Open Letters

So this happened last spring, and I decided that it’s time I write an open letter.  Or two.



To my sophomore-year gym class teacher:

Dear Mr. Walsh,

I doubt you’d remember me.  I run errands for the library, and I’ve often given you DVDs and fixed your laptop.

Remember me?  No?  Okay, let’s try this:

I’m the blue-haired loony who spent every free day pacing the edge of the gym.  I never spoke.  You laughed at me a lot, especially on days when we didn’t have to dress and I showed up in Doctor Who and Star Trek shirts and spent the entire period reading.  I was pretty spacey; you never could hold my attention, and you often had to call my name repeatedly.

Remember now?  Oh, good.

Your laughter and constant shouting of my name brought a lot of unwanted attention to me.  I get the feeling that if you had never put the spotlight on me, my life wouldn’t have been the hell it was that year.  It still would have been hell, but perhaps not as high a circle as it ended up being.  I’m not saying all of it’s your fault; you may have called attention to me, but my classmates didn’t have to pick on me.  Still, teasing the geek?  For being smart as opposed to athletic?  And for reading?  Really?  Aren’t adults supposed to be above that?

Still, maybe next time you walk into the library while I’m working there, you’ll recognize me and see how things are.  I’ve single-handedly fixed half the computers in there.  I know exactly where everything is.  I helped sort out the bloody design of the place.  All the librarians love me, because I’m bright, I can help with the books, and I can teach them how to do tech things.

Did you notice?  Did you see that everything they love me for is what you teased me about?  Did you know that I endeared myself to my boss over the summer on the first day by teaching myself how to do something she wanted, and then teaching her?

I used to say that listening to you talk dropped my IQ by a point or two every time.  I realize that you’re probably not smart enough to understand the technology that I work with and fix every day, and that probably puts you a little in awe of my technological magic (because that’s what it is), and that maybe you’re a little afraid of what you don’t understand.  You’re not going about this the right way, though.  You want to befriend the smart kids who can fix your webcam and microphone.  You want to be nice to them.  Because we can tell.  We know who teased the nerds, and we’ll fix your webcam, but we can install viruses, too.  We know how to make your computer flash you the bird at random times.  We can externally access your computer and steal your files.  But on the other hand, we can tell who was nice to the nerds, and we’ll fix your webcam, but then we’ll do a scan to make sure that you have no viruses, and make sure that all your connections are up and running.

I’m not making threats.  I’m just saying, be nice to the smart kids, and we’ll be nice back.  Be mean to the smart kids, and we’ll be the ones in power pretty soon, and then we’ll make your life hell.  We’re kind of vindictive that way.

—Sarah Kate



To my eighth grade graduating class:

To Whom It May Concern:

So, does anyone remember me?  You probably all do, actually.  I mean, there were only sixty-four of us; we all knew each other by name.  But, in case you don’t, I’m the kid who challenged your views of how people should be.  I’m the one who was completely beyond your comprehension.  I’m the smart one with all the answers who didn’t know shit.  I’m the one who never swore.  I’m the one who never thought about dying her hair, painting her nails, or putting on make-up.  I’m the only one who didn’t have a problem with the socks.  I’m the non-conformist of non-conformists.  I’m the one you simply did not understand.

And I remember, very clearly, that you reacted with hostility.

I got left out of almost everything, picked last in gym class, left to work alone on group projects.  My books were stolen.  I was treated like I wasn’t there.  I was hit more than once.  When I made the slightest mistake, everyone laughed.  I was expected to be perfect, yet viewed as always wrong until someone confirmed what I said.

There were light points, though.  You were grudgingly impressed whenever I was forced to share my writing with the class.  I remember one incident from sixth grade, when the silence after I’d read a story was punctuated by admiring whistles and a surprised look from our teacher that a twelve-year-old could be so deep.  More than once, I heard, “Don’t forget us when you’re famous.”

I’d smile and blush and promise not to, only to cry at home that I’d never be able to.  Whether I end up the rich, famous author, or the technician working on your computers, I will never be able to forget you or what you did, though I’m sure you’ll only remember enough to say, “I knew her in grade school!”  If you see my name on a book, you’ll think, “I always said she was good!” and if you hire me to fix your computer, you’ll think, “I always thought she’d never amount to anything.”

Really though? I don't care any more. I'm finished being upset that you thought that "different" meant "weird." I can take on huge projects by myself now, because I had to do before. I can take being wrong, because I know I'm not perfect. I have the ability to disappear into crowds and sneak away, because I know how to make people ignore me. Most of all, though, I can fight back and stand up for other people, because I know how much it sucks to be on receiving end of it.

