So where I last left off I was just about to enter junior high I think. Middle school wasn’t much different at first, due to the meds my brain power was skewed. I was calmer for the classrooms, but dumber from the drugs. (Don’t do drugs kids, they’ll make you stupid)
I wound up in several “remedial” classes, which was filled with more bullies. The upside being I had a slightly better handle on myself and by that I mean I had gone completely numb. I coasted through without too many visits to the detention room, but I think it’s because I had a “friend” that looked out for me.
This is when Mr. Ed Clark enters, Mr. Clark was originally the vice principal of my middle school. He took an interest in the kids he felt had an unfair shake and plenty of potential. I guess I was one of them. Mr. Clark made it a point each day to find me and just talk with me for 5 mins. I know 5 minutes doesn’t seem like a lot, but to a kid that felt ignored at home it meant the world. He did this every day for the first year I was in middle school and the only reason he stopped is because he became principal and had more responsibilities to do, but he made sure he told me and several other students that his door was always open to us even when it was closed. He kept his word too, anytime myself or others he mentored needed an ear or council we had it.
The remedial classes sucked, the teachers were nice it’s just that the classes were slow and boring. Of course I know they had to be so the kid who actually needed them could keep up. I was starting to fight the medication, I was getting more sure of myself and through talking with Mr. Clark and few others I was able to find the courage to address how these pills made me feel and that I didn’t want to take them any more. At the same time I started to flourish more socially. I had a whole mess of friends and suddenly there was female attraction.
I met my first “girl friend” in middle school, unfortunately I was an ass to her after a week. Peer pressure is a bitch. She was in one of my remedial classes as an assistant. I can’t remember her name (I’m horrible with that shit), but I do remember her….the important stuff. She was a year or two older, smart and funny. She had seen instantly that I didn’t belong in those classes and kind of gravitated towards me. She had a pretty smile and long dark hair. She was also a little person, not drastically so though. It was enough that people noticed her being different. We had a great time in class and we’d sneak off to talk in between classes, but one day we were seen holding hands and she asked me to bend down so she could tell me something. She kissed me, and everybody saw. I was teased mercilessly by those kids that saw for a few days. It led me to being a douche and breaking it off with her for no reason. I really feel horrible about it, but you can’t change the past only the future.
The girlfriend thing was weird for me anyways, I had been attracted to other girls before and well being young meant a heap of unrequited love and affections. I was used to being shunned or strung along. I was the fat kid who could wig out at any moment, nobody wanted to be with that guy. You’d get teased mercilessly and end up being a douche by breaking up with him.
Actually my love life is a whole chapter in an of itself. Which we’ll probably dive into next. This should be interesting.
Anyways, middle school came and went without much of a fuss. There were a few dust-ups, but nothing major really happened I seemed to have grabbed a hold of who I was and was learning to control it. Or so I thought. I could manage the kids at school fairly well, but it was the home life that left me feeling ready to punch kittens.
You see, my mother had issues. Or she was told she did, and well while mom was going crazy in her own way, I was kind of left to fend for myself a bit. My step father was a less than patient man and really was a condescending asshole. He treated my mother like crap and it angered me endlessly. I was a kid and couldn’t do anything other than bottle it up and hope it stayed bottled. Which it never did, I would blow up at home or out in public.
My step father had his own demons he never addressed, he just pushed them aside and tried to ignore them like he did us. He was adopted, within his own family though he never knew for sure who his parents were. He was a sickly kid and missed a good chunk of the formative bonding experiences with friends due to it. He had 1 friend from child hood that I knew of. A man named Dennis who at every turn my step father would try to ignore. This man, endured condescension and ridicule from my step father yet still wanted to be his friend.
Hell my parents weren’t big on being social with anyone, that included any kind of real social bonding with each other. It was always them off in their own corners of where ever we were living. My mother was always what they call an Introvert, which means shy and antisocial. Even in her youth she was rather meek and mousey. My step father was a dick, which means he was antisocial due to his own design. I can see why they didn’t have a mountain of friends beating down their doors.
We didn’t even really do too awful much as a family. Liz and most everyone else is shocked by the fact that I have never done 90% of the stuff that normal families did together. Things like camping or road tripping, we were poor and couldn’t afford much. My step father had an “accident” shortly after he and my mother got married and never worked again. If he hadn’t we’d have had a pretty good life financially speaking, actually I think things would have been a little different all the way around since I am pretty sure his self worth was actually nil. He liked to act like he believed himself to be king, but the cracks showed all to well in his facade.
I believe he was ultimately threatened by me, I was stronger and smarter than he was and that was a problem because he liked to treat people (including his women) how he wanted to treat them without being needled for it. You see he had been married once before and it ended badly, mostly it seems due to his own arrogance and ignorance. You can’t treat a woman like she doesn’t matter and prove time and time again that you don’t really give a shit and expect her to stay. That’s not to say that the woman in question didn’t have her share of blame pie, but it does sound like ultimately she left due to him.
So home life was rocky, we had almost no money and were teetering broke almost every week. Christmas, birthdays ect. were just another day to me really. Little fanfare or fuss was made over my aging or really any designed childhood holiday. Sure my grandparents tried to make up for it, but really I was ok with no party or many presents…if any some years. It all just solidified the fact to me that I wasn’t really wanted, that I was a burden to those around me. This is how the step father would make me feel whenever he got the chance.
It carried on throughout my whole life, at every chance that man would try to make me feel as small as possible in “his house” which is how he ALWAYS referred to it. You see he hated being challenged (to be fair nobody is ever fond of it), but any time he was challenged and especially by me, he’d lose his shit and become so condescending that you just wanted to beat the snob out of him. One time I literally attacked the man with a sandwich for being a unbearable prick. There was one time though that I truly scared the shit out of him.
The only times I really went after him is when he was being a douche to my mother. This was fairly regular, but he’d go too far and set me off. I even think he sometimes did it on purpose. Anyways, one time he had gone too far and got my hackles up. He was trying to corner me, attempting to do damage and I grabbed our vacuum by it handle and rotated my wrist till it went from flat on the ground to straight up in the air. Holding it like most would hold a bat or club. Doing this one handed startled the shit out of him, I didn’t swing it nor did I have intentions to. It was a power move to get him to back down, didn’t work and he initiated violence with me by punching me in the mouth. He was found of punching me, I’d say out of any given year he’d lay his hands on me at least once or twice a month. It sucked, but what could I do? I didn’t have anywhere to run to, no safe place to move out to.
Always seemed like I was stuck, my mother wasn’t on my side and my step father manipulated people and the truth to make me look like the bad guy. I edged out everyone who could have saved me by making me look like the villain. Oh well, being the bad guy is something I have come to accept.