When I w as a kid, I had no idea what was normal and what wasn’t. No, that’s not right. I knew that my family was not like others, but I didn’t know why. It’s easy to see in retrospect that it’s cultural, but how was I to know that at the time? When you’re a kid, the only thing you know is your own family. That is the basis for normal. Which is fine if you have a healthy family. However, if your family is deeply dysfunctional as mine is, then it’s hell.
I was being shaped without knowing it. I was taught that my perfectly normal body was gross and disgusting. My brain was the only thing that mattered, but at the same time, I was supposed to make sure that at some point in time, I was attractive enough to secure a (male) mate with whom I would breed. I had to play an instrument and a sport, and there wasn’t any question of whether I could quit or not. Until I got deeply depressed and thought life meant nothing, but I’ll get to that later.
I started dancing when I was two and took lessons until I was twelve. I played the cello from eight to eighteen. I also had piano lessons; played ping-pong, tennis, and softball; and took enrichment classes during the summer at the Twin Cities Institute for Talented Youth. (TCITY). I took Latin, drama, and writing during those summers. There was no such thing as downtime; my brother and I had to be doing something every minute of the day.
When I was in high school, I was deeply depressed. I thought about killing myself every day. My brother had trouble with school so my mother was focused on him, not me. I was (and am) good at school, so she just took it for granted that I would continue to excel. She paid my brother for his good grades, but I got scolded when I brought home an A-.
I decided to give up my junior or senior year. I stopped trying and my grades plummeted. Probably junior year. I remember once in class, the teacher wasn’t there and we were all just hanging out doing our thing. I wrote suicidal poems on the blackboard and was outraged when someone else erased them. In retrospect, it was a good call, but at the time, I felt as if I was being erased.