When I was pregnant with my first child, I was out to dinner with my now ex-husband and two of his friends. We were discussing our unborn son when one of the friends referred to him as the "devil's child" and suggested that we toss him into a fire after he is born.
It's been almost 7 years and I still remember that. I also remember my son's father not doing anything about it except laugh.
A few weeks ago, I was in a store, and I heard someone call my name. I turned and looked and saw a guy who I went to high school with, who was kind of a jerk to me back then. He was with his high school sweetheart, and he started making smalltalk with me, which surprised me, since we were never friends. He said, "It's nice to see you; I never see anyone from high school anymore."
Just hearing, "It's nice to see you," from this guy who used to be mean to me made me feel so good. It reminded me that people can change.
"Don't do that. People will judge." - My mom, sparking a lifetime of doubt and anxiety.
"Don't ever invite yourself to people's houses. It's rude, inconsiderate, and obnoxious." - My dad, causing me to constantly be afraid of accidentally inviting myself among friends, and thinking that being obnoxious is the worst social crime I could commit.
"I think you're just bored." - My mom, brushing aside an actually harmful addiction I had in high school, because it might hurt her reputation.
"Hey, I was a jerk before. I just wanted to apologize." - A bully from middle school apologizing to me in high school out of the blue, helping me keep faith that there's always good in humanity.
Towards the end of my junior year, I was wearing a skater skirt and tight crop top. Our school doesn't have AC and gets extremely hot near the end of the year, so I wore this a lot.
I was talking in art class with two of my girlfriends and three of our best guy friends. We were all chit chatting and laughing when the art teacher called me over to her desk and told me to think about what I wear next time, and that I was violating dress code because half an inch of my mid drift was showing and my skirt was too short. Even though the skirt was at finger tip length, which meets the school requirement on skirts.
She proceeded to say in a sarcastic and degrading way, "There's a reason five guys are standing around you right now." Even though it was three guys and they in no way ever even flirted with me. I was about to explode, so I walked away from her desk and sat and talked to my friends about it. They all were shocked and outraged. The teacher overheard us and then proceeded to talk about it loudly to the whole classroom, degrading my outfit.
My friend spoke up and said, "Stop sexualizing women's bodies."
Then the teacher tried to give me detention and keep me after class for the commotion SHE caused.
I went home bawling for two hours because I felt so awful and embarrassed. She never apologized. And I forever am worried about seeing her in the halls with whatever I wear.
I've always enjoyed crafting, making jewelry, doing duct tape projects, and arts and crafts of all kinds. I put a lot of time and effort into my work because I enjoy it so much.
But as much as I love devoting so much of myself to crafts, I inevitably hear the comment, "You have too much time on your hands!"
This always hurts me because I make the time for what I like to do. I don't watch TV or scroll Facebook for hours on end when I want to make things, and that winds up being all they spend their free time on.
I dated a guy in high school for two years. He was manipulative and abusive, but I still stayed.
Towards the end of the relationship I was pushed and guilt tripped into doing things with him I wasn't completely comfortable with. About two weeks after we broke up after a really nasty altercation in the hallway at school, he begged me to come over so we could talk, so I did. He drugged and raped me. I felt all of it, but I couldn't move.
Two days later, he and his mom moved away without a trace. Only a few people knew where he had gone. I stayed quiet about it, but finally broke down to a really close guy friend of mine. I will never forget how he looked me dead in the eyes and said, "Well? Can you blame him? I would, too! I've thought about it a few times myself."
My two friends and I all live in a dorm together. One day we were all hanging out and joking around like we usually do, and one of my friends suggested we should probably start our homework soon.
My other friend replied, "Yeah, but I can't get any work done with the distraction in here." She looked at me and laughed, meaning it as a joke.
I have severe ADHD, and do often get off topic and distracted. I understand why it's hard to concentrate with me in the room. But it only affirmed the message I have been getting my whole life: that while I may be fun to hang out with, I'm not useful when real work needs to get done. I'm not serious. I don't belong in an intellectual environment. I'm not smart. I don't work hard. I only distract people from the things that are actually important.
My father was absent basically my whole life, but at the beginning of 2015, we started going to counseling, in an attempt to work on our relationship.
On May 28th of that year, my 15-year-old brother and best friend was accidentally struck and killed by a train.
My mother called my father to tell him that I wouldn't be able to go to counseling the next day, since I hadn't slept all night while I waited for the coroner to confirm that the body was in fact my brother's.
After my mom yelled at my father for fifteen minutes, she handed me the phone. The only words that slipped out of his mouth were, "He committed suicide. It's his fault. He's going to hell, so just get over it."
That was the last time I really talked to my father.
It'll be two years in May, and those words have always been and always will be echoing in the back of my brain. I know that my brother didn't die by suicide. But I can still hear those words. "He's going to hell. Get over it."
It was tradition in our house to get our tree two weeks before Christmas, and spend an evening decorating it together as a family, sipping hot cocoa and singing carols.
But when I was five, it was Christmas Eve, and we still didn't have a tree yet. This was when I first discovered my family was poor.
That Christmas Eve, my mom begged my proud father to ask his friend for a tree, any tree. The friend sold them in our small town, and surely would let my dad have one with a promise to repay him once business picked up again.
Faced with disappointing his wife and children, my dad went to do something he had never in his life done before, ask for a handout.
I tagged along, being a Daddy's girl. He firmly told me to stay in the truck, and I watched for a minute as my dad made small talk. I rolled the window down a crack, then an inch.
"Please, just for my kids. The ugliest, smallest tree you have, I just want my kids to have a tree." My dad couldn't look his childhood friend in the eyes.
The friend came over to the truck and opened my door. I was afraid I'd been caught eavesdropping. "Go pick a tree honey, any tree you want!"
Being five, I picked the largest one there.
We left, got home and put the tree up. As we started our traditional decorating, there was a knock on the door.
A neighbor dropping off an extra ham they had in their freezer and said Merry Christmas. Another knock, this time it was handmade hats and mittens. Another knock, another neighbor. This continued well after us kids had gone to bed.
Christmas morning, I was the first to get up, so I snuck downstairs to see if Santa had come. I found my father sitting at the foot of our Christmas tree, crying. The room was full of gifts, some wrapped, some not, each one labelled.
I sat in my dad's lap, unable to understand how he could possibly be crying.
"I asked God for a miracle, instead He gave us great neighbors, and a great town."
Thirty years later, my husband still can't understand why I cannot pass a Toys for Tots bin without donating.
When I was in middle school, I was the awkward kid who was constantly picked on for things like my name and how I dressed. One day on my walk to class (which always felt like a battlefield because people shot me with teasing words) a group of girls started laughing at me and commenting on my shoes.
Later on in class, one of the most popular guys in school came up to me and said, "You know they're jealous of you because you are ten times prettier than they are."
At that point I thought I was hallucinating. I couldn't believe that someone like him would even talk to me, let alone compliment me.
He continued, "Don't let it get to you. One day they'll be begging you to be their friend."
His words honestly changed my entire perspective on myself and the reason I was always called out.
Has anyone ever made a fleeting comment about you that immediately became tattooed onto the front of your brain for all of eternity, impacting your self-perception and self-worth? Whether it was an offhand comment made by someone you love and respect or a fleeting declaration by someone you barely know, we share the moments that stick.
