This next part is more difficult to write about. First off because there are only a very small handful of people in the world who know this, I haven't talked about it much and so I don't have as many explanations for it, I don't understand it as well as I do other parts of my life. And secondly these are my mistakes. Things I did. The other was something that happened to me. This is something I did.
When I wrote my blog about guilt I said I had some regrets. That I had made some huge mistakes in my life. What I am about to write about falls into that area. But at the same time, I did it, I chose to do it and it's part of what shaped me into who I am today. Okay, story time...
I have a huge and vivid imagination. I was an avid reader and like most readers I entertained the idea of writing for a long time. I cannot remember a time when I wasn't spinning some sort of story in my head. We had a flower garden on the lot in the south valley and I remember just laying on the porch above the garden looking down into the leaves and weaving stories about a whole community of fairies that lived there. I would entertain myself for hours with my Barbies, and they had HUGE story lines and continuing events that would happen to them. I read books and comic books and then would imagine what it would be like to be part of the story and would write myself in to them. Elfquest was a favorite and I had a whole extra life with Skywise and Cutter and Letah. Doing this during the worst of the time with my sister helped me have someplace else to go. Someplace better. (this is where the foreshadowing music should play in your head)
Being in a private religious school for middle school a lot of the issues that other kids our age were going through just weren't an issue for us. The middle school I would have gone to had kids that were already getting high and a few that were already sexually active. These things weren't really issues at Parkview. We had "boyfriends" and "girlfriends" but "going around together" (my generation's version of going steady) was nothing more than holding hands when the teachers weren't looking and passing notes and a few phone calls. Maybe a clandestine kiss on the playground, but nothing other than that. Drugs, smoking, alcohol, none of that was an issue. Until the end of my eighth grade year.
A couple of friends of mine had started getting high with friends from their neighborhood. They were in the very early part of exploration and were talking about it at school. I started to have little panic attacks. Didn't they have any idea what they were getting into? I started getting very agitated about it, really upset and I wasn't sure what to do about it. Drug use to me was not something casual or fun you did with friends, it was scary and dark and catastrophic. I decided that I could SAVE them by telling them my story. So I went to Mrs. Cyzac and asked her if I could do the morning devotion and tell a personal story. I was a good student and one of the leaders of the class so she said that I could without any hesitation at all. Not having any clue what I was going to talk about. So the next morning I marched to the front of the class, took a deep breath and...
Lied my ass off. I had decided overnight that there was no way I could out my sister as a druggie and no way I could admit that she had done the things to me that she had. I just felt protective of her and also of me. To tell someone something like that would be opening myself up to my most vulnerable and I could not do it. But I had already decided that I NEEDED to make a difference and I had asked to lead the devotion so instead I told essentially my sister's story but substituted me in as the user. I knew what the behavior was that came with being high. I knew the habits. I knew everything about it except for the actual act. I couldn't have told you how it really felt to be high, but I could tell you everything else about it and I did. I talked about it taking over your life and becoming more important to you than anything and how hard it was to get clean. Then I asked them for forgiveness and lead them all in prayer. There were tears from classmates and from my teacher, there were words of encouragement and promises that they would never get stoned again.
To this day I have no idea how come the teacher didn't call my parents about my grand confession. I guess because I had talked about them during the confession she thought the were obviously aware of the problem. But I didn't get caught. I felt a little guilty about it because I knew it wasn't true, but I also felt like I had done it for their own good and since school was over in a few weeks I knew it wasn't going to be a lie I would have to sustain. And I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for those darn kids...
Flash forward to freshman year, I am making new friends in high school and the whole sordid drug history is behind me. Okay, pretend drug history. Then one of the guys that I am now friends with says that he goes to church with someone I used to go to school with. He has heard the whole story and he wants to talk to me about it. Great. So I have two options, coming clean about well, being clean, or continuing the lie. I continued the lie. I tried bluffing my way through questions for a little bit and then finally said that it was really too hard for me to talk about so I didn't want to. So people who met me in high school all "knew" that I had a drug history but I was clean now so not to offer me any.
That's one of the first things people "knew" about me. There were more. I know this is a long blog, but I have a lot more to add, so bear with me. But what I will do is cut this off for now and start a second blog. So take a walk, take a break, rest your eyes and then come back for part two.
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