BOOK ONE—CHAPTER 3 FIRST KISS Part 2 Inner Conflict Plays Hide and Seek with our Smarts

Once my body-image has been battered by a busload of bullies during puberty, I'll see myself as unworthy of positive male attention for most of my life.  In fact, the more attracted I feel toward a guy, the more my psyche will cower behind darkened shadows of self-doubt.

During junior high, insecurities secreted from my conscious self would have surprised my new friends, because a cheerful smile will have masked my anxieties, and the same will prove true in high school, when I'll date, a lot.  However, as you'll see, dates will not transition into boy friends, because I'll be unable to distinguish between excitement catalyzed by mutual attraction and anxiety caused by fear of rejection— so

Each time a guy so much as pulls my body close to his own, a hodgepodge of emotion will erupt from deep within, stimulating adrenalin (rather than pheromones) to race through my bloodstream, flooding my mind with static.  And since my dates (and I) will have had no clue as to the blended sources of many-layered insecurities attacking my self confidence from deep within, every guy who takes me out will try to cozy up with a self protective, (uncharacteristically) quiet, teen-aged girl who must have seemed—boring—based in the fact that, upon sitting, hip to hip, every clear-headed thought will have blown straight out of my dizzied state of mind.

I remember one guy in high school who’d continued to come back for more of the same until, finally, during a kiss in his car after a date that had satisfied neither of us, he pushed me away, sputtering:  Annie, something's wrong—kissing you is like kissing a wall!   And though he’d felt as confounded as was true of me, he’d come closer to tapping into the truth than either of us could have fathomed concerning the intensity of swirling emotions dammed up behind my defense wall of denial, which will have continued to block my conscious awareness from so much as gaining a clue as to why I’d grappled silently with spiking anxiety whenever male desire so much as hinted at lustful thoughts laying hands, lips or hips upon any anxious portion of my torso. 

The fact of that memory arising, right now, decades later, suggests that—the closer a guy got to my body, the more my tensely coiled 'up tight' reaction pierced my spirit's naturally spunky effervescence to shrink back as though in fear for my life.  Why?  Because

The human spirit is like a metronome, signaling the cadence of a person’s state of mind as feeling fully relaxed at one end of the spectrum to feeling ever so tensely wound around angst at the other.

Though my spirit’s sparkle was often seen soaring as high as the sublime, it could plummet (as fast as a happy-go-lucky duck, thunderstruck by buckshot, falls from the sky) whenever subconscious insecurity, repressed in its unidentified state, felt reason to geyser out of the depths of my brain as if my thought processing center, having been shot straight through the heart with adrenalin, had imploded from within.

Over most of my life, I'll remain in the dark as to how often subconscious fear of rejection is empowered to shoot down my self confidence with guys, one after another.  Needless to say, no guy ever rejected me as spontaneously as I'd rejected myself.

The fact that I've clearly admitted to quitting on my long range goal (of studying Hebrew) in favor of saving face might inspire you to ask:  Annie, what did you hope 'we'd' absorb from that story describing your traumatized experiences inside the van from hell?  I’d reply:

First off:  Each painful encounter illustrates how often our defense mechanisms deny us access to deeper truths, concerning our most vulnerable character traits, which, having been acquired during early childhood, tend to slip out of subconscious hiding and then slip right back in before our conscious awareness has even an inkling of a clue as to which subconscious (and thus unidentified) less than desirable trait we've just exposed.  As long as denial supports our mental blocks (which blind us to self demeaning, self defeating traits), we’ll continue to shoot ourselves in the foot or suffer bouts of foot-in-mouth dis/ease while unknowingly sabotaging our most deeply valued long range goals and personal friendships, as well.

Secondly I'd say: It’s a safe bet that at the age of eleven, my thought processor had not yet developed the host of inner strengths that prove necessary to call forth depth perception under fire so as to stop a bully in his tracks by staunchly voicing my self respect with dignity and patience intact.  In fact, most adults I know have little conscious clue as to how often their voices shrink up into acquiescent meekness so as to quietly remain out of range of any mean-minded bully’s rat-a-tat attacks.  (How often have we sat upon our couches feeling aghast, cringing while viewing newscasts of innocent, deeply loved children gunned down in classrooms while our lawmakers consistently do nothing to tighten gun control laws in protection of lives not yet lost but soon to be blown away if not this week then next—God save little lambs from the inaction of elected shepherds whose reactions, numbed by denial, blindly fail to protect our happy-go-not-so-lucky ducklings from maniacal harm running rampant through our streets so freely as to see gang initiated drive by’s elevated to shooting sprees where our young are gunned down in school after school.  And then we hear—let’s arm teachers as if placing six year old processors in the position to absorb gun battles sanctioned by authority to take place in first grade classrooms makes any sense of civic chaos, at all!  If bullying is to be stopped, courage must be revealed, beginning at the top!