In short, "I'm burning bright thanks to your rejection fuel."

Whatever I end up doing, I'll love it and shine like a star in my field, and that's one hell of a lot more than I can say for most of you.

—Sarah Kate

I Wrote A List This Week

This isn't all that uncommon a thing for me to do. I write lots of lists. Lists of books I want need to get. Lists of things I have to do. Lists of what my mom needs me to get at the store. I remember things better when I write them down, and I feel more accomplished when I check things off. Plus, I know that everything is done when the whole list is finished.

But this list is a special list. This list is a list of things I need to bring with me to college.

I'm sure some of you are thinking "Already? It's only the beginning of May!" I'm sure I'd be thinking that, too, if the person were anyone other than me. But only if I didn't know the reason. The reason I already wrote this list is that I'm leaving soon. Twenty-three days from now, actually.

See, I got a job this summer, working at my college. My big brother goes there, and he hooked me up at the theater he works at. I'll be working forty hours a week, and living with his awesome, geektastic girlfriend, Jordan. This is going to be a huge change for me; I know that it will be Fun and A Good Experience, but it could also be Frightening and Lonely, and it will definitely be New and Different. I have many complicated feels about this, and it will probably be a good thing for me to get them down and sort them out.

The first think I'd like to address is my house and homelife. In this aspect, things can only get better. Yes, I'll be providing for myself, living with someone who I have only met three or four times, and will have to manage everything on my own, but I honestly can only see this as an improvement. I currently live with my parents and two younger sisters; my oldest brother has moved out, and lives in Chicago, and I will be joining my other big brother in Wisconsin this summer. I love my family, don't get me wrong, but my baby sister (she's almost nine now, but she'll always be the baby) has an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and it can make life hell sometimes. She can be this sweet little girl, who loves to hug you and hang out with you and looks up to me and our other sister so much and wants to be just as cool as we are, but suddenly, with no visible cause, she can become unreasonable, throwing fits over the smallest thing; she won't respect our personal space, she has no filter between her brain and her mouth, and never thinks how hurtful the things she says can be, she doesn't get that sometimes, big girls are irritable and in so much pain they literally cannot move and just don't have the patience or the will to deal with anything stressful.

I don't want anyone getting the wrong idea. Like I said, I love her, with all my heart, and I will do anything to help her. I'm so grateful to the people at her school, to the staff, who know exactly how to handle her, and to the other students, who love her imagination and think she's the coolest and are almost always so nice to her and make her feel like the most popular girl in school and, really, I think she might be. I'm so happy that she can have that, because I know the hell that kids with mental disabilities can go through in school. I flew completely off the handle one day in Gym class because the teacher was being an ass to someone like my sister, and nobody said so much as a negative word about the kid in my hearing for the rest of the year. I hope that my baby sister doesn't ever have anything like that happen to her, but if she does, I hope that there is someone like me to stand up for her.

Now that I (hopefully) have convinced you of my love of my sister, I think it's safe to say that she is one of the things that make me cry the most often. The unreasonableness, the temper tantrums, the just not getting the fact that Neenie and I just need to be left alone sometimes, are so hard to reconcile with the sweet girl she can be. It's desperately difficult to deal with, and there are times when I have to babysit her, and once she's in bed, I just sit down and cry, and I'm damn certain that it will be so much easier when I don't have to deal with that sort of thing on a daily basis. But then I love her so much, it hurts to think that.

Also included in my homelife are my parents. I remember saying, when I was little, how my parents were probably the best parents in the world. I think back and remember that, and then remember how much they managed to screw up. Maybe Neenie and Grace have it best, because my parents had three kids to practice on before them, or maybe what they do is more noticeable. Or maybe my parents were so afraid of doing the wrong thing that they did it anyway.

When Neenie was in fourth grade, her teacher was a bitch of the highest degree. This was the final year in our elementary school before the students started switching classes; English, spelling, math, science, social studies, all were taught by the same teacher, so Neenie had to spend the whole day with the same woman. My sister would come home sobbing, because the teacher made fun of her, almost every single day. My parents went to see the principal, and I think I'm going to love that woman for my whole life because of what she did. She couldn't fire the teacher, because the pastor had the final say in those matters (don't get me started on him), but she told Neenie that she could come down to the office whenever she needed to, because the teacher was being mean, because another student was being mean, or just because Neenie was feeling down. So my parents did something about that. They don't seem too bad, do they?

Well, look at the other side of the story.

