Wemblin' Fool

When I was in sixth grade, one of my biggest traumas happened to me.

I had been a popular kid, partially because I was so imaginative. But because of the bullying and abuse at my mother’s hands, I had unpredictable anger issues. I used to get bad ear infections, and the doctor gave me a steroid shot in fourth grade. After that, I started to get fat. And when that happened, the bullying became an at-school thing, too. Even from teachers. Side note: when I was 40 I found out I had undiagnosed ADHD.

Still, I had one best friend: Shane. Shane was the only guy who always hung out with me. And then, one day, when I was 10 years old, I called him and asked if he wanted to hang out, and he said “No, actually, I’d rather not hang out with YOU” and hung up on me.

Even right now, telling this story, I can feel how surprised, hurt, and rejected I felt in that moment. I couldn’t understand. I cried. I shook with sadness. And I internalized it… well, no one likes me. Anyone who likes me at all just hasn’t figured out yet that they don’t. This is my fault for thinking I can have things like friends and a normal life.

That’s when I really became suicidal for the first time.

Now I understand that these little asshole kids, in the *very* middle class area I lived in, were trying too hard to grow up. I was 10. I still wanted to play with my GI Joes and watch Real Ghostbusters and listen to pop music and Weird Al and go to arcades. These were my escape from the constant, exhausting torture of being on alert at home for what split second thing might set off my mother and get me screamed at and/or beaten.

Shane and the other 10 year old boys wanted Heather and Patty and Nicole to like them. They wanted to watch sports and listen to hair metal and talk about what happened on Miami Vice last night. And because I didn’t, I was first isolated, then targeted, and then the constant, exhausting torture of being on alert became a home AND school thing.

Shane didn’t just stop being my friend, you see. He became the ringleader of my army of bullies. The only things the guys in my class ever agreed on as a whole was that Walter Payton was a legend and that I was fun to bully. I will never forget the day I walked home from school with all of the boys around me in a circle, shouting out insults, making jokes about how awful I was, and punching me. I just didn’t look at them, kept walking, and tried not to cry in front of them. With all of my mom’s evil programming, I felt like I probably deserved it. I thought a lot that night about how I could kill myself. Not to escape the torture, but because by then I felt like it would just be better for everyone else if I wasn’t there, making life worse with my presence. I didn’t know why everyone, even my mom, HATED me so much… But I knew it must be my fault.

So, yeah, I’ve never trusted groups or had a lot of friends or been completely comfortable around other people, except for my wife and my two best friends (one of whom I made on Tumblr) and the occasional therapist who’s really good. I’m always sort of “on” in public persona mode and I don’t let a lot of people get close enough to see the entire me. I don’t really feel like I have anyplace I can go and just openly be everything I am.

Except Tumblr.

And now, even Tumblr has decided I have to be a certain way.

This whole stupid thing Verizon is doing to Tumblr is just opening that trauma again. That confused feeling of rejection that’s never really gone away.

So many of us are losing the one safe place we can go to and be our entire selves.

That’s why this has been do depressing. I made friends I may never see again. I may never have an outlet like this again. I may never feel this accepted again.

But at least this time I know it’s not because of me. It’s because of assholes who crave money and want to dismantle a politically active community.

But it still hurts. And I’ll never forget whose fault it is that I feel this way again.