Thirdly I'd say:  Just as with learning the ABC's in school, children need to be gently encouraged (coached) at home to muster the courage to stand up and make sound use of their voices whenever their bodies or sense of self respect is attacked.  (Additional stories on this subject, such as—ABC NO BULLIES FOR MY KIDS! and BULLY FOR DAVID—which have been penned, will be published at appropriate times, down the road.  Bottom line, stories, written or yet to be written, will provide us with scenarios in which each of my sons was coached to stand up to bullies who proved to be peers, teachers, principals and deans.  (Hmmm—perhaps, my story teller, feeling need to pen so many vital stories, had overwhelmed my processor at an earlier stage in my life when a heightened sense of self awareness had not yet developed today's belief that I can depend upon my brain's self-empowered, insight-driven intuitive sense of internal clarity to write a memoir concerning humanity's need to simplify emotional chaos by concentrating my newly relaxed state of mental attention upon one true tale following another just as is true when a historical novel is in the process of being patiently (rather than tensely) researched, penned and reviewed.)

Fourthly—you watched my processor actively absorbing new insights while my brain was engaged in the process of reflecting over BULLY FOR ME:  You witnessed the fact that until recently, I'd had no conscious clue as to how much of that early trauma had yet to heal.

Fifth in line:  You watched while I identified and peeled away layers of self protective fear that had continued to clip away at my wings whenever a guy’s healthy libido enticed mine, which had been fearfully numbed, to unfreeze, heat up and grow so bold as to fly freely into his arms.

And in keeping with one insight spotlighting the next, here comes number six:  While writing BULLY FOR ME, I felt myself absorbing the inner strength necessary to bare the depths of my shame to myself by feeling bee stings piercing my wall of denial, which my defense system had numbed when I was eleven.  As of recent nights, I developed hives and itched as had been true during childhood with one remarkable caveat—rather than feeling anxiously confounded, I experienced a release of latent anger and outrage, both emotional reactions based in clarity, which prove crystal clear to the portion of my processor, which has finally released sound reason to not feel lost in a fog—at last.  

As to insight number seven, I've been distinguishing the difference between self-confidence, which can feel as wiggly to hold onto as a hare, hopping here and there before disappearing into a hole, and self-esteem, which, developing at a turtle's pace, is made up of a host of inner strengths that layer up deep inside replacing yesteryear's personal vulnerabilities, over time.

Though a slice of my self-image had taken a serious hit on that van, flattening my spunky spirit’s natural self confidence with men, most of my intellect's budding self-esteem survived the fires of humiliation—meaning that stories concerning the next several decades of my life will showcase the host of reasons why many of my eleven year old half baked strengths will have continued to mature while my preteen libido, along with yesteryear’s unprocessed fears, which had felt need to duck behind my wall of denial, remained numbed to my brain’s adult pleasure center‘s entreaties imploring my smarts to identify and gain control over fears that had encapsulated a portion of my processor within an emotional fog that had felt much too dense for a child’s think tank to navigate, all alone.  So while my self-confidence with guys had crashed BIG TIME at the highly vulnerable age of eleven, my high self-esteeming (budding) leadership skills did not burn; in fact, upon reflection, portions of my spirit continued to fly so high as to freely flash through a portal into the seventh dimension of my processor, where intuitive clarity thrives.

As for insight number eight (reminding me of eight nights of Chanukah lights, commemorating the spiritual miracle inherent within the eternal human quest for freedom) upon its completion, BULLY FOR ME spotlighted a technicolored vision of a specific inner conflict, which had gone undetected until—now.  This insight highlights the fact that each time my storyteller describes some aspect of my character, which proves in need of jumpstarting toward healing or maturing, I’ll begin to undergo yet another period of personal growth, right before your very eyes (and mine), thus exemplifying the ways in which the writing process, itself, serves to heighten my conscious ability to deepen my brain's insight-driven, intuitive depth perception in order to understand additional aspects of my self-image more clearly than had been possible before my consciously heightened awareness felt sound reason to set out on a soulful quest to seek well educated guidance in order to follow Socrates' lead to muster the courage to 'See Both Sides of Myself' more clearly and honestly and thus, more thoroughly, today, than had been true, yesterday.  Why?  Because each morsel of deeper truth that I consciously seek to process and absorb, concerning my past misperceptions, frees more of my think tank to truly develop into the less fearful, strong individual, whom I'd mistakenly believed myself to be, all along.

And thus, while engaged in writing this memoir, my processor’s depth perception will continue to deepen.  For example, now, more than ever before, I'm coming face to face with this last insight-driven, classic fact of life for today:

No matter how deeply I believe in my intuitive ability to excavate repressed details concerning my past, I'll continue to be an enigma—to myself—forever— and here's why that's true:  I'll never make my way through all of the strata of details secreted from the conscious portion of my mind over these past seventy-five years.  And if I was so foolish as to attempt to accomplish such an impossible feat that would require hermetically sealing myself away so as to invest every hour of the rest of my life in looking backward rather than growing ever more mindfully aware of how best to concentrate the better part of my attention upon freeing my wholesome sense of self to relax engagingly with every soulful moment, yet to come, in the company of those I love most to the fullest extent of my high flying spirit’s connection to enjoying life, every day.  Hooray for freeing love to fully express its sense of joy by slaying the dragon of repressed self rejection!

On the other hand, if we back track a bit, I can show you what I mean...
(See what I mean about our brain's being complicated little critters—thank God for the insight suggesting—balance in all things—LOL!