When Neenie was in fourth grade, I was in seventh. Now, I didn't have a teacher going after me, but I had most of my classmates on my back. Neenie has always exuded an aura of confidence (however much we both know she lacks it) that has made her a favorite among her classmates. I never had that. I was smart, geeky, and socially awkward from the ground up. I had been homeschooled until sixth grade, and I didn't have any idea how to interact with my peers until about eighth grade. I'm still kind of clueless. They teased me mercilessly because of this, and I came home crying almost as often as Neenie. My parents never did anything.

When I started to self-injure, I think it was kind of obvious. I'd show up in the morning in my pajamas--a tank top and pajama pants--with cuts criss-crossing my shoulders, but my mom took the cock-and-bull story about falling into bushes that I fed her for the longest time. She only ever did anything about it when my dad saw them, too.

My big brother thinks that she was afraid of making a mistake. Perhaps she was thinking that I was just clumsy and kept taking the same fall over and over, or maybe she was in denial. All that I know is that it made me feel even more alone.

But they did eventually get me help, and I got better.  I'm still better. You could almost say that I'm flourishing. Almost.

They got better, too. They helped me get through things, they did what they could to help me get better, and they were very, very gentle with me. For about five months.

Once those five months were up, though, I started seeming like I was okay again, the support and the gentleness and the care that they had been showing me faded slowly away, until they got to the point where they act like nothing is different from before. They have started, again, some of the behaviors that put me in the hospital in the first place. They yell at me for doing things wrong when I think I'm doing them right but I'm not because my parents have changed the rules again and forgot to tell me. They don't take what I do seriously. They tell me that I need to take time for myself, but get angry with me when I do. They make hurting, cutting remarks that undermine my self-esteem and confidence.

I have to deal with this sort of shit in my own home. And my friends wonder why I think so poorly of myself.

I never get out. I'm trapped in a house that isn't a home, with people who don't seem concerned about my welfare, and I'm dying to just leave. These are the reasons that I got the job at the theater in the first place, and why I'm so happy to be going. But there are reasons that I want to stay, too.

I'm a part of a wonderful youth group. I left St. Damian, the parish of my childhood, and the school where I spent three years learning, to go to a church twenty minutes from where I live, where my only connection is that it was the place my dad and his siblings went to school. Why did I do this, you ask? Because my three years at the school sucked. Because the pastor was a homophobe, and I couldn't sit through another damn sermon about how gays were bad and wrong and going to Hell because they didn't conform to the Bible. Because the place where I ended up had a group of loving, supporting people who let me be myself and stood by me through hell and high water. Because the sixty-something-year-old youth minister told one boy to get off another boy's lap because "that's so gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that."

They are wonderful human beings, the epitome of what the Catholic Church really should be, who take the real meaning of the word "catholic" to heart, and make it truly universal. I'm going to miss being a part of this group, all the friends I leave behind, the love and support they have given me, and the two hours of being open and honest and just having fun every week, and I know that they are going to miss me.

My social life has taken an upturn recently. Specifically, I actually got asked to prom by a friend of mine, and that's something that I never thought would happen. But this kid; he's a friend of mine, and I've sort of half-liked him ever since we met. He's cute and geeky, and he's one of the few guys I've met who are actually really nice (the total is, like, seven or something, and two of them are my blood brothers and another is like my little brother). I mean, I have quite a few guy friends, but most of them can be complete assholes sometimes.

But anyway, so there's this boy who has asked me to prom. Unfortunately for the both of us, I had to say no. No, I'm not doing anything the night of or whatever. I just really hate dances; I hate dancing and crowds and noise and really bad music, and that's pretty much the summary of a school dance. So we're currently treading those awkward waters frequented by two socially awkward people between a slight miscommunication (he thinks I was out-and-out rejecting him) and clearing it up, but hopefully this will work.

Except that I'm leaving soon, so God only knows where this will actually end up going.

Then there are my other friends. My best guy friend (and my "little brother") and I came up with this hilarious plan to build ourselves a little hut thing behind my house this summer, and it would have been so much fun to build it and paint it and hang out in it all summer before I left for college and he started classes (at a local community college) in the fall. Because I'm going away to work, that plan completely fell through.

This is just a little sample of what's going on. My friends and I had a bunch of plans (road trip, hanging out, swimming, and all sorts of other stuff) that won't happen now because I'm really only going to have ten days of summer break between my last day of school and when I leave to start work.

But the hardest part of leaving is definitely the fact that I don't get to take my little sister and my best friend with me.

