgan walked back into class. Jordan, she screamed, outside now! Mrs. Morgan informed me that kind of language and attitude would not be tolerated in her class. I tried to explain my side of the story but she was red in the face mad, and not interested in what I had to say. Ok, so i guess adults can be mean after all. She told me to get back into class and she didn’t want to hear from me for the rest of the day.

So this puts me in a weird place. Now I’ve lost any credibility to ask my teacher for help. My mom has already explained that I could not go to her, because of how lucky I am not to have grown up like she did. I’m pretty sure dick head is planning on beating me up the first chance he gets. And it still doesn’t seem right to me that I’m the only one being disciplined in this whole situation. What am I missing?

I felt like I was trying to do social calculus before learning how to add and subtract. The closest I could get to possibly understanding is that I was caught in my transgression and the other kid’s were not. So therefore adults can’t be trusted. Now listen, I know that last sentence was a bit of leap but remember I was in first grade and I had just been slapped in front of my whole class. Emotions were high and I genuinely felt as though adults were worthless and kids suck. This is an opinion that I have not yet fully disproved.

Here’s a fun fact about bullies, if you don’t do anything to stop them, they don’t stop and I was doing myself absolutely no favors. From first grade, all the way through ninth grade there was always at least one bully. The overall issue was that I didn’t know how to fight and I had a really big mouth. Also I couldn’t run very fast, which would have been beneficial. It was a torturous existence but it was the only way I knew to fight back. If someone said something to me, I would say something worse back to them. And this was not limited to other students, oh no, this attitude extended to teachers, my parents, the principal and even the police. They were all lumped into the same catagory in my mind, they were all out to get me and were all the enemy. So I was disrespectful, insubordinate, out of line a pusillanimous reprobate if ever one walked the earth. And still, I couldn’t understand why no one seemed to like me.

Here are a few down sides to speaking recklessly to everyone you come into contact with. Firstly you spend a considerable amount of time looking over your shoulder. Secondly, you develop a bad reputation, leaving those who may have helped you with your actual problems, rooting against you. Thirdly I had formed and implicit bias at a young age, and through the years it was confirmed time and time again that “Authority Figures” were worthless and deserved to be mocked. Here’s the forth problem, the fear. I felt like it was me against the world and there was no help on the way. I’d created a vicious cycle in my mind that manifested into a very ugly young life experience. But I didn’t have that perspective at that time. All I had were anxiety, and confusion.

There are long term cures for confusion, and anxiety and the answer isn’t drugs. But drugs were the first answer I found that I liked. It started with marijuana, reefer, happy grass, (that gas, if you’re under the age of twenty five). Yes, at 16 I was introduced to weed and the anxiety became manageable. I was blown away, not only did I feel better but it made me want to stay inside which handled the looking over my shoulder problem. Quick side note, in no way did weed help me with my confusion problem, but i was prepared to live with that. I’d gone through the D.A.R.E. Program (Drug Awareness Resistance Education) when I was younger, but they taught you about the extreme cases in an attempt to scare you. I can assure you that drug use can get bad, fast, but the first couple of years are a blast.

I spent the next seven years in, more or less, a walking coma. My drug use had progressed well passed weed and I was very high on a daily basis. The point of this bit is not to glorify drug use. For me, it was a real problem. The point is to show how quickly things can go off the rails. I’ve been to jail twice. I’ve been on probation, done community service, completed over one hundred hours in Narcotics Anonymous and been fired from countless jobs along side having ruined numerous relationships. These all should have been red flags but none of these were enough of a wake up call.

At the age of twenty two I had a very uncharacteristic moment of clarity. I was able to see that the life style I was living was never going to change unless I did something about it. I forced myself to stare down my implicit bias, and start dealing with my problems one by one. This is certainly not a hero’s tale, but facing my problems sober was the scariest thing I’ve ever had to stand up to. Not just sobriety, but the realization that I had formed so many defense mechanisms in order to protect myself that no one would have been able to reach me. 

It’s been thirteen years since that moment. I’m now married with two beautiful children. I hope to be able to teach them that the hardest thing to stand up to may be yourself. But if they ever need anything, I hope they’ll always come to me.