The Brett Incident

I had spent much of my teenage years wanting to be an Oceanographer, like Dr. Bob Ballard.  I even ran my bath scalding hot, so I might prepare for diving in the hot water around the underwater volcanoes.  When I tried to get into LSMSA, see Cold Hands, I had to take the SAT’s.  I began to understand I was smart, but not that smart.  Math is the bane of my existence.  I also began to understand I would have to leave the state to study, something I was not prepared to do.  I did not want to leave my family.  I also did not want to leave the area, go away, build a life, get married, have kids, own a home, and have to give up everything many years later, to come home and care for aging and dying parents.  I am an only child.  I don’t get the luxury of handing it off to another family member.  It is going to be me, doing it all, in the end.  I was brought up to believe you do not put your loved ones in a nursing home.  It is dishonorable and distasteful. 

So I knew I could not be an Oceanographer, although I loved writing, I figured I could never make a living at it, besides I knew I wasn’t very good at it.  I knew people who could write circles around me.  I didn’t want to be a teacher like my mom was working on becoming, and two of my Aunts were already.  I didn’t want to be a nurse like my other Aunt.  I had been training in the wifely arts of cooking, cleaning, sewing, and hand work since I could remember.  My mom always said she wanted to prepare me.  So I thought I am a pretty good cook and I love food, maybe I will be a chef, so that is what I started out going to college to do.  I was also in love with the Frugal Gourmet about this time.

As my senior year approached I began to look at colleges.  My father then stepped in and said, “You may only apply to colleges where I may get to you in less than a day’s drive.”  That sealed the deal, no Oceanography for me.  I remember measuring off the distance and marking my large US map with my compass and setting up the radius.  I decided to apply in state.  I asked, my family, for help filling out the forms for both financial aid and college applications, they refused.  It taught me how to do them though.  I always found it odd some colleges required you send a picture.  What the hell did that tell them about your brain or who you were???  I applied all over the state: to Northwestern in Natchitoches, LSU in Baton Rouge, USL in Lafayette, Louisiana Tech in Ruston, NLU in Monroe, Southeastern in Hammond, and McNeese in Lake Charles.  I got in to all of them.  I was very surprised I got into LSU, but I did. 

I was so ecstatic when my letter came from Louisiana Tech that I had been accepted.  My entire life my father had told me, “You’re going to college.”  I never had a say in it.  I wanted to go to Tech, desperately, like my father before me.  I have always wanted to be just like my Dad.  I still remember going into the living room to tell him.  He held the letter and said, “That’s great, but you can’t go there.  You will have no one to watch over you.  You can go to NSU, where you Mom is attending, and she can watch other you, or you can go to USL where your aunt can watch over you.”  I was devastated.  All that work, applying to all the other colleges, only to be told, again that what I wanted, didn’t matter.  I am sure he had his reasons, but he broke my heart that day.  Still makes me angry to this day.

I thought for a moment.  I wanted to get as far away from my mother as possible, and I knew others from my school were going to NSU.  I was terrified the bullying would continue there, so I said, “I guess I will go to USL then.” 

USL became my battle cry, it became my hope, and thinking of going there and getting away from the daily abuse, which was only getting worse now that Cajun Rink had been added to he bunch, became my refuge.  Cajun helped crank the daily taunts up to 11.  But I was trying so hard to be a good Christian and turn the other cheek, and to do what my parents asked.  But with every word he hurled at me, I died inside.  He even went so far as to paint penis on my car windows, in shoe polish. I am still thankful for the cheerleaders who helped me remove enough from my window, to drive home, with spit and a Kleenex, and held me while I cried.

Into my life came Brett.  He was beautiful or so I thought.  He had this long curly black mullet.  He was of Native American decent, and covered in pimples.  I didn’t care.  I was on him like white on rice.  He was fresh meat and I wanted him.  In my mind he had not been tainted by my tormentors.  So it was game on.  He was from Shreveport.  He was always crying, come to find out his father had recently died.  His mother had remarried.  She and her new husband had moved to Keatchie.  Brett and I became fast friends.  I was always trying to comfort him, rubbing his back and trying to help him through this difficult time. 

As I sit here looking at my annual, I don’t know that we were ever officially boyfriend and girlfriend.  I was invited to a bonfire at his house.  Our parents met and they liked each other.  They encourage us to be together.  I went to a Christmas party at his house, where he danced with me.  He gave me a cassette single of Dwight Yoakam’s “Fast as you.”  I spent hours listening to it, to see if Brett was trying to give me a secret message.  I hate that song now, it reminds me of all of this.

