Story #2

My first rejection happened to me on the day of my birth: I was given up for adoption. The only parents I knew, the people who adopted me, raised me, and cared for me, were good, honest, hardworking people -- and they were white. Yes, I am black, and every day I would look at them and be reminded of how unwanted I was by the person who had birthed me. My parents saw an untapped intelligence and taught me how to read at an early age: that way when I asked too many questions about too many things, they could say, "Look it up in the dictionary or the encyclopedia." So I did. But there are so many things that books can't or won't teach you -- like how much hatred there is in the world, and how that hate is directed at people who have no control over their situation or lot in life. Before I started school, life was okay -- a bit sheltered, perhaps, but it was okay. It took moving to a little town in southeastern Alaska to open the gates of Hell for me.

I remember walking into the first grade classroom -- no kindergarten for this high-IQ child! -- and seeing all these white faces looking at me. When I sat in my desk, everybody on all sides moved their desks away from mine as if I had something contagious, and I don't recall if the teacher did anything about it. More rejection! I had no friends for months, always eating by myself or standing in a corner of the schoolyard watching everyone else have fun. If I tried to approach the others, they'd call me foul names and run off laughing. I did very well academically, trying to prove my worth to a bunch of bigots who would never consider me a human being. I became withdrawn and angry, hating everybody I saw and becoming a bit of a bully. I experimented sexually with my older brother's friends, becoming quite adept at oral sex by the time I was 12 -- just hoping for a little bit of acceptance, never finding it. I got angrier. I tried joining all sorts of school clubs -- photography, German club, yearbook committee, weight training, volleyball. I did well in all of those things, but was never really part of any team -- just me and two other outcasts muddling along. Social functions were nothing for me to look forward to, since I knew I'd be on the outskirts of the crowd while everybody else fit in easily. Even my two older brothers didn't want me to speak to them at school -- still more rejection! No dates, no dances: NOTHING. Just an ugly, awkward black girl, no good and good for nothing.

My parents sent me to stay with some black friends of theirs that they'd met in Alaska, who had since moved to South Dakota. I don't know what they hoped to achieve; I was already socially inept and felt like the ugliest piece of crap in the world. I'd already lost my virginity to a 22-year-old guy when I was 15, and it didn't improve my attitude any; I felt a bit of satisfaction when I seduced the father.

Back in Alaska after the school year, my parents sent me to get jobs at fish canneries for the rest of the summer. Combined with money I made babysitting, I soon had a nice stash of cash. I dropped out of school at the beginning of my senior year. I was 16 years old and fed up with the world, so I ran away from home, feeling unloved and misunderstood, and didn't speak to my parents for 2 years. The man I hooked up with fed my toxicity, and my bad attitude got worse. The only good things he did for me were making sure I got my G.E.D. and kept on with some form of education. Otherwise, I spent my days at a video-game parlor or just wandered around the boat docks. I was always full of rage, though -- that's the only emotion I was capable of dealing with. Joy and happiness were always fleeting, and pain and sadness were always to much to bear. But anger and rage were my companions -- pets on a leash that I could loosen on anybody who had the misfortune of getting on my bad side. Years of physical labor made me stronger than I appeared, and I had no compunction about getting in a fistfight with anybody, whether they were male or female, and they always got the worse end of the deal. I started drinking and using drugs: LSD, pot and mushrooms were the big things, and sometimes I'd take speed.

I sought psychiatric help when overwhelmed by my feelings of worthlessness, getting nothing but weird diagnoses that I didn't think applied to me. Psychotic? Me? Impossible! Manic-depression? No way! Paranoid schizophrenic? I didn't have a split personality! Off and on, I went to various shrinks, labeling them as 'quick-fix quacks' who would take an hour of my time and lots of money.

I became pregnant at the age of 18 and finally re-established contact with my parents, but I still felt alone and isolated. I didn't know how to make friends, and just quit trying. I had a slight 'episode' one day in June of '88, where I was convinced that one woman in town had set her sights on my husband. I got one of my guns and put it in a bag and carried it around, hoping I would see her so I could blow her away. A guy who knew my husband saw me walking past a bar they hung out at, and by fate or something, I accidentally dropped the gun. He grabbed it and told me to go home, and I started screaming at him. I finally went home and just stared at the blank television set, not wanting to hear or see anything. My husband got worried and sent me to a hospital in Seattle. I voluntarily signed in and stayed there for a week, then I left. I stayed with a girl I knew from school (one of 2 friends I made the whole time) until my husband sent me a ticket home. I just kind of existed then, not really feeling part of anything, even life. I took care of myself physically, walking every day and taking my vitamins. I didn't think that my child should suffer just because I was such a mental case.

After he was born, postpartum depression hit hard. I was crying all the time over the stupidest things, and couldn't deal with all the stress anymore. I never harmed my son, but I always thought that I should give him up so he'd be with better people; of course my husband didn't want that. He had his own selfish reasons for wanting a child, and when I found out why, I left him.

When I stopped breastfeeding, my OB/GYN prescribed antidepressants for me. I felt like a zombie, and I always had headaches or heart palpitations. If I missed one dose, I'd feel violently ill and just lay in bed. After almost a year of that nonsense, I weaned myself off the drugs and continued existing. I kept searching for some sort of acceptance, mainly men, and had numerous one-night stands -- I started prostituting myself a bit, figuring I shouldn't just give it away, and men were so stupid they'd pay for anything.

I currently live in Seattle with my son, who is dealing with the abuse he suffered from his father. It's so tough for me to help him when I can't even help myself when it comes to dealing with our demons. He's in a residential treatment facility with other boys like him. I want to cry when I think of that innocent little boy, so sweet and loving, going through the hell his father perpetrated on him. I feel like a huge failure since nothing I've ever attempted has succeeded. I hate being stuck in a 9 to 5 job, when all I really want to do is be a hermit, living off the land, away from people, and writing stories and poems. I feel like a phony even when I label others as phony: they, because they refuse to look behind the masks that they wear; me, because I do wear a mask as well. I have to, unless I want to be ostracized more than I already am. I am a pariah, one of the walking wounded -- but my scars aren't visible. I simply exude the aura, and on some primal level others sense it and keep their distance. My body dimorphism makes me hate looking in the mirror, and I hate trying to pick out clothes to wear to work. Everything that looks good in store windows or on other women just look like burlap sacks on my pathetic figure. I try to tell myself that I should be grateful that I'm healthy, but it would sure be nice to be accepted. unconditional acceptance and non-rejection -- will I ever know what that's like? Or am I just doomed to a lonely existence, crippled by my disorder and the ineptitude I feel? I just don't seem to belong anywhere. I'm just a survivor, not even looking for acceptance anymore. Too many rules to follow and games to play if you want to belong, and the rules are always changing. I'm just so tired of the B.S.