Something I got to thinking about this evening.
I grew up kinda discombobulated. I was born of one father, assigned a few years later to another one, and then sent back to the first on a regular basis every summer.
His mother and his aunts loved me. That was okay. But it was confusing, and I can only imagine how confusing it was, because this started when I was very young. Sent off on the airplane with the smiling stewardess. Now there are all these new people I have to please.
I don't remember any of that. I can only imagine it.
I have spent almost all of my remembered life in some sort of anxiety. It's always there, waiting to pounce.
I was an unruly child. Eventually. And later.
I like to think that I wasn't born bad.
But all of this anxiety doesn't just bloom out of nowhere. I was scared. I was scared, over and over again. I remember some of it, and I do believe I don't remember all of it.
But I can work it out, in retrospect.
I became difficult. Back and forth, back and forth. I don't remember much of this either. But I can see it.
School? Yeah, that was fun. Picked up on by a few good teachers for my talents, and then left to hang and be battered by my darling little schoolmates.
Built into the system.
Some of it was great, though, before the little bullies killed it for me. They were, of course, allowed, because our school systems suck.
More ruination. More time to go, time to be shipped somewhere else. New people to please.
I probably thought I was getting good at it.
I've spent my whole life learning to do this.
New people, new people, new people to fail to please.
I've gotten used to it. I kind of smile every time it happens, now.
New people, new people, new people, you don't like me? Okay, there's the door.
I win.
Except, of course I don't. It's not really a way of getting even, so much as it's a way of trying to keep my head above water.
I get rejected, rejected, rejected. Now you get rejected, rejected, rejected.
The water level stays even.
This is what happens to children who are scared too much. This is what we turn into.
This is a blog about working for more and better Democrats. We insult the Republicans. We insult the teabaggers.
I watch this go by, I read about the sexually twisted people and the abusers and the sad teabaggers, and I think; they are not so far from me. They, too, are children who were scared too much.
I don't think I'm ruined, really. I'm still here, blogging around and occasionally irritating the hell out of people; other times pleasing people.
Still the same kid I always was.
But I was not scared too much, I believe. Not quite enough to fail. Not quite enough to turn mean.
For that, I am grateful. I'm glad I didn't become ruined entirely. Just kind of. Just partly.
Just enough to still retain the threads of what I could have been, even though I never will be that.
Just enough to bear witness, and to be sad for these people who got ruined too far, who cannot ever recover.
Sounds religious, doesn't it?
Mirrors are funny that way.