An experiment in writing without needing to make a point

Today I had two things touch me.  Which sounds odd, but that’s just because you’ve got a dirty mind.  The first was a video that has all the hallmarks of being a cheesy “we think we know teenagers (but we really haven’t got a clue)” video and ended with me bawling into a wad of tissues near the end (it’s the bit where they walk across the line if you’re interested).  If you’re one of those people who managed to go through school without suffering psychological (and maybe even physical) scarring then it may not have quite the same affect.  For the rest of us, when you’ve got some time in a safe space what this 15 minute video about something called Challenge Day.  And have a box of tissues handy, just in case.

To be honest though, the video itself possibly isn’t that moving (except the bit with the Vice Principal talking to her son – more blubbing was had here).  It’s what was said in my head that had me splashing tears all over my laptop.  So if you don’t want to watch the video, let me explain the bit that got me going.

Take a bunch of teenagers AND school staff, some students have gone through training to lead the session.  All are mixed up outside normal friendship groups and do exercises and games to break ice.  Then they start to answer questions (leaders going first) – things like “If you really knew me…” but that’s not the ‘good’ part.  Fast forward to everyone stood behind a line, if you relate to the group named you cross the line to the other side of the room and turn to face the others.  Picked on for the colour of your skin.  Picked on for being fat.  These get clear responses.  But in my head she asked the questions “Picked on for reasons you don’t even know”, “Picked on for doing stuff that’s ‘gay’ like dancing”, “Picked on for not agreeing with your friends” and even “Feel ignored by everyone”, “Feel like you don’t have a single friend in the world”, “So confused you wanna cry”, “Hiding a secret”,”Don’t relate to anyone around you”,”Just want someone to care”,….  And I wasn’t the only one walking across that line.

I’ve found new friends online that I can talk to about things I wouldn’t bring up with offline friends.  I feel safe to open up about things that I’m going through right now.  But there’s still so much of me that’s stuck in school, where being different was the only thing I could be and yet was the one thing guaranteed to bring me misery.  I’m still desperately looking for people who can say “me too” about the silly things like “I don’t have a clue what’s going on”, “I don’t like people who don’t use their brains”, “This is all majorly scary”, but to my 15 yr old self.

Right now, I get these things about the world, I have people I can share in this with, but the little boy in my memories standing in the playground alone just after…, standing in the corridor alone just after…, standing in the hall alone just after…, standing in the crowd alone, he needs someone to love him and right now all I seem to be able to do is cry for him.

And another

The second was when I read about a new visitor explaining why she went splat on the internet.  These two posts left me feeling like maybe, just maybe, it really was ok to feel all this stuff I feel.  And maybe, just maybe, it’s possible to get to a point where you can finally start to see what’s going on, even if you’re not able to stop it yet, you can still recognise, understand & observe the crazy in a way that feels more like the outside looking in, than blundering around on the inside in total confusion.  And there are people in the UK that I can relate to.

What I’ve experienced isn’t as ‘dramatic’ as Joely, but the one thing that I seem to be stuck on is getting out of unhappy comfort and moving towards happy discomfort.  Here I can see someone who has managed to make this break because that was the next step for them.  Here is someone who can describe why being told I’m wrong, or being offered advice is just going to pee me off.  Here is someone who can explain that the things that I do that I hate I do because I had to do them to survive, and now I can maybe start to recognise them as no longer necessary and start to think about letting go of them.  And that the scary feeling of being lost that accompanies that is normal, and ok, and not going to kill me either.  And somehow I don’t think she’d mind me making the comparison between her and me, despite the voice in my head that thinks “what happened to you wasn’t nearly as bad, you shouldn’t need to do all that grieving, loving, hippy crap”.

Another Havinaut (or Friend of Havi?) wrote about dancing around the pain and this idea of not jumping into the deep end is a new one for me.  I’m in uncharted territory for me.  I’m trying to learn the skills necessary to learn the skills necessary to understand what skills I need to learn in order to learn the skills to start to think about dealing with some of this stuff.  I feel so far behind it seems impossible, and yet I know that if I just take some time to be near the horrible sucking black hole that I can feel in my chest, then maybe, just maybe, it will suck a little less.

Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

• Living in the past
• Making looking after myself a priority
• The Happiness Hypothesis