I intend to tackle some (okay, one) of my more painful questions. This is pretty much just an exploration of my crazy brain. Of my memories. And if they've lead to something that I consider one of my 'most painful questions' it's pretty clear that these don't have happy endings. This really doesn't have anything to do with CHADD, but I don't see any reason to make a whole new blog just for my introspective emo time. Read if you want, don't if you don't. Simple, isn't it?
Also, I realize that in the previous post I begin as though in the middle of a conversation. There is one simple reason for that: I started writing this one first.
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When--where?--did I learn that I am replaceable? Not in the way of every human being is a small piece of the whole, but in the way of "I'll never be as good as the next model". I won't. There is always some-one or -thing that is better than me by just enough to be worth dropping me right then and there and moving on with the newer improved model.
Maybe I should start with the earliest example in my memory, the one that started it all. Yes, Julie Andrews, the beginning is a very good place to start.
When I was five years old my family moved to Oregon from Florida. We drove across the country in fourteen days. When we reached Oregon, I was tired and it was night. We were met by my uncle and led to the house where we would be staying with my mom's sister, her husband, and their six children. I didn't meet anyone during that time who hadn't known my cousins first. Not anyone. When we finally moved out, both families were relieved. A week or two, maybe more, after we settled in, I was at the front door of our house, the aptly named Haven, and saw a girl walking across the street. I asked my dad if it was okay, then walked over to her and said "Hi!". We struck up a conversation and she became my first official friend in Oregon that I met and made by myself.
I was six years old. She was ten, and I didn't care. I was just too happy. But there was one concern: now I had someone to play with and my sister didn't. So I got my sister, and I introduced them. And the three of us were friends. She introduced us to her family, her little brothers and sisters, and we would play together. It lasted like that for a long time.
But nothing lasts forever, and as the undeniable youngest of our core trio, I was eventually cut out of things, little by little. Bit by bit. Though we stuck together when the bullies on our street were around, I was the weakest and both my sister and out friend knew it. And they used it. I remember that at one point I was going to ride my bike home, but one of them got in front of me--not just blocking the way, but physically holding my bike in place. I sat there on my bike, pedaling away while she made fun of me until I cried. Then she let me go.
Fast forward: I've just turned eleven, and at the last Girl Scout camp my sister and I attended we met someone else who loved Sailor Moon. My sister had just started to draw, and I had not yet begun to write fanfiction. But the three of us got along famously, for our love of Japanese cartoons eclipsed all else. But she and I had something else in common, something that connected to two of us in a special way: she had ADD. Still does. The three of us were fast friends, with my sister being the eldest and I, once again, the youngest. In fact, we saw each other almost every day that summer, and during that time we decided we would make a film. We would write it, direct, produce, act... we each had out own trademark characters. I was Meg. I had brown hair with blue tips and I could control water and time. My boyfriend was Ryan.
Then we decided our characters needed theme songs. So we looked at anime music video after anime music video (AMV). And they each found one, and I found one. and then my sister decided that she wanted mine—Iris, by the Goo-Goo-Dolls. I could have hers, she promised. And since I had originally wanted Rose in the Wind by Anggun... but no. I liked Iris too much to give it up. Then our friend took her side, and never, ever went back to the middle ground. She got her song, all right. But the three of us kept hanging out. We still spent a lot of time together; we were a trio, after all. Little by little and bit by bit I, the youngest in the group, was pushed away and ignored.
For the next three years I was referred to as "wall".
My sister introduced her to some other friends she had made and together they began working on a marvelous story, the telling of which lasted until after they had graduated high school. The characters that they used were from our movie. I was not permitted to play. I was too young and too uncool. And then, on the weekends, when my sister and I would have played together or watched TV, she went over there and they played. I realized that she preferred their company to mine, and that she didn't love me anymore. And sometimes my sister's friend's mother, my mom's best friend, would invite both of us over, and I would go because I loved that house and that family.
I would go into my old friend's room and sit against the wall next to her closet. I wrote, read, and drew a lot in those days. I spoke very little.
I had spent two years trying to get them to like me, and it had never worked. I had done everything they told me to do and then some. I had been funny, supportive, and obedient. Eventually I stopped spending time with the pair and the group of them. If I was forced to go visit on holidays and other such events, I avoided them. I went to room they weren't in. I sat downstairs in the family room, the art room, the TV room, the quilting room. I sat under a table in a corner, in the dark. I had been doing that for months before her mother noticed. They never made me go back.
The movie, of course, never happened.
As this was going on, I had entered middle school and made a whole new group of friends. Why a new group? Simple answer: my old friends had all bonded very closely with the people I introduced them to, because as a rule I never introduced people who I didn't think would get along. In fact, they had bonded so closely that they had begun ignoring me altogether. With my new friends and my fresh stat, I was sure to be happy.
But I wasn't, because when you make friends from six different social groups and you want to spend time with them all at once, you have to introduce them. And they all got along.
Freshman year I went to a different school. I had one friend, a girl I had been in a play with the year before. Two weeks into the school year, she had met another girl. A popular girl, one who she had classes with. Ignoring the fact that I was in all those same classes, she ignored me.
Sophomore year, I'm back to school with my middle school friends, and I learn that they're friends with my sister. My best friend was the only person who kept me sane, because he kept me with him and as such with the rest of the group. It was slow-going, but I was once again among friends. My friends. Not my sisters. I admit though, during that time I did my fair share of befriending her best friends, too. Not out of spite, but because they were such honestly nice and interesting people.
I'll say no more on my social life in high school, because it is just as chaotic and painful and traumatizing as you might imagine. Thing fell apart. And I was replaced, little by little and bit by bit. Time and time again. I can safely say that I was replaced more times than I had friends who could replace me, because I just kept forgiving them. I just wanted them to like me. But I'll never be as good as the next model.
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So maybe, just maybe, that's why I think I'm replaceable. Not in the way of all humans are, but in the way of the iPod Micro. Do you remember it? No? Most people don't.
It was replaced.
Ja na.
No one, and I mean no one can replace you. Ever.
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