Nothing Very Big Happened
Some years ago, I went through a phase. Most kids dye their hair purple or start taking mushrooms, but I felt I’d done both of those things (and others) enough times. I did not want to rebel.
I wanted to make a statement.
I wanted to prove there was something wrong with a world which judged me based on my intelligence.
I wanted to make a scene. I was seventeen and did not really have a home: several kind adults had tried hard to help me, but there is not much you can do about people like me when we’re trying to prove a point, especially when our point involves people like you. I was angry with the world for making me not only sad and abused and addicted and terrified but gifted: I felt that someone, somewhere had given me the tools to survive most situations and that this was preventing me from getting the help I needed.
I made it clear that I would not be normal.
I made it clear that I would not be normal. I did my best to avoid help, guidance, and advice. I said no to offer after offer. It seemed as if I was horribly arrogant. I did the stupidest work I could, and tried to avoid falling into intelligent conversations. One night I forgot this, and had a long conversation with a charming, blonde-haired goth who gave me a lift home and tried to have sex with me.
He told me I might die.
I got a job in a bar, thinking I’d make more money, and that sort of thing happened every few hours.
I found a new bar. I gave up trying to avoid people. I spoke to everyone. The manager’s girlfriend used to sit near me and explain him they way you would explain Pythagoras to a twelve-year-old. She told me he hired pretty girls, and that I had a porn star’s name. Someone else told me that he always tainted the pretty girls. I shrugged.
When he took me home, I was thinking about a free meal and free drugs and a warm bed to sleep in. I was remembering that this had happened before and that I was strong, clever, and gifted enough to see this as a meal ticket instead of rape.
I felt that making a statement meant breaking the rules. I saw the rules as one collection, and I did not want to compromise by breaking only some of them (not anymore). I explained to myself that only weak, tired women were raped and that I must have chosen the bad things which happened to me because, goddamn it, I was far too strong to have anyone take advantage of me.
I was thinking of my own alien strength in an aloof sort of way when I realized I actually liked the man on the bed next to me. He was talking about things which I understood, and I started talking back, and I told him a secret. I told him my only real secret. I wanted to cry, but I said something silly and pretended that nothing very big had happened.
I broke a rule I had not been aware of.
For the first time in years, I felt as if I were speaking to a peer and not to a target or a threat. I broke a rule I had not been aware of.
I went home the next day and continued to run to work and cadge free meals and lie about my situation and, sometimes, to be raped. I continued to see people as paper dolls, to be cut into new shapes. I continued to try to cut myself a new shape (perhaps even a shape I liked). I found I could be taken advantage of in different (and more confusing) ways.
I found this out a long time ago and have no idea whether it’s relevant in the world I live in now. I’m sure that, now that I’ve made my own rules and started following them to the letter, I’m far too strong to have anyone take advantage of me. I rarely lose control in public.
Two years ago, my old manager was still the manager at the same bar. I’m not sure whether he was still taking the pretty girls home. I’m not sure what he was doing, or thinking, when he put down his cellphone and keys and killed himself on a bright Saturday morning.
After I found out, I went to work and smiled a lot. I’d known the guy for a few months. We weren’t friends. I am no longer the type of person who knows that type of person. I had no right to be upset.
About four hours in, I ran to the bathroom and burst into tears. I remembered being a kid and feeling as if there was someone a little like me. I remembered being abandoned, and being hated, and scrounging food, and being raped and I understood that making a decision to stay at that bar until you gave up and killed yourself was perfectly normal.
I felt abnormal.
I remembered that I had always wanted to be so. I said so. I broke a rule I had not been aware of.
