Just when I wanted to give up all together, throw the whole thing in the trash, never look at it, or think about it again, just act like it none of that ever happened, something came along that relit a fire under my ass.
Okay where do I begin? At the beginning? No. That’s too long and exhausting. Maybe I will just start in the middle. I went to a very strange high school. One that had very different concepts and techniques on how to deliver an education and therapy to the ‘troubled teens’ left on that mountain in California. Some called the school a cult. Some called it pioneering. Whichever way you slice it, this was not a normal high school. This was not a normal private boarding school. I can’t even find the appropriate comparison to describe my high school to you. There was, and is, nothing else like it.
I had three pages written trying to explain that school, but then…I deleted it. If you didn’t go there it is almost impossible to explain, nor is it believable. After I tell someone about that school they usually sit there, in silence, stunned, complete with their jaw on the floor and a confused look on their faces.
[but…if you have a lot (I mean a lot) of time on your hands you can read these links which will give you the general idea, from which my school’s concepts were built upon]
A very long story cut short, someone who attended my high school wrote a book about it. A real book, that’s been published, and now for sale on Amazon. She attended the school after I did. Well after the school had lightened up a bit and loosened their tight reigns. Let’s just say she went to the decaffeinated version of the school from when I attended. Nonetheless, I am sure she had some of the very same experiences as I did.
I am sitting here writing this with a mass of emotions exploding through my body. My first impulse (of course) was to order the book as fast as I could. But, the second after I pressed the button for shipping, I started to feel strange. I am actually scared to read her words, to remember those days with that sort of clarity. To see where I went to high school, on paper, in print, in a book. Or, to see / hear about that school, from her point of view. At the same time I was wishing that book were already in my hands so I can gobble it up.
I still have all of my things from that time in my life. Every letter, every journal, every card, every story is all right here, under my nose, in my house. I just haven’t looked at it too closely for years. And I did not want to. Not really.
Just knowing that book is on its way to my house is bringing up all kinds of feelings. Some feelings I don’t recognize. Other’s …I know all too well.
Then I started thinking about my own book. The one I haven’t touched in six months. And why I haven’t touched it in six months. I am great at making excuses. I’m too busy, my job, my house, my son, my family, my friends, my stomach, blah blah.
In truth…and in all honesty, I stopped writing because it was too painful for me to ‘go there’. I like to tell myself that I am over it. I am. I like to tell myself that I have moved on. I have. I know that I am a different person now; I am not the same girl I was then.
But the only way to write my book; is to ‘go there’ mentally and emotionally. I have to go back to ‘that place’. That very dark, cold…place. It takes a lot out of me to go to that place, to be in her shoes again…to be Jasmine, in order to remember each and every detail, and spill it onto the pages.
If I am so “over” all of it, then why does it still hurt so much to ‘go there’?
When I was really focused on my book, writing every night; weird stuff started to happen. I started having really bad dreams. I never remember my dreams. I started reliving all those old feelings as if they were new. The pissed off sleeping teenager inside of me, was awakened. And she was still pissed off.
A.Very. Angry. Little. Girl.
I wasn’t rebuilding all of the walls I worked so hard to take down. But some of the familiar “I can’t be in my own skin” feelings came back. The memories that were once cloudy became extremely vivid. Things I thought I had forgotten; were becoming almost tangible.
I started sleepwalking. I would wake up in my own living room, re-arranging furniture and not know why or how I had gotten there. I started sleep-calling people. Yes. Sleep-Calling. I called my mother while I was sleeping. I thought she was my ex-drug dealer. I left scary voice mails on her cell phone, yelling at her to bring me cocaine. I didn’t even know I called my mother until she called me back, terrified, and played the voice mail back to me. I also called one of my girlfriends thinking I was in the dressing room of one of the clubs I worked. I sounded so distraught she drove all the way over to my house to check on me. I was sleeping and had no idea what she was talking about.
That’s when my mother suggested I might want to take a break, just for a few weeks to clear my head. That few weeks turned into a month, then two, and now here we are at six.
Another reason I stopped writing the book, was the sheer horror of being that exposed. I have written here about how I keep things right on the surface. Nothing too deep, or too real, because what if the wrong person reads it? I am supposed to be this professional woman. I couldn’t have colleague or co-worker read or know any of those things. Maybe they would loose respect for me? Label me? Look at me with different eyes? There have been friends, and family members of mine that have told me to delete certain posts, for the very reasons I mentioned above.
I had to do a lot of soul searching to find the courage and strength to post that chapter one, even though I am up to chapter 10.
Then I started thinking how hard it must have been for this girl to write her book. How did she get through it? Not just the writing process, but also the emotional process that had to come with writing such a book.
That brings me to the feelings I am having right now. If she could do it, I can do it. If she is letting it all hangout, then so can I. That school we both attended was insane, that insanity has made us stronger. Since we survived, and managed to become rational, responsible, productive members of society, then what the fuck am I so scared of?
Maybe I am not as “over it” as I’d like to think I am. Maybe I have to write my book to get over it. Maybe I need that emotional process to really heal. Maybe I am the only one that needs to look at me through different eyes.
Poem lyrics of Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matchd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life.
“To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.”
… I am rededicating my efforts towards my book. As painful as it may be, and even if it never gets published, it has to be written….
