Hometown Growing

I came to my hometown in the year 2001 as a shy and feisty ten year old. I can still remember crying in my room of our new house, wishing I was with my good friends in my old city. We had been through a lot as a family at that time, and we were looking to have a new start and a better life. Like many, we did not have it easy and each of us had (and still have) our own traumas and life experiences that scarred us and shaped us into our being. We loved each other very much, but maybe were not equipped with the knowledge and tools to take care of our mental health.

My parents tried their best. We tried our best.

We’ve all made wrong choices and took wrong turns, but we try to love and try to understand. Each one of us knee deep in our own problems and trying to figure out our way through the sludge. My parents tried to instill good things in us, as their kids. Be nice. Stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. Try to understand others. Stand up for yourself. Live a good life.

I also grew up in a very conservative and Christian household. I grew up with stories of Jonah being eaten by the fish, Jesus providing endless bread and fish to the masses, turning water to wine, rising from the dead, wives being turned to salt, the obedient women of the Bible. I grew up with all these biblical stories being told to me and thinking that everyone thought these same things.

I did not realize there were other religions that thought they were correct just as much as Christianity. I did not realize that I would come to question everything about it, and I did not consider the fact that I may not fully believe the same things. I did not realize that I would slowly grow to believe the worst in humanity, and thus loose most of that child-like belief.

I knew my life outside of school wasn’t the worst, but everything was not perfect, not by a long shot. We grew up in a loving family, with family dinners, chores around the house, dogs, family movie nights, shopping and walks with my mom, movie dates with my dad. I got in plenty of trouble and my mom still to this day lovingly refers to me as her wild child.

I don’t think it’s uncommon to be a tween/teenager and be unable to talk to your parents. It’s hard for an adult to relate to the problems their kid may be having when those issues didn’t exist for the parent- ever. They don’t know what solutions will work, they don’t know what their kid is really going through, but they can see the changes in their soul. And it scares the Hell out of them, so they try to hold on tighter.

It’s easy to write your kid off as having an attitude problem when you don’t know how it feels to go through those same things- to not have anyone your own age you can trust, and to feel like you are never taken seriously anyway.

As the baby of the family, I’ve always felt unseen and spoken over because, well because I was ignored and people spoke over me all the time. I constantly felt as if I had to fight to be heard, and coupled with everything from school, I just gave up after a while. I even had a hard time speaking up in class from the very beginning because I didn’t think I ever had anything good to say. I was always being told to speak up, being made a spectacle and embarrassed.

Middle school was the worst.

You’re new to town and no one knows who you are. They see a quiet and shy, slightly bigger girl who is maybe an easy target. They start on day one, and you can’t stop it.

You’re fat. You’re ugly. You’ll never get a boyfriend. No one likes you. You have no friends. They spit in your hair, in your face, throw things at you on the bus. They make fun of everything about you, and they never let up. They never let up.

They read your diary-they were supposed to be your friend, they were in your house for Christ’s sake- and spread it around class until you scream in their faces, “I’ll hurt you, I swear it!” No one laughs at the anger and adrenaline in your blood- they know the quiet girl is about to snap.

The boys ignore you or give you too much attention. Tell you you’re ugly and good for nothing. Or stare at your giant boobs because, of course.

You walk around the halls by yourself most of the time, trying to ignore those who now hate you. Trying to stay invisible and figure out if anyone in this new world is actually nice. Is anyone out there actually nice?

Christmas or my birthday comes- they are close together so I can’t remember which- Dad got me a real promise ring. Real gold and diamonds, and I loved it. These girls are the worst. Gym class is spent covering up and trying not to change or shower in front of the other girls because they would stare. They would laugh. They would say it to your face. We aren’t allowed to lock our lockers, but I have to take my ring off for class. These girls are the worst. My ring is gone. My parents are pissed. I’m devastated and angry beyond belief.

Nasty little things- A perfect description for the cretins we call human adolescent girls. They claw their way through each other…one nasty little thing at a time. She will be your friend to your face, collecting your stories- your secrets- all ammo for the impending, blindsiding attack. They will take you out. You won’t see it coming at all. You never see it coming.

There are times where the anger and pain become too much to keep inside and your ‘fight or flight’ decides to fight to the death. When someone decides to mess with you, you fight back and they know you are not someone to mess with…for a little while.

High School…more of the same.

