Indelible

Biography

[originally posted in "Biography" ]

Jaeff | KBtW of the Free Folk 's take on a prompt ("And the Oscar goes to... & Firefly" ) made me stand up and say, "Challenge accepted!"

...Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration. However, it did prompt me to do some rereading of my previous journals to see if I had at any point discussed a moment in my life that I would choose for adapting into a work of some sort. Anyone who has been following my journals for a long time may have remembered when I discussed the notebook incident previously. If you need a refresher, "I've been there"  is where you want to go. It provides the nuts and bolts of the what of the notebook incident. However, since it's been almost exactly 15 years since the Infamous Notebook Incident took place, so I figured I ought to consider why this is still my answer after nearly 15 friggin' years.

You would think after 15 years I would have finished the grieving process and moved on with my life. In my previous entry, I thought I had done those things. The truth is, I've only moved on with my life. I never really finished grieving what happened when I left the notebook behind that day. When I look back on everything, I didn't really get a chance to grieve. I kept getting pushed back into the limelight for generally unhappy reasons, which isn't conducive to grieving for anyone. It's even more difficult for a 14 year old who felt everything in life slip away with the trauma of having her psyche paraded in front of her classmates, all 300 or so of them. The worst part about it is my eighth grade year had actually been going pretty well. I won the school spelling bee; was active in band (and good at playing saxophone); was in advanced level classes; may have had the attention of a popular guy on campus (but was mostly oblivious to this); and even had a pretty sweet gig as an office aide. Simply put, I had some achievements to my name and was respected by my classmates even if I chose to hang out with less popular people. On the flip side, though, I'd been friends with Michelle, who did whatever she could to manipulate my social life. You may ask if I really had a choice to hang out with less popular people, and I could understand why you might ask that question. The answer is yes. I did have outs, as I was on speaking terms with more popular classmates, but I chose the group I did because I knew most of them before Michelle and I became friends in the latter half of my sixth grade year. I'd known my friends for a fairly long time, and I can be loyal. I know that's hard to believe, but it's definitely possible. I'm actually loyal to a fault, but I'll save that for another entry. Anyway, the thing is, I was always dancing on the edge of the limelight that year, and when things went my way I did get some recognition. The problem is, when things went south, I was in the spotlight even more. Considering my record now bore the marks of an in school suspension (which was more to protect me from the wrath of my classmates once I turned myself in), I had to be really on guard with my behavior, and at school that ended up translating into blending into the background as much as possible. That tactic involved showing as little emotion as possible. Being so stoic at an age where emotional displays are far more common is exhausting. I'd come home just glad that the day was done. My notebook made the rounds before the Columbine shooting, but the shooting brought me back into the spotlight and enduring days of being called a psychopath by my classmates. I had a very small support network by that point, as a number of my friends did not talk to me much the remainder of that year. Nichole, Bruce, and Niggy were the three closest people in my life when the dust settled, and they were the only people outside of my family that cheered for me at my middle school graduation. There were people I chatted with before the ceremony, and you'll see me smiling in the pictures from that time. However, I was still numb. There was no getting around that. I ended middle school on a rough note and had high school pressure looming when my state of mind was already compromised by the taunting I had endured for over two months with nearly no breaks. When high school started, I had to push through my doubts and fright just to get through each day. I leaned on Nichole a fair amount during this time, although I did start to make a few more friends through Jess (a middle school friend who shied away from talking to me after the Infamous Notebook Incident but came around after a few months). This lead to a whole new set of stresses that ended up taking priority over what had happened toward the end of eighth grade. This pattern did really let up until after I got married and found I had some time to actually think about what was in my head.

One thing that may have further stunted the grieving process is not acknowledging Michelle's behavior for what it was: emotional abuse. During the time she and I were friends, she would often ask me to talk to guys she liked for her. If the guy showed even a smidgen of friendliness toward me, Michelle would start acting dodgy. While I saw this a bit in seventh grade, it was worse in eighth grade. The difference between those two years boiled down to how the object of Michelle's affection behaved toward me. While Aaron

