The Weird Kid
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Let's chat
I am developmentally arrested, at about 14. Junior High and early High School meant way too much to me, and their muck stuck too strongly to me.
Because everything started to slip and shake then. Suddenly being funny and smart and weird wasn't any good in a girl, not without sexual attractiveness and that particular burgeoning femininity that I just could not project.
No fair, no fair! I'm still shouting it. I still get nervous around a group of adolescent boys, frightened they'll make fun of me. I feel strange feeling of injustice around pretty young girls, jealous of the freedom they'll have because they're pretty.
So imagine how it is for Imez, yesterday, to settle in the sunken living room of the most popular girl in Junior High. Imagine the joy injected straight to that little piece of maladjusted brain.
Tirza is 30 now. She deserved to be popular. She was beautiful, model beautiful. And calm, and nice, and styled. All these things still.
She began dating the most popular senior boy, her freshman year. They're still married. Classy and successful. Two daughters. I said hello on her webpage and she invited me the surprisingly short distance to her house.
Truth is, I'd like to make a big deal of it. That some sort of healing took place, some sort of battle finally won. But, no. We talked about our kids, a couple memories. I had fun.
In this one little area, I have...somehow...become healthy. As a thirty year old, fat though I may be, career-less too, I'm a great conversationalist. Children relate to one another through a myriad of ways.
Adults relate primarily by having conversations.
And I'm....dammit, I'm just not to be outdone conversation-wise. Give me doctors, give me actors, give me professors. I can handle them all. I can talk.
Something I have that is good, already good. Wow. Look at that.
Jesus Christ, did I just write something good about myself?
Because everything started to slip and shake then. Suddenly being funny and smart and weird wasn't any good in a girl, not without sexual attractiveness and that particular burgeoning femininity that I just could not project.
No fair, no fair! I'm still shouting it. I still get nervous around a group of adolescent boys, frightened they'll make fun of me. I feel strange feeling of injustice around pretty young girls, jealous of the freedom they'll have because they're pretty.
So imagine how it is for Imez, yesterday, to settle in the sunken living room of the most popular girl in Junior High. Imagine the joy injected straight to that little piece of maladjusted brain.
Tirza is 30 now. She deserved to be popular. She was beautiful, model beautiful. And calm, and nice, and styled. All these things still.
She began dating the most popular senior boy, her freshman year. They're still married. Classy and successful. Two daughters. I said hello on her webpage and she invited me the surprisingly short distance to her house.
Truth is, I'd like to make a big deal of it. That some sort of healing took place, some sort of battle finally won. But, no. We talked about our kids, a couple memories. I had fun.
In this one little area, I have...somehow...become healthy. As a thirty year old, fat though I may be, career-less too, I'm a great conversationalist. Children relate to one another through a myriad of ways.
Adults relate primarily by having conversations.
And I'm....dammit, I'm just not to be outdone conversation-wise. Give me doctors, give me actors, give me professors. I can handle them all. I can talk.
Something I have that is good, already good. Wow. Look at that.
Jesus Christ, did I just write something good about myself?
posted by Imez at 9:39 PM
4 Comments:
Hey! Good for you. :-) For what it's worth, I am also completely developmentally stunted at 14, for all the reasons you described. It makes me wonder how many other women feel that way.
Hell, yes, you did! Keep talkin' :)
Yes - I'm still stuck at 14 too!
I wouldn't have been brave enough to go though! lol
I'm still stuck in adolescence, also. I still feel the pain when I relive a bad memory, an embarrassment, an injustice. I still can't carry a conversation face to face with someone I don't know, tho, so good for you! You did just write something good about yourself!
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