These are two different people, but they can both share the same two roles. Neenie, my freshman (they make great pets), has been considered my best friend since sophomore year. I don't know how it happened, other than gradually, but suddenly we were super close and loving each other and still a little teasing but in a nice way now and sharing interests and all sorts of things, sort of like what happened with me and my big brother, Chris, but fortunately before my senior year. Emma Lee, my lovely co-host on our recently-conceived podcast (shameless!plug is shameless), has been my best friend since the first day we met in 2008. We are similar enough for it to be awesome and kind of freaky, but different enough that we fill in the gaps in the other's character. When a lot of people think about soulmates, they picture the perfect couple. Emma and I aren't in a romantic relationship--we never will be and the thought is pretty weird. We are soulmates, though, completing each other, best friends for forever and a day, and we know we'll make it through hard times because we have done before.

I'm going to miss these two desperately. Even though I don't get to see Emma every day like I do Neenie, it's still going to be hard being so much farther away from her. Nothing will change in our relationships because we are four hours apart, I know that, but it still hurts to leave.

So, when the day comes to go, I'm going to leave with mingled joy and sadness, because sometimes good-bye is a second chance, but the hardest part of this is leaving you.

In Which I Get Personal And Interpret a Song in a Way it Probably Wasn't Intended to Be

There is a song called “Jar of Hearts”, sung by Christina Perri.  It’s about a girl running from the hopeful return of someone she has been in an abusive relationship with before.  Looking at it, it would appear that the relationship was with a boy who has a history of abusing and abandoning people, and maybe that’s what the writer intended.  Maybe it is the story of a girl staying away from a boy, who has hurt her before, when he tries to come back.  But maybe it’s something more.

I heard this song on a bad day.  It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it, and it wasn’t the first time this idea occurred to me.  But this time, it was a source of strength against temptation.

No, I can’t take one more step towards you

‘Cause all that’s waiting is regret.

Don’t you know I’m not you ghost anymore?

You lost the love I loved the most.

In this, the first verse, there is a declaration of independence.  “I’m not going to accept you this time,” it says.  “I don’t love you anymore, I don’t need you anymore.  I’m walking away.  The only thing choosing you would give me is regret, and I don’t want that.”

I’ve learned to live half alive

And now you want me one more time.

This small couplet is accusatory.  “By the time you left,” it says, “I was half dead. And you’re thinking about coming back?”  The implied anger and indignation of this couplet can be easily felt.

And who do you think you are

Running ‘round leaving scars

Collecting your jar of hearts

And tearing love apart?

You’re gonna catch a cold

From the ice inside your soul

So don’t come back for me.

Who do you think you are?

The same indignation from the previous couplet is echoed in the refrain.  “Who are you to do all this?” it demands.  “Who are you to hurt so many people?”  It continues, “If you keep going like this, you’re going to end up cold and dead, and if you have me in your clutches then, I’m going to go down with you.  But I don’t want to, so keep away.”

I hear you’re asking all around

If I am anywhere to be found

But I have grown too strong

To ever fall back in your arms

The second verse again declares independence.  “I don’t need you,” it says again.  “You may be looking for me, you may be tempting me back to you, and yes, it would be easy to come back, but I’m strong now.  I won’t take the easy way out, especially because I know what it will do to me in the long run.”

The couplet and the refrain are repeated.

And it took so long just to feel all right

Remember how to put back the light in my eyes

I wish I had missed the first time that we kissed

‘Cause you broke all your promises

And you’re back

You don’t get to get me back.

The bridge is perhaps my favorite part of the song.  It admits weakness, the struggle to regain control, and expresses the wish that it had never happened.  “You promised me things,” it says.  “You promised me relief and hope and happiness, and you didn’t give me any of that.  You made me hurt.  You can apologize and smile and look pretty all you want, but I’m standing firm, and you are not getting me back.  I refuse to surrender to you again.”

As the refrain repeats twice more, I wonder at the hearts that have been collected.  In my interpretation of the song, what is doing the hurting and collecting is not someone who moves from person to person, snagging their hearts on the way past, but a self-destructive tendency.  So do these hearts represent everyone who has participated in this tendency?

I rather think not.  The song can be sung by everyone who has hurt themselves intentionally, but the hearts do not refer to the others who have done so.  The hearts represent all the people who are touched by one person’s self-destructive acts.  So many things are hurt by this action; trusts are broken, relationships are damaged, people are wracked by guilt, wondering what they could have done to stop this.

