1958
With no clue as to why this core group of girls has included me amongst 'the chosen', I attend our first club meeting, which convenes in someone's well-appointed, finished basement, feeling deeply perplexed. Actually, I'm more than perplexed. So great is my disbelief at being included that I feel disoriented. I mean, other than my new friend, Debi, who sits next to me in first period English, there's not one face in the room that I can connect to a name. So, I can't figure out why these girls, who know nothing of me, have collectively waved this magic wand of inclusion over my head.
If you think to ask: Well, did you know any more about them than they knew of you? I'd reply. Nope.
If next you ask: Well, if you knew nothing about them, why join them? I'd reply: Are you kidding? I was flabbergasted at being amongst those selected instead of rejected! These girls were cool! So cool, in fact, that the Chatty Cathy part of my personality proved pretty quiet while in their company, because I'd feared saying or doing anything that might clue them into the fact (?) that, having chosen a girl who was not cool—at all—had been a huge mistake!
During that first semester, here's what I learned about girlfriends that reinforced the shyness adopted by my psyche after my self image had burned to a crisp and my self confidence had succumbed to smoke on those bus rides, which had cast me into the fires of preteen hell: Just as boys could pummel vulnerability, girls could smile at you, one minute, and talk smack behind your back, the next. None of that made sense to me! Having been excluded for years, I'd had time on my own to define friendship differently!
Gosh, from the outside looking in, the popular set had always seemed so happy, mutually supportive and tight. Once I'd been welcomed into the inner sanctum, I'd witness this surprising scenario, time and again: 'For some unknown reason, 'this group' seemed uptight whenever 'that group' walked in …
This division made no sense to me, at all! I mean, weren't we all each other's best friends in thick and thin?
Reflection suggests that my mental state of naïveté had lots to learn about the ways that friendship is undermined by power struggles born of human nature's two-faced, back stabbing jealousies, right? As you shall see, sleep over parties, which I'd thought would offer only friendship and fun could turn dark as fast as the collective mindset of a group, like the bullies on the bus, suddenly switches from nice to not ...
If you ask why I didn't think to share my perceptions, openly, I'd reply: By the age of fourteen, my fear of rejection had suffered three strikes: First after Janet's death, next on the bus and then during junior high.
Once fear of rejection had suffered three strikes, my defense system felt so shocked to find me standing in the batter's box, again, that my self assertive voice choked, and having lost sight of my social self confidence, every leadership trait—which had emoted so naturally from within my five-year old core when my sure footed graces had wiped tears away from the faces of children in kindergarten—experienced a mind bending change. Thank goodness, reflective insight, concerning unprocessed changes, opened my mind to consciously review this string of interconnected misperceptions, which has been in serious need of re-evaluation since I'd felt adrift from my socially secure self at the age of eleven.
Once those bus rides, collided with my exclusion at my new school, my social self confidence felt buried alive within an avalanche of rejection. And with no clue that my voice had been gagged by huge lumps of undiagnosed PTSD—which had festered within my subconscious from the age of three—I was unable to express my needs or distress, aloud, suggesting why my personal strengths felt hog-tied for years. With no voice (other than please and thank you) to speak up for me, I grew up accepting confusion as a normal state of mind. Oy.
As long as denial's smokescreens smothered clarity of thought, I remained blind to my unidentified fear of exclusion. Since any degree of inclusion eased my distress, silencing my needs seemed golden for decades to come. Thus, unbeknownst to me, it was the disoriented state of my psyche that breathed life into the consummate pleaser, whose cheerful demeanor served the needs of others to the exclusion of my own, and as the warmth of my smile won hearts, denial won over clarity for decades to come. As to PTSD? That remained undiagnosed until a dozen years ago, when denial crashed into despair—and I turned into a stranger to myself.
Flash of insight! Holy cow! In order to ensure my inclusion, I'd met the needs of others by excluding myself from my circle of friends! Can you see how dizzied a mind, blinded by denial, proves to be, most especially at those times when a person's thought processing sense of clarity proves most in need of mindful re-adjustment? Wow! This insight is huge! I mean if trauma breathed life into denial, which created a state of disorder within the development of my three year old thought processor, then how many people with undiagnosed PTSD might be relieved of subconscious fear by engaging in sessions of EMDR, each of which gently prepares the traumatized portions of the brain to heal by working through denial until clarity is restored.
At the age of fourteen, intuition sensed that though 'included' within the inner sanctum of this social club, I'd remained an 'outsider', who had not fit the mold of any of these girls—except for Debi, whose warm smile, awash with sincerity, drew my heartfelt sense of safety close, and though intuition surmised that my inclusion in this club did not feel natural, I chose inclusion over exclusion until fate stepped in, catalyzing a welcome change, which allowed me to stop walking eggshells, and as this change for the better offered me reason to relax my guard, your quiet friend Annie, began to evolve into the person, whose patience chooses to muster the courage necessary to untie each knot of confusion, which had held Chatty Cathy's strength of mental clarity captive for as long as fear of rejection remained unidentified.
Many years would pass before my true sense of personal choice, concerning my conscious inclusion of friends, overcame fear of loneliness, buried inside. Many years would pass before my five year old voice of positively focused leadership began to seek a path of self discovery, where, each intuitive step forward led me toward healing my brain from PTSD, which had gone undiagnosed until recent years. Many years would pass before my conscious awareness began to recover the self assertive sense of clarity that had wandered into a smoky maze at the vulnerable age of three. And once this growing awareness of clarity was mine, my self confident spirit re-awakened, opening my eyes to an insight that changed my life in this enlightened way: I came to fully embrace this fact: Finding myself amongst those chosen was a far cry from developing character traits that empowered me to choose friends by myself for myself, regardless of what anyone else might think.
As developing the strength to embrace that conscious awareness is many years down the road, let's high tail it back to the welcome change that was fated to encourage me to drop my guard with the girls, who comprised my high school club, during the spring of my freshman year …
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