Brett was strange.  He spent hours on his hair and although it was my guess he liked me, he didn’t want to hold my hand, and kissed me only once.  When he kissed me it was not like Adam’s kisses, full of passion and want.  No it was like kissing a rock.  I was confused.  I liked him, was falling in love with him, but he did not seem to reciprocate.  I knew, deep down, it was going to be another one of my one sided love affairs.  I often fell “In love” with a guy and then waited for him to say he liked me, even tried to buddy up to some of them, but none of them ever got the hint.  So it was always on sided.

Brett, me and our families went out New Years Eve to the American Legion Hall dance.  Brett was prone to migraines.  He had one that night.  I would learn later he faked it to get away from me. 

Not long after we were due to give blood.  I talked all my friends into doing it.  It ended up that I could not because had an ear infection and was on antibiotics.  Brett, Sonya and some more of my friends gave blood.  A few weeks later Brett received a letter, or so I was told, that said he had a devastating medical condition.  I wrote him a letter and told him how much I loved him and I would stay beside him through this diagnosis.

Within a few days later I was given a note from him, by Sonya, he said wanted nothing to do with me anymore.  I was devastated.  For once in my life, I thought I had found love.  I have always said the worst thing about all of this, was that for a few weeks, I had hope that I was not this horrible, ugly, fat, crazy monster that everyone told me I was.  When I read his letter, all that hope was destroyed.

It was not just the relationship that hurt, what did the most damage is what came after.  Sonya, my best friend since 2^nd grade, was also friends with Brett.  What I didn’t know, is that many nights that I was on the phone with Brett, she was quietly listening in.  He had called her, before he called me.  I didn’t know until later that she was acting as a conduit to help get him hooked up to another friend, who Brett began dating a few weeks later.

This friend he dated, a few months later, when the relationship was over, turned to me in class and said, “He lies doesn’t he?”  I said, “Yes he does.” 

I still do not know what was said.  I don’t know what rumor was spread, but from the time that Brett broke up with me in January of 1994 until about a month before I graduated in May of 1995, I was basically shunned.  Suddenly none of my friends, or anyone for that matter, would speak to me.  No one would eat lunch with me.  I was treated like a pariah.  My only clue is what one friend said to me one day.  He had the courage to break whatever taboo they had set against me.  He said, “They have told me to hate you and I just can’t do it anymore.  You have always been nice to me.”  And he sat with me and ate lunch.  It was finally over.  He was the first, more would join us as they year drew to a close. 

I cannot tell you how desperate I was.  I cannot tell you how many nights I wanted to kill myself.  How I wanted to jump from the river bridge.  In one swoop I had lost everything I understood.  My people, my tribe, my friends, or however you want to call it.  My sociology professor years later, would call it a “social death.”  When I finally got up the courage to talk to my parents, tell them what was going on and I was suicidal, my Dad said, “Oh It’s just puppy love.  It will pass.”  Twenty-Two years later it hurts, almost as bad as it did when it happened.  At least I now have some understanding to go with all of this.

I stayed friends with Brett’s parents.  I have seen his mother several times over the years.  When I saw her, I told her all that had happened, and she confirmed for me what I had begun to suspect many years before.  Brett was gay.  I now understand what he did.  He used me for cover.  He was pretending to be interested in me to appease his family and hide his homosexuality.  That I could have lived with, and would have even happily participated in it had I known. 

I found Brett many years ago on Facebook, we discussed much of the above.  To say he has a different idea of what happened is an understatement.  He said we were never in a relationship and he never cared for me, that he has always been gay.  I am sure there is much truth to that.  I have known for a long time what I felt for him, was not reciprocated.  I had hoped for an apology, but that will never happened.  Never got one from Sonya either or knew what was actually said about me.  Would love to know now, if someone wanted to PM me, I would be open to hearing it now.  Ten years, after all this, I would see Sonya again.  Who just hugged my neck and could not understand why I was so mad at her.  What a Bitch!

While all this was going on, all I could do was pray and count the days until I would go to USL.  I was in Hell and I had to find my own way out.  I was like Rapunzel.  I was trapped in the tower, no one was coming to save me, I had to cut my hair and save myself. 

There was a young man in my class who came in everyday, with the most beautiful smile.  As corny as it sounds his smile, gave me hope.  Seeing him smile, and hearing him laugh helped me in ways he has no idea of.  I even developed a little crush on him, but my fate was sealed and I was too broken and afraid to try to find love again.  I was leaving for Lafayette after I graduated, and that was that.

I began what I called “Smile Therapy.”  I would force myself to smile, just for a few seconds every few hours.  I noticed when I did so I would feel better.  Turns out smiling releases all kinds of endorphins in your brain, that are good for you.  Slowly, ever so slowly I feel it began to pull me out of the worst of my depression.  The first few weeks were the worst.  I would get two or three seconds and then burst into tears again.  I cried so much during class, during this whole thing, me a woman who hates to cry and used to see it as a sign of weakness. 