So many of us do this, thinking that we are only hurting ourselves, that this is okay, because at least we’re not taking it out on other people, and besides, we’re not really worth as much anyway, are we?  I tend to think that maybe, the people who think like that would stop when they realize how much else they’re hurting.  I know I did.

As I lay here, under my warm, toasty covers, at quarter after three in the morning, typing despite the fact that I know I need to get up in two and a half hours, I look back at what I wrote and realize that, no matter what this song is really talking about, no matter how you interpret it, it has a message it’s shouting loud and clear, and that message is, “I don’t need you anymore.”

“I don’t need you anymore.”  It’s a thought I myself often express, in the usual arrogant, pigheaded manner of teenagers everywhere.  Of course I don’t need older, wiser people.  I know everything, and I know it way better than they do!  A lot of the time, that arrogance and pigheadedness is undeserved, unwarranted, and I do need these older, smarter, wiser people.  But sometimes, it’s not.  Sometimes, I really don’t need what these people and things are giving me.  I don’t need my aunt’s opinion on being “weird” and what will come of that.  I don’t need my mother’s lectures on tolerating other people’s stupidity.  I don’t need my father’s angry glares every time I make the slightest mistake.

I don’t need the silver flash of a knife and the scarlet drip of blood to make me feel okay.  Not anymore.  I am stronger than the pull of this, I have walked away from it once, and I can damn well stay away.  I’d like to think that I never needed it, but now I know I don’t.  So you can bloody well stop tempting me, because really, who do you think you are?

All At Once--My thoughts on a relatively popular song

So I was mowing my neighbor's lawn earlier today, and one of my less-listened-to songs came on.  "All At Once" by The Fray.  Have you ever heard it?  If you haven't, a lyric video is here.

Anyway, this song, which I've had on my iPod for a long time, suddenly means a bit more to me.  See, I don't admit this to everyone, but with the certain anonimity that goes with blogging and the fact that I haven't told anyone about this, I feel okay sharing.  I'm bisexual, and I'm in love with my female best friend.  My oldest best friend.  The girl who has admitted to being my soul mate, because we are just similar enough for it to awesome, and just different enough to fill in each other's shortcomings.

Now, I'm pretty sure that she knows.  Either that, or she's really fricking dense.  Anyway, so there was some fuckwittery going on earlier this month, having to do with a thirteen-year-old I met at a hospital and my best friend getting herself drunk without telling me (not that I'd want to get drunk with her; it'd be embarrassing for both of us, it's just what went on in the conversation we had while she was drunk).

Anyway, long story short (seriously, the whole took, like, a week to play out), she told me that she might love me in "more than a best friend way", but she was too scared to really look at her feelings and that I was a lot like her ex (which I'm not, by the way, he's rude and creepy and shit) and that it would be better if we just ignored it.

Now, it's necessary to know at this point that I've been living with the fact that I'm in love with her and she's never going to love me back the same way for about two years now.  Just think about it; you settle yourself to the fact that what you really want is never going to happen, then you find out that is could happen, and the only reason it's not happening is because the other person is too much of a fucking coward to figure out if it's even possible.

It's been really hard lately, talking to her and trying to pretend that everything's okay, but I have no intention, right now, anyway, of letting her go, because I've spent a few months without her in the past, and I don't ever want to go through that again.  This song, All At Once, tells the story of someone who has something special at home, but for some reason doesn't think it's enough, and goes out in search of perfection.  The line near the end, "Perfection will not come," shows how futile this person's search is, because what he/she is looking for cannot be found.

Another of the lines, "She won't keep on waiting/For you without a doubt/Much longer for you to sort it out," says that if this person's search takes too long, his/her girl will eventually give up on him/her.  In the end, this person could end up totally alone, because he/she pushed away what he/she had, and couldn't find what he/she was looking for, because it can't be found.

Now, to apply this to my life, my best friend doesn't have to worry.  I will never leave her.  But the fact that she is off searching for something that's right in front of her face makes me sad, and the fact that she refuses to recognize what's right in front of her face hurts like Hell.

Maybe one day I'll get over this.  Maybe I'll stop loving her so much.  Maybe I'll keep loving her, but forgive how much she hurt me.  Maybe one day I'll be able to forget.  Maybe I'll move on.  Maybe I'll fall in love with someone I actually have a chance with.  Maybe I'll be able to just stop thinking about it one day.

I don't know what the future brings, but I do know that for now, I'll nurse a secret heartache once more, and I'll cry every now and then, and I'll try not to get green with envy the next time she has a boyfriend.  I'll pretend to her and to my family and most of my friends that everything's okay, and pray that one day that I won't have to pretend anymore.