It’s a complicated mess for everyone trying to survive in one piece, or most of one piece. I didn’t understand that until well into my 20’s. I didn’t understand why my friends could not deal with the traumas that made me the way I was. Traumas that made me distrust everyone, and deeply hate or cut off those who I did trust but who chose to break my heart over and over again. I deeply wanted someone who I could trust, and I gave many people chances to be that person. I was open and tried my best to let people in, to let them get to know me. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t matter.

Just about the only successful thing I did through my high school career was get a job at my local movie theatre when I was 15 years old. I loved movies, loved watching them and spent a lot of time enjoying them. I was excited and liked working there very much. My older brother worked there for a time and so did many of his friends. All of which helped immensely in me feeling comfortable working there. I did not know it at the time, but I met my best friend and sister at this job, and that would change my life in my late 20’s.

NO ONE IS PERFECT. I know I could have done a lot more differently than I did. No one could see through my anger, no one knew it was a front for the hurt and pain I had been through and put myself through. No one cared to realize this and I went through a lot of my life feeling like I was a bitch.

And being told I was a bitch.

But what is a bitch, anyway?

Boys don’t know how to talk to girls, didn’t know what they are doing to us. They secretly text you. Secretly ask you for pictures because they are horny little creatures and they don’t know how to act properly. So they ask, and they flirt, and they put in the time to make you think they like you. They will text and call and send you pictures weather you asked for them or not. They will tell you they like you, tell you they want to get to know you more, and hangout with you outside of school. They will introduce you to their moms and dads, and they will let you pet their dogs, and invite you to the movies. They will make you feel like they are safe…until they are not.

They will ignore you in front of their friends. They will make you think you did something wrong…make you feel like you are obsessed with them even though they tricked you into it. They will not talk to their friends about you because they will surely be made fun of for talking to the girl who isn’t the skinniest. Not the prettiest. Not the most outgoing girl in school. You will be made fun of to your face by multiple boys who said they liked you, who wanted to get to know you.

Girls will tolerate you…until they don’t have to. They will say shitty things about you behind your back and let you believe you are their friend. BEST FRIENDS will not let you sit with them at lunch- and laugh, tell you to leave, or they will leave when you try to sit down anyway. You will figure out it’s easier to be in solitude in the library or sit alone outside or in a bathroom stall. Your heart will race uncontrollably when someone comes near, but you won’t say a single word because you need peace.

You will try your hardest to have friends. You will try out for softball, a sport you love, only to find that you can’t breathe halfway through the first lap. Everyone will stare and you will be so embarrassed that you grab your stuff and just run out. It’s assumed you are fat and out of shape…and they will never let you forget it. It will not be until years later that you find out you actually have Asthma and could not run if your life depended on it (still). You never try out for another sport again, never have the family that comes with it, either.

You’ll have crushes along the way…and a select number of your friends will find out who and date every one of them right in front of you just because they can. Because the boy you like would never like you back, and they wanted you to know it. And your heart will break again and again.

One day, after the worst night of your life, your girlfriends will not believe a single word you say when you tell them you didn’t want to do it, but they made you. And you will be able to see it in their eyes from the second you start talking. Even though you are uncontrollably shaking and crying and you tell them every detail with the hope they will believe you- that they will tell you its okay. Instead, they will look you in the eye and say “That isn’t rape” (it was). Or worse, they will say it behind your back and let you believe you are safe with them. But you’ll find out because they can’t keep their mouth closed anyway. And your world will crash further down into the darkness. And you will close down. And you will never trust a single word that comes from their mouths again.

You will, yet again, be made fun of constantly and your friends will avoid you with everything they have. And your heart will shatter, and you will feel the pieces shredding your insides every day.

You will go through your senior year avoiding everyone, breaking down in front of the class, in the corner of class, in the library, in the hallway, in the corner of the room, at work, in the car, in front of anyone and everyone. You will not say a single word all year. You will be broken and no one will care. You will be alone; walking the halls with your eyes down, not a single soul will see the whites of your eyes all year.

You’ll spend all your time wondering who knows. Who will come up to you and say something? Will someone spread it around school? Has it already spread around the school?

You will graduate hating everyone because they hated you.

It will not be until the middle and end of college that those girls will come back to you and say “You were right, that was rape.” “It happened to me, I know exactly what you meant now” “I’m so sorry none of us believed you.” And it will be too late. Your heart is already too damaged. Too many scars ran too deep from each one of them…and you will not care, but you will wonder why they had to make an example out of you. Why you had to lose them as friends and why they didn’t want you in their life…why you were not worth anything to them. You will wonder why you were the one who had to struggle and struggle and struggle and almost lose the struggle.