A few weeks before we graduated someone told me something I would never have dreamed.  They said, “Melvin has been in love with you for years.  He would have done anything for you.”  I remember sitting in our drafting room, looking at him and just smiling.  I have no idea if it was even true, but it helped me none the less.  And today I regret not doing anything about it.  The idea that Melvin had once loved me, along with my friends smile, gave me comfort in one of the darkest times of my life.  Stupid and corny, right?  I know.  But I love stupid and corny. 

Ilsa

 

 

 

 

 

Blood in the water

I am a big girl, at the moment I am currently pushing 350 lb.  and just under 5 ft tall.  I have not always been big.  As a little girl, about age 6, I loved to run.  I remember one time Grandpa was going to whoop me.  I said, “Oh no you’re not!”  and I took off running around the house.  He just calmly sat on the porch until I ran out of steam.  I made three trips around the house before that happened and I collapsed.  I was also a very picky eater.  If I didn’t like what was on my plate, I would just flip that plate over, food and all. 

My mom married my new step-dad, Jef, when I was 6.  I remember thinking that I wanted to gain weight so that I would look more like my new step-dad Jef, and then people would not know I was not his biologically.  Oma dies, when I am 7.  I become very depressed.  It is not long after she dies that I walk in to Mom and Dad’s room and tell them that I want to die too, to be with Oma.  Mom, who was already in a bad place at that time, kind of loses it.  Although I have no idea how to accomplish such a thing, I think this may have been my first suicidal thoughts.  I begin to gain weight.  In the pictures of my 8^th birthday you can tell I am chunky. 

It is in those early years I develop my first cases of Bronchitis and my first case of Pneumonia.  My new step-dad, Jef, who I will refer to as Daddy from now on, smokes in the house.  It is a while before we understand the connection.  I am terribly allergic to smoke.  As the idea that second hand smoke was bad for you is new, and Dad’s are hard to change, he continues to smoke in the house until I am in my teens.  By that time I am having about 3 cases a year or more.  I am told I must not get to hot outside or run and play too much or I will get sick again.  For years I am watched for signs of getting to hot, being red and sweating.  My running days are over.

Mom continues to lose it for several years after Oma’s death.  We cannot even talk about Oma or she will burst into tears. She nearly grieves herself to death.   She becomes anorexic and one night tucking her in bed, I can count every rib.  Mom never gets help and no one, I guess, ever suggest it too her. I continue to gain weight.  My Pediatrician suggests putting me on a diet.  I am 9 years old.  Mom begins to recover soon after and becomes obsessed with my weight.  Eating disorders are very common in those who have been sexual abused. 

Growing up unconditional love was something I only got some Oma.  As a child most of the “I love you’s,” came with a “but” attached.  I love you, but you’d be so pretty if you just lost 10 pounds.  I love you, but you should lose some weight.  I love you, but your butt is getting too big. 

At Novelle’s, Daddy’s mother, she berated me on a regular and public basis.  I remember many, many family dinners where she would sit and tell me how fat I was, and was I going to eat all my food.  NO ONE stood up for me.  Not my parents, my cousins, my aunts or my uncles, none of them.  I was forbidden to defend myself or say anything to her by my parents.  In fact this treatment from her continued until my teens, where I would drive to family functions in my car.  If she insulted me, I would quietly pick up my plate, place it beside the sink, and leave. She never did this to her other grandchildren, some who were bigger than me.  I believe she did this because I was her step-grandchild, and she always, until the day she died, saw me as such.  Despite being legal adopted into the family, and doing family genealogy on her side of the family. I am still listed in the family bible as a step-grandchild.  She even goes so far as to tell me one day, that no man will want me because I am so fat. We had a complicated history, but more on that later.

I never asked to be put on a diet.  I never saw anything wrong with my body till everyone else did.  Then the self hatred began in earnest.  Wanting to please I did as I was told, but the weight would not come off.  I look back at my pictures from that age and do not see a fat child, maybe a bit pudgy, but not in need of diets.  I never knew when the newest diet would begin.  My mother became the food Nazi. I was of course not allowed cakes, cookies, or cokes, even in moderation.  Things I had never been denied before.  Some days I would come home and only be allowed Slimfast for dinner, while my father ate a full meal, plus dessert. Mom would diet with me.  I never knew when the diet would start.  I have done Weight Watches, wheat germ, Slimfast’s and lots of other fad diets that were around at the time. And of all cruelties, when I went to stay with Novelle, she feed me as much ice cream, cokes and cookies as I could hold.  I remember eating extra portions, and others left over lunches at school. 

