The Wallflower to End All Wallflowers

I may have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating again. For you dear readers, to understand, but also for me, to internalize and remind myself what it was. It was not normal, and it was not nice.

I was raised in a cult.

I went to “Cult School” as I call it today. It was a fundamentalist independent Baptist “Christian” school, from kindergarten until twelfth grade. To say that this experience in the beginnings of life shaped my future is an understatement.

Early elementary grades looked similar to any regular elementary school. We learned our time tables, classified animals by vertebrates and invertebrates, diagrammed sentences, memorized spelling lists, and read fables, Greek myths, and Bible stories. God was a friend who bent down to mankind, wanting to be involved intimately in our lives and extending a hand to help us out from the mire of sin and death. (And I still believe this to be true, despite everything.) The only thing that separated us from our public school peers was our dress code of modest dresses and skirts to the knee, our eschewment of movie theaters, and our weekly chapels.

Later, however, this school took on a much darker turn. My childhood best friend moved away to Michigan after third grade. She was my protector and my confidant, my champion and my defender from evil. After she left, and as we aged towards puberty, I realized how cold and unfriendly a place it truly was.

If you were any bit different whether physically, mentally, or emotionally, you were marked as a social pariah. I was different in all of the aforementioned categories. I was overweight, a hefty child. I was what I can now label as neurodivergent, as no such terms existed back then; I later learned I had Adult ADHD, and the ADHD was very much present back in my brain at that time as well. I always felt out of place, like I marched to the tune of a different drum than everyone else. Now I can see that my Artist self was very present (Thanks to the tutelage of Julia Cameron, I have a term for this inner part of myself), but my creativity was misdirected by my attempts at survival.

Once middle school began, if you were one of these pariahs, you would be mercilessly tortured by the other students. (I thank God that social media was not a thing back then. At least at home, you earned something of a reprieve from the endless bullying.) Some students horrendously bullied in this way had smart parents, who realized what was occurring, and they yanked their children out. Others embraced their otherness and relished in being outsiders.

Then there were others like me, who melded into the background. I became the Wallflower to end all Wallflowers. I became mute. I became invisible. I remained silent, as my friends were teased and tortured for their weight, for being different, for the outlandish teenager things they would say in class. The occasional student, not usually in my class of twenty, would make a snide remark about my grotesque fat body, but for the most part, I was left alone.

But I longed to be accepted; I desired to be part of the gang. To be human is to belong to a tribe. Being invisible was preferable to being teased, but it was a terrible price to pay. I am still today tribeless. I am still not much of a joiner. I wouldn’t know how to be part of a tribe, even if I was fortunate enough to be accepted into one.

My inner thought life was a wellspring, however. Despite my quiet demeanor, my inner daydreams were an oasis from this toxic environment. I could be whoever I wanted to be in my daydreams. I could be accepted. I could have friends and boyfriends. I could have adventures, and I concocted many such adventures that I was someone else in another place and time.

At one point as an adult, an adult with an education career being harmed by my endless maladaptive daydreaming, I made the decision I could no longer daydream about myself. No more running away from myself and losing myself in fantasies. It was at this moment that stories of numerous characters came to life in my mind. So while I no longer permit myself to fantasize myself as someone else, I am free to daydream about my characters and the adventures they are having. And I don’t depress myself in the lack of my own adventures and the disappointing status I find my personal life today.

This is a much more fulfilling use of my storytelling. One day my characters will be out in the world in a way that everyone can enjoy them and feel camaraderie through their suffering. Will then my own suffering be worth it, when that day appears?