If you’re reading this then I hope you know you are not alone.
If anyone knows what it’s like to be set aside, it’s me. I’ve always been a deep thinker, but after some reflection the past few days I think I finally pinpointed where my feelings of being set aside began.
In kindergarten I spent my whole day at school in two different classes, one building in mornings and another in the afternoons. I didn’t think twice about any of it at the time, but there weren’t all the same kids in both classes. [I remember being embarrassed in my afternoon class because I had to pee but couldn’t get my jeans (remember how thick 90’s kid jeans were with that one giant iron button?) off in time and ended up peeing my pants.] Set Aside #1: I was with different people and didn’t get to build strong friendships.
In 2nd grade I remember my biggest struggles were that I was heads and shoulders taller than the boys and the girls in my class. I felt like I didn’t fit in because I was too tall for boys to like and too tall to look my peers in the eyes, so i started to hunch over just to be eye-level. I was in the GT (gifted and talented) program and I didn’t understand that at the time, all I knew was that the 4 or 5 smart kids with me had to go to an outbuilding and do extra reading classes (chapter books, literacy comprehension tests, etc.) while the rest of our classmates got to go outside for a second recess and play on the BIG KIDS playground! What?! That wasn’t fair! Shouldn’t it be that the kids who weren’t good at reading needed another class to work on it while my group got a break? 🙁 It just wasn’t fair. Set Aside #2: I wanted as much fun and freedom and social bonding as the other kids got, I didn’t appreciate how I had to work harder and not get the fun parts of the day.
I switched schools when my family moved after 2nd grade, and I had finally made a small group of friends at my old school so I was sad to leave them. 3rd grade meant a new school with people I didn’t know, a school I didn’t know my way around, and I was EVEN TALLER now. I was the tallest kid in all my classes and ultra blonde so I didn’t have visible eye-lashes or eyebrows and thought everyone else was prettier than me. I thought boys never liked me because I was so big, I was tall and the other girls were cuter because they were all darker than me and smaller (short) than me. I made one friend pretty quickly at that school, a girl who rode my bus, Anjelica Rivera; I was excited to have a friend! I remember this as probably my first time feeling truly rejected; Anjelica and I were playing tag on the playground and I went to chase her up the jungle gym and she shoved me down off of it, and spat in my face; she told me she didn’t like me, didn’t want to be my friend, laughed at me and told me to go away. Set Aside #3: People don’t actually like me. I’m unwanted. I’m rejected. I don’t fit in, belong, or have hope of making any friends. Why bother?
The rest of elementary was really rough for me, a deep sorrow had been awoken in my soul. I wasn’t rich, I wasn’t popular, I wasn’t as pretty, I was too tall, too broad, too strong for my own good. I kept attending my GT classes but since I had extremely high English and Literacy skills they thought I should probably be placed in the GT Math program as well: huge mistake. Day one in GT Math had me outside the classroom sobbing uncontrollably. I was always good in school, I picked things up quickly, but when they threw me into that class and everything was going too fast for me and I wasn’t able to understand it… I broke down. Set Aside #4: I wasn’t smart enough. I wasn’t good enough and I couldn’t keep up with the others.
I remember making a friend in 5th grade and being so relieved and excited to finally have a friend!!! But her and her friends were more “preppy” and into boys and for fun I brought cheer-leading pom poms to school one day (bought at a yard sale) to play with, somehow while we were walking and playing together in the blacktop her friend fell down and got hurt and bloodied- to this day I don’t get what went through their minds – but they blamed ME for her getting hurt; they started calling me a jynx and yelling at me and that caught on fast. Soon enough no one would go near me because I was a “jynx”. That was devastating. As if I didn’t already have enough on my plate with my GT classwork, my Math struggle, and my loneliness; all the while my Dad and Mom were working hard trying to provide for me and my brother which included my Dad working out of town weeks at a time. I felt so alone, so tortured inside by the burden of just existing that I would lean my head against our brick gymnasium (alone, because I was always alone) and bang my head against the wall, just wanting the pain inside to go away, to just be numb or be gone. I talked to the school counselor and convinced the school to have a culture day/talent show- I felt so good that she thought my idea had so much merit that they actually went through with it!! I wanted to be a singer so when auditions came (which I didn’t know about ahead of time) to our class I just kinda sang the lyrics I had been doodling on my notebook; I wasn’t chosen to perform. My own idea and they didn’t think I was talented enough to perform in it. But the three boys who lip-synced to “Stacey’s Mom” were. I was rejected. Set Aside #5: I’m Unwanted. Unattractive. Less-than. Worthless. Alone. What I think I excel at is what others think I am poor at.
Come 6th grade I was moved into a private Christian School where my Brother attended. New school, new rules, new people. I didn’t know anyone but I recognized a few people as kids who went to my church. I befriended a close group of girls and it was great to finally have friends! But I was also into boys now. I was feet taller than the girls I was friends with, going through my awkward puberty stage, and had a hack job of a haircut I had given myself out of boredom: NO, boys did not like me. But all my friends were the pretty ones that got the attention. I felt like an odd duck, and we were all the butt end of the jokes by the popular crowd (principles kids and friends) so when the school year ended I refused to go back. I wanted to go to public school with dances (I just knew a boy would like me there and I could dance and have fun and be finally found attractive if I could only go to a school with dances)! Set Aside #6: No one finds me attractive. No one takes an interest in me and the only way I can get a guys attention is to go seeking it somewhere.