I was bullied in High School about my weight, by Jeremy Pace, John Scott Smitherman, Cajun Rink, and Neil Alexander.  They were my tormenters.  Every day from about middle school till my senior year, I heard about how fat, how ugly, how stupid and how crazy I was, sometimes on an hourly basis.  It was during these dark years that I first truly began to contemplate suicide, and stayed depressed most of the time.  I don’t know if they could smell the blood in the water or they just picked me for no reason. It was everyday, constant from them, being told how fat and ugly I was while sitting in class and anywhere else they wanted to at school.   I developed chronic stomach aches and anxiety over going to school.  When I told my parents, I was told two things that kids are cruel and I was never to fight back.  That if I did it would go on my permanent record and I would not get into a good college.  Again I did as I was told. 

Only one teacher every did anything to them, my 7^th grade English teacher.  Jeremy and them were being especially bad that day.  She called him out and told him to apologize.  She made him go outside the room until he was ready to apologize.  When he came back in he would ask for my forgiveness.  I told him I would not forgive him.  He did this about three times.  Finally I told the teacher, I will never forgive him for what he has done to me.

Jeremy and I had an interesting relationship.  He constantly harassed me at school, but we had United Methodist Youth Group (UMYF) together and he never messed with me there.  One night our leader took us into a little chapel to pray.  She told us to write our deepest heart’s desire on a piece of paper and pray over it.  She gathered them and slowly read out loud, with no names, from the back of the chapel.  Mine was, “Please make them stop teasing me.”  After that Jeremy was no longer the ring leader, and most of it stopped.

It wasn’t until Cajun joined the group in high school that the mooing started.  They would moo down the hall and call after me, “Free Willie!”  If you don’t get the moo thing, its cause Borden, the milk company, has a cow named Elsie.  And of course Elsie sounds like Ilsa, thus the mooing.  And I guess they thought I was as big as a cow.  Cajun loved to torment me.  He even went so far as to paint penises on my car one afternoon.  An action, over which, would get him suspend, again.  Thankfully the Principle had been hiding in a parked school bus, watching the kids, and had seen the whole thing.  My great joy was watching Cajun have to scrub my car with a toothbrush!

Jeremy’s mother was one of my favorite teachers.  I found her on Facebook some years ago, and I told her of the torment that her son and his friends had put me through.  I did not hear from her again for a while.  Turns out she was waiting to confront him about all of this.  He responded to her that yes he had bullied me in high school.  When asked why, he simply said, “Everyone did it.”  His mom apologized profusely for him.  She had no idea any of this had ever gone on.  She did give me an explanation though.  About the time this all began, Jeremy’s dad was abusing him.  It was threw this statement that I was able to forgive him.  If he was being abused, he may have simply used me as a scapegoat.  It was a way for him to blow off anger over the abuse.  I have never received apologies from the others.

I never stood up for myself until two weeks before I graduated high school.  I was sitting in class, quietly holding my cousins hand, when Eric Miller stood up and gave me a Texas Titty Twister.  Now for those of you who don’t know what that is, let me enlighten you.  A Texas Titty Twister is when you walk up to a girl and grab her nipple and twist it one way or another.  When he put his hands on me I had had enough.  I snapped! What the hell were they going to do to me next!  That was too far!  I grabbed Eric by the shirt and threw him against the desk.  But that wasn’t enough.  I felt the rage boiling in me.  I grabbed him again, and threw him to the floor.  He was stunned.  I stood over him and said, “You ever fucking touch me again and I’ll kill you!!!” Everyone was shocked.  They had never seen me react to anything they did to me.  Hey I was fixing to graduate, what the hell could they do to me.  I am hauled into the Vice-principles office.  She not angry at Eric for what he did, or what I did, she’s angry at me for holding my cousins hand!  She tells me there are to be no public displays of affection at school!  I still don’t know what kind of punishment, if any, Eric received.  But this incredible thing happened!  After that incident, nobody, my bullies included, ever messed with me again. 

My diets continued until I was 18, when I told my mother that I was legally an adult and she could no longer force me to do anything.  I remember my elation on my first day of college, no one mooed at me, and no one said anything about my weight.  I was free.  It was finally over. 

There is only one more incident of Mooing in my life.  It happens late in my college years.  I am walking past a group of freshmen.  They Mooed.  I decided to scare them a bit.  I figured part of it was because they had never had a fat friend and no one had ever called them on their shit.  I turned and went up to them an introduced myself.  I meant to ask them why they had done that, but the look of shock on their faces was enough for me.  They were clearly embarrassed.

No one Moo’s at me anymore but when I am out in public I am ever vigilant that it might happen again.  I have my comeback all ready.  “Thank god you told me I was fat!  I didn’t know!  I can’t see it every morning when I look in the mirror!”  Come on mother fuckers I’m ready for you this time!  

Ilsa