seventh grade crush du jour

and I did chat a bit without Michelle's prompting, Drew

eighth grade crush du jour

would sometimes approach me first and overtly flirted with me in open settings where anyone and their parents could witness it. (For that matter, Drew's mom happened to overhear me asking Drew if he would ever pay me back the money I lent him after marching practice to get a soda.) Michelle was not happy with these developments. Though she generally didn't say too much if I socialized outside our circle of friends (maybe just a sneer here and there), her tactics stepped up when Drew entered the picture. She started insisting on being around me more during classes we shared and started wearing more dramatic fashions to school events so the attention would be focused on her. I had to be discreet if I wanted to talk to other classmates lest she swoop in and bodily drag me away from them. One of the reasons I tend to befriend guys more is that my guy friends did serve as a bit of a short term buffer between Michelle and myself when the going got tough. I say short term because the more I hung out with guys, the worse her jealousy became. She generally wouldn't do anything in front of a male audience (including that of mutual friends and acquaintances), as it could potentially jeopardize any romantic gains she had a chance of obtaining. For my part, I'd befriended her because we were intellectually compatible (at least in my eyes at the time), and I felt weird about befriending other people in my classes because I perceived them as being more interested in grades than actually learning anything (while half the time I was bored because the material was easy). I stuck with Michelle because I honestly didn't know what other options I had (if any). If I'd had the courage at 14 to befriend people with different priorities, I might have spared myself Michelle's wrath. However, I was already socially stunted enough thanks to some altered brain chemistry a la ASD. That courage would not be found at that time. I'm honestly not sure how much of it I have even 15 years later. I know I have more of it, but I don't know how much I truly have. I just know it's still not that much. Anyway, so Michelle guilt tripped me; became manipulative if I appeared to be making any headway in the romance department; exhibited jealousy if I could do something as well or better than her (e.g. eating while still maintaining a certain figure); and even cowed some of my other friends into following her lead. Since my previous experience with friendships was extremely low, I didn't realize right away that what she did would be considered abusive, and this was a point I didn't even consider until mi amor and I had been together for a few years. Mi amor was the first person to suggest the idea that Michelle had emotionally abuse me. Prior to that, I had some unanswered (and thoroughly ignored) questions about why she acted the way she did around me. I figured jealousy was a factor, but until mi amor mentioned the possibility of abuse, I hadn't really grasped how deep it ran. When that idea came into the picture, it reminded that some wounds from the Infamous Notebook Incident hadn't healed, and they were big wounds left to fester and rot. One of the biggest was understanding what had pushed me over the metaphorical edge. I knew that Michelle's behavior was one reason I drew what I did in the notebook, but realizing that her behavior would be considered by a number of people to be abusive made me realize I never fully came to terms with her behavior toward me. That lack of reconciliation has kept me from fulling grieving what happened with that notebook.

Then there are the somewhat less emotionally involved reasons why this moment in my life sticks out as a time to be captured in a work. First is obviously the timing. This all occurred in 1999, a year that was rife with confusion and tumult. My tumult came at a time when school violence just started to become a nationwide news topic, and the presence of a notebook neatly juxtaposed the rise of youth on the internet (as I was tracked down online by a couple fellow students a few months after the notebook first made the rounds). I was young, high school bound, and perhaps close to following the steps of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. The fact that I managed to keep my head clear for so long is another reason to focus on this time. We hear so many stereotypes about those who commit such heinous acts but seem to be lacking clear narratives that show how we can prevent giving rise to future Harrises and Klebolds. Similarly, I did not fit the loner mold. As I stated earlier, I was a pretty good student. I was on the edge of popularity and pretty content with that social standing. Even with everything hanging over my head, my teachers overwhelmingly recommended me for the IB program. I wasn't super involved in school, but I had presence in various co-curricular and extracurricular activities. I held my own. The coupe de gr'ce, in my opinion, is the fact that I am female. Female students even being evaluated for risk of committing violence in the school environment is not widely discussed. I managed to not give in to the taunts or pressure to lash out after the incident, but the fact that my classmates were calling a female a psycho is not by any means typical. I would want to share my story to remind everyone that profiling students is an unwise tactic and that approaching troubled students as potential criminals puts everyone on the slippery slope of self prophecy. Sharing my story on a somewhat grand scale may seem like a lot, but considering how drastically it altered my life path, I think a grand gesture is the best chance I have to be have to finally grieve for what had been lost. When I finish grieving over the Infamous Notebook Incident, I'll finally be able to look back on my past and not let it haunt/paralyze my future.