Jr. High was good in the classroom, I excelled and was immediately thrown back into honors coursework and gifted and talented programs (except Math). Math was the class I tried to follow along – but I couldn’t keep up with the notes the teacher wanted us to take – so after trying my best to follow and try to understand the concepts I often just gave up and stared out the classroom window. I would let my heart and eyes wander off to the distant plateaus and mountains, much preferring the company of adventures and nature to the complicated and overwhelming demands of my Math teacher. I didn’t have friends at this school, but knew some kids from Elementary school. One day during gym class a girl named Cory Swim came up and started talking to me, I was shy at first but she brought me out of my shell and she spoke to me and found out I had no friends. She pulled me over to her friends and invited me to eat lunch at their table with them later, I was nervous but relieved somebody was reaching out to me so I wasn’t a loner. Come lunchtime I nervously followed her through the cafeteria lie and then to the table in the back of the cafeteria. The table was full of a diverse mix of people, and it was full with the exception of Cory’s empty chair. I silently panicked inside, thinking maybe I should just go away and let them sit with their friends rather than inconvenience them to find a way to add me in. In the end, several of them just got up and went to a different table altogether. Ouch. I noted this and felt that they jut didn’t want some awkward, tall, unattractive new girl sitting with them. I noted later those same people never really returned to that table for lunch in the future. Set Aside #7: Even if someone wants to befriend you or be nice it’s going to cost them, people just don’t want to be around you.
I ended up staying friends with Cory and the girls at the table through high school. But during Jr. High and High School the only time guys at my school would take an interest in me enough to talk to me was to try to get to or talk to my pretty friends. We were all in honors classes, but they were in all honors classes while I had to retake the same Math class all of high school. I had hard times at home, my Dad lost his job and we weren’t exactly well off before that happened, so money was tight and meanwhile most of my closest friends were well to do families and had all nice and new things and could afford to go have fun, buy clothes, makeup, had cars or new phones and iPods. I got new clothes once a year or mostly hand-me-downs, took the bus and never dated anyone in my school. I also filled out faster than my friends, so at 115 lbs I started to think I was fat next to my friends which began a string of yo-yo dieting and I ended up going from athletic to chubby in that process (which is ridiculous considering I was a foot taller than my friends who were all 90 lbs and short). Set Aside #8: Guys don’t notice you because you’re fat, unattractive, poor, too tall, bad at Math and don’t have nice things.
At 14, things started down a really dark spiral in my life. My friends had the attention of every boy in school and every strange dude they walked past in the Mall. I was hidden in my jeans, screen t-shirt and over-sized zip-up hoodie. Just trying to find a way to not feel like I was worthless and unlovely, I tried to find a place I had value. Que the darkness. My cousin, who admittedly had had a much harder life than me, started getting into the party scene (but not the HS party scene) with adults. One day I met one of these adults, broad daylight, and the look he gave me feel beautiful… it made me feel special, feel valued… it made feel something other than overlooked, unloved, unimportant. He smiled at me and he didn’t glance past me or over me to look at someone else, he made eye contact and smiled and was very intentional in his effort to talk to me and get to know me. It made my heart leap, he was 26 years old but he made me feel… hope. He started texting me, saying kind sweet things about how happy he was to meet me, how beautiful I was and other sweet nonsense (in Italian). My cousin was planning a chance for us to go drink with him and his brother in the desert (I had never been drinking other than a sip), (also, the desert is where people in my area go out to go drinking or party at a bonfire, etc.). She told me that since he was bringing us booze I had better let him get to 3rd base. I was like, “Um, no. I’ve never even been with a guy like that!” I had only recently had my first kiss and it ended poorly (grounded for 6 months because I wasn’t allowed to date before 16) with a guy from another school. She told me, “Well you better give him something!” (it was a toxic influence but my cousin was one of the only people who hung out with me outside of school). So, that night my cousin and I said we were going with BJ (His nickname) to a double feature at the movies and then we were gonna have a sleepover at my aunts. They bought it, but my Mom had reservations since she didn’t know him.
Fast forward to the desert, my cousin and his brother wander off into the dark looking for desert ghosts, and leave me sitting alone in the bed of his truck with him after a vodka sunrise. I wont go into detail. But that night began a dangerous and unhealthy predator-prey relationship (that I didn’t realize was pedophilia) and the only guys whose interest I had or wanted from then on was older men, who had deeper thoughts, their own place and cars and money, who acknowledged I was beautiful and most of all who knew the right things to say to feed my starving heart… at least temporarily; that lasted till just before I turned 18, where I was raped in his car in front of my own home. I could see my porch light on. I knew my older brother was home. I was scared. And no one came out and rescued me. I drank myself to sleep that night. I didn’t face my sexual abuse for years. Set Aside #9: People will lie and manipulate you to get what they want, regardless of what it does to you. The only reason people take an interest in you is for what they can get from you. You’re disposable.
Remember guys: This is just part one, I’m not gonna leave you hanging here for long. Maybe take this opportunity to reflect on your life and identify specific sources of brokenness that have had an effect on your life. I will share with you what t do with it next time.
* * * * *
UPDATE!
I am in Belize working on a variety of projects with several local ministries, including Hope for Life, a local school, A Men’s Halfway Home, Freedom House and VBS! This week we are hosting VBS, yesterday was day one so pray we can have a fruitful week with the kids who come and that the love of God would saturate their hearts. 🙂 I have a $13,000 deadline coming up and I’m about $3,500 short right now- please consider donating!
