How was your day?

I remember playing tag or some other game where somebody was "it". Or maybe it was keep-away: I hate games that make you feel left out.

I remember when in school those horrible times choosing sides for red-rover or volley ball or basketball. I remember how humiliating it was to be among the last one or two chosen. Its hard to play a good game when you know nobody wants you in it.

I remember valentines day as a special horror. I was very excited the night before my first valentines day at school. I had a box of little valentines and matching little envelopes. The cards all said things like BEE MINE maybe with a picture of a bee or something. I remember being very careful to write one out for each person in my class and I couldn't wait to give them out at school. The teacher had little boxes in front of class with our names on the one that belonged to us. So I took the ones I wrote and put them in the boxes, sort of like a mailman delivering mail. But I grew to hate that holiday; all it represented was another day to be humiliated and rejected. It was hard seeing boxes overflowing and mine with just a few. It was hard to sit there in class feeling like I had a great big LOSER sign across my forehead for everyone to see.

It didn't help any that throughout my life I got "messages" from my mom of one form or another, sometimes words but sometimes other ways. But the meaning was always the same: you're not special, no one's going to like you, you not a nice girl, Even though I know that I tried very hard to be "nice" I guess I just sort of accepted the idea that other people did not like me. Eventually, I began to hear inside my own head that same list of derisive words like "homely" and "ugly" so no one needed to say them anymore - I told them to myself.

But when I look now at my pictures I think I wasn't nearly as unattractive as I felt. But its hard to be fun and nice when you think no one could possibly like you.


If I made the rules for school there wouldn't be anymore days like that, no team-choosing, no valentine-giving days. Its too cruel to the "unfortunates" the "misfits".

Sometimes when I was in school I would feel sad and want to go home and be "safe". But in reality that was just a daydream because home wasn't at all like that. I did like my dog who was always glad to see me. But I needed to come home to a mom who said stuff like: "hi sweetie how was your day"? And she would listen for the answer. Instead, if you were lucky, no one said anything and you could just go out and play or read a book. I know there are moms like that out there because I've seen other kids that have them.


In my heart I still feel that aching need to find my safe place, home where I am loved. A place where I would know that I was with people who cared about me when people were mean. Somebody to say "never mind them - they don't matter".

It's like being thirsty for a drink you know you will never have.

My life has been such a miserable failure. In the years I have left I guess I had ideas about being able to fix all that - to find those missed connections. To feel what its like when someone I love is holding me tight and I feel deliciously warm and safe and special..

The truth is that I feel scared of dying because I have to go alone. I will leave just as I've lived: with no one knowing who I am inside. No one will know that once I was a little girl who smiled and laughed and didn't frown at the way she looked in school pictures.

I wish that I could shrink until I become invisible and be gone and have it all done and over with. Being here feels too exposed - still feeling like the one not chosen.