A Misfit Among Misfits

I ended up spending most of the day at work. I started work at 9 today anyway, and Sharon asked me to stay two more hours when one of the cashiers got sick and had to go home. No problem. I still badly needed the hours. It was tiring, though, and I was already tired to begin with.

I wish I could be better when I'm tired. I can't help it. It's too easy to revert to old habits, old fears when I'm not thinking. Sometimes I wish my memory wasn't so good. I see all those people who chuckle when I get upset, and I know they don't mean any harm...but then I remember snickering elementary school kids who hated me because they couldn't and wouldn't understand me, and sneering Special Services kids who thought I was crazy and a baby.

I don't know if they still do this, but during my last year at the Cape May County Special Services Middle School, I went on an overnight field trip to a bed and breakfast in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia with a bunch of the other last-year girls and some female teachers. It was supposed to be a female bonding experience, but I felt even less like I belonged after the trip. On the way up, two of the oldest girls asked if they could see the Garfield comic book I was reading. I later discovered they tore a page out before they gave it back. (Those two girls didn't make it to the overnight part of the trip - they were sent home for causing trouble during our stop at the Franklin Institute.)

I felt so out-of-place. The two bedrooms filled with bunks were cramped and sleeping wasn't fun, especially since half the girls complained about sleeping arrangements, toothbrushes, and wanting more time on their own. I felt better when I was able to read and eat Lemon Poppyseed Muffins on my own. Some of the girls played ping pong, or gossiped, or played board games. I didn't feel like I could really join any of them, and I didn't think they'd want me to.

The next morning, we gathered in the main room. We listened to soothing music while working on some meditation and breathing techniques. That wasn't so bad. The bad part was when we were all supposed to discuss our fears, our troubles, and try to get help and support. I found out that day that some of the girls had been raped. Others had been having sex since they were 14. Most came from broken homes.

When the girls confessed their troubles, there was much crying, hand-holding, hugging, sympathy. What about me? What was my troubles?

I was lonely. I had no one to talk to. Few of the students lived on Cape Island, which is where my family lived at the time. I was friends with a few of the gentler girls, but the closest lived off the island in the Tranquility subdivision between the Cape May Bridge and North Cape May. As Yukon Cornelius put it, even among misfits, I was a misfit. The kids didn't read. They didn't write. They listened to rap, not classic rock. They didn't watch any movie older than a year or so, didn't play any sports they hadn't learned in "the hood."

No one went to my side. No one hugged me. No one offered words of sympathy, or support. No one touched me. They all looked at me like I was from Mars, even the teachers. How could I have any troubles? No man had ever been with me, and given what I looked like, doubtless never would. I'd never been physically harmed, never bore a child, and my mother and stepfather were happily married. I lived in a large old house in a fancy old resort. How could I even dare to INSINUATE I had any problems? I was perfect!

I wasn't perfect. No one understands what it's like to be constantly alone. I never felt right at the Special Services School after that. I hoped to make peace on a similar outing to celebrate the end of the year and our leaving the school, one at a teacher's home in West Cape May, but it didn't go any better. The girls just thought I was weird, boring, and hopelessly naive.

That fear and doubt still turns up to this very day. I'm still afraid no one will ever understand what it's like to be alone. Everyone will be sophisitcated and fun and witty and pretty, and I'll be plain and boring and no one will want me.