57 END BULLY FOR ME PART 5

Once my ego had been thoroughly trounced, I'd never ride that bus, again.  However along with this decision came a dilemma.   In keeping with suppression I could not reveal my humiliation to my parents, who saw me as bright, cheerful, and popular.  So instead of ‘fessing up’ to the truth of having transformed into a social pariah—I threw the baby out with the bath water and drummed up a reason to drop out of Hebrew School—thus holding fast to my self-image by way of denial.     

If you know anything about being raised in a conservative Jewish home, you know that I could not have pulled this off had I been my parents' son.  However I was a girl.  And in 1956, it was uncommon for girls to study Hebrew, which is why I was the Lone Ranger on that bus—mask in place—lots of piercing arrows—no Tonto in sight.

At this time, it's important to note that this decision to learn the language of my religious heritage had been my own.  So when I told my parents that the little I was learning was not worth their expense, my dad arranged a meeting with my teacher.  Upon hearing that his daughter was at the top of the class, Dad asked me to reconsider.

With a resounding ‘NO!’, I reiterated that the class was unruly—my teacher spent most of his time yelling in futile attempts to regain control—and I was done wasting my time—all of which made sense to Mom and Dad.

And there you have it.  In order to ‘save face’, my brain maneuvered around the whole truth by slicing it in half.  Since the given Reason was truthful, the real reason remained ‘safely’ undisclosed.  Thus ...

If you think to know any person, through and through—think again.

When Dad asked what happened to my desire to study Hebrew, I said:  I don’t care, anymore.  And that was true, too, because once misery sucks eagerness dry, desire shrivels up and dies.

In short, every word I’d said was true.  And as my descent into that black hole had come to an end without telling a lie, I figured I’d escaped from hell; all was well, and life would go on just like before.  But I couldn’t have been more wrong—because the bully on the bus now threatened me from within.

At this point several questions arise:

1. From whom had I 'denied' the truth—the whole truth—and nothing but the truth?
2. What caused my self-defeating pattern of suppressing shame into tight knots of tongue-tied tension to develop?
3. Why was a popular, self confident child unable to open her mouth on that bus in order to shout:

Never again!

what other experience might mother nature have buried so deep within my subconscious that I had no memory of at all?

By the way, if you think telling half-truths to ‘save face’ hurts no one as much as one self, well think again, because I'm about to show you what took place when another vulnerable heart reached out courageously to connect in depth with me.  And as this train of thought is pulling into the station where FIRST KISS awaits, I’ll show you how trauma, left unresolved, creates a pattern of dis/ease, which interferes with LOVE's good health.  And story by story, you'll see how that self defeating pattern persisted, until such time as I'd hunkered down to do the work of exorcising traumatic static, which had haunted my mind with dis/ease until I'd patiently healed each abscess, one by one, through and through.  Whew!  Hard work, but someone had to do it!