All through college, you will not have a second of freedom from that moment- You will never find anyone to have a connection with, will never find anyone who will not end up stabbing you in the back in one way or another. You will never have anyone you can fully trust.

What will you do?

Focus on yourself.

You will get through your traumas and you will work out how to be a human again. You will still not trust a single person, but you will grow in yourself and you will figure out who you are and what you stand for. You will learn to focus less on what everyone else thinks of you and you will learn what you think of you. You will try and try and try to see the best in people, and learn to be more than what people see in you. You will learn to trust yourself and you will learn to love the hell out of yourself, even on your worst days.

You will take those bad memories surrounding your youth and learn how to honor them but also allow yourself to add in all the good things that come later on. Good memories will overturn the bad. You will come home from your college-town, to your hometown, and you will take it back again. Slowly, it will be yours again.

The local movie theatre will no longer be the place you met your rapists. It will go back to being your first job that you loved and had for 3 years of high school. It will be where you met your current best friend and sister for life, (although you won’t know this until much later). It will be the place you had lots of dates with your dad to see free movies, one of the great perks of being employed there. It will be the place you are most comfortable, sitting in the darkness, living in someone else’s dreams.

The Red Robin will no longer be the place he took you on a friend date that one time. It will just be a plain old restaurant, and he will not be there- he has no place there, it’s yours now.

The millpond will no longer be the place that those girls never invited you to with the rest of your friends. It will no longer be the place you could never go to because your parents wouldn’t let you, or because you had no one to go with. Instead, it will turn into the place you walk around on your own, where you get to watch the geese and fish swim, where you get to see the muskrats scrounging for supplies in the water. The path you can walk around after getting ice cream.

Main Street will turn into the place where, being an adult, you get together with your girlfriends on a Friday night and drink and eat the night away. In the summer, it will be the place you get to walk around festivals and eat good food, hear good music, and get to know the local establishments lining the streets. It will be the place you can interact with your neighbors, the place where you can laugh and have fun.

Middle school and high school will still be the places where you were tortured the most. Those buildings will still hold your worst years, your worst friends, and the beginning of your worst mental health days. But they will also resemble the beginning of the hardest time of your life, and therefore will always resemble how far you’ve come, how close you came to losing everything. Every single time you drive past them, you will be reminded of how strong you’ve become. How much you’ve endured.

And you will still ask yourself that one question, always come back to that one question:

Why were you the one who had to struggle and struggle and struggle and almost lose the struggle?Why were you the one who had to lose everyone, who had no one?

Until one day you realize it’s because life isn’t fair, but you survived it.

You were the one who built from the bottom up, and created something better. You were the one who created a life of love and understanding; a life of trying to bring good things to yourself and everyone else. You built yourself up when everyone else pushed you down.

You realized you were good enough for yourself when you were not good enough for anyone else. And nothing but time, growing up, and picking yourself up from the burning ground could make you believe and understand that your heart is good and you are worth something.

I used to hate my hometown and everyone in it. I just wanted people that cared.

I used to hate my high school and everyone in it. I just wanted friends who had my back.

I used to hate myself and my life. I only wanted to be as perfect as they were.

My heart used to be hard and unforgiving.

I’ve been able to live the past 20 years in this town, and grow with the memories, good and bad; carving my own way, coming into my own. I was never allowed the honor of having a really great friend until I became an adult; after college, and I found her in my hometown, had known her since working at the movie theatre in our teens. My best friend, my sister, the person who will always try to understand me, to love me, and I will always do the same for her.

I’m lucky to say that I have grown into someone I am proud to be. Someone who works hard for what I have and who loves even harder. I’ve grown to understand my hometown and love the places in it. I’ve worked hard to be in a better place mentally, to be a better person, and to be the friend I always wished I had. I try to be aware of myself and my own actions, and I wholly take responsibility for my own self. I don’t allow “bad” friends in my life anymore- who has the time for that?!

I take the time to take advantage of the beautiful lakes that surround us and center myself with the nature it brings. I walk the paths, drive the roads, swim in the water, feel the sand between my toes, and take life one day at a time.

I cannot imagine living anywhere else, cannot imagine growing up anywhere else.

Why is my hometown so special? Why is my hometown worth it? I survived my traumas and this place reminds me daily of that very proud fact.

It holds my scars, my hatred, my love, my hurt, the good, the bad; my life.

Brighton, MI- Livingston County.

**All photos are my own personal and original photos. Some are 10+ years old, some are actual photos scanned and some are digital.**