I haven’t been entirely fair to my old school or the people of that community and I need to go into some further details to clear up the misconceptions and assumptions that are easy to make.
I had a hard time of it in school, no doubt. Some of that has to do with my personality and the experiences I had both before I got there and after I started attending, but some of it certainly has to do with the culture there as well. As an adult, I have some serious problems with the way things were, and sometimes still are run.
However, what you have to understand, and I don’t know if you will, is that the community there was more than just a school, it was truly a community. The people I attended school with may not have been my friends, but most of them, the ones who were there for a long time or who I spent significant time with, they are my family. And that won’t ever go away.
Over the weekend, I ran into some of my former schoolmates and teachers. I see them rarely, but when I do there’s always catching up and hugs and a deep caring and wondering about how the other person’s life is going. All my peers and their siblings and the younger kids and the older kids, they’re like cousins, and, honestly, though I have 6 blood cousins, I’m probably closer to tens of them than any one of the cousins I’m actually related to.
We’ve been through trauma together, we’ve been through bliss, we’ve been through adventures and experiences that few people outside of that community can really understand. I was somewhat removed from the community, at least in comparison to many of the people to whom I refer, but I was still a part of it, and those people were still my family. Consider that maybe they are all siblings and I’m the cousin. It doesn’t matter, though, our ties are strong.
Of those girls I mentioned a few days back who held the power when I first attended, only one lasted until 8th grade. She and I eventually formed a strong bond. Again, it wasn’t friendship, it was something more. I first babysat for the children born in the community and, several years ago, when one of them broke down during a moving emotional scene in a movie about the school, I happened to be physically closest to him and wound up being the one to hold him while he cried. He was surrounded by people comforting him and plenty of hugs once the movie was over, and I slipped away knowing that he was in good hands, but in that earlier moment, all I knew was that someone I loved deeply was hurting and I needed to be there for him.
We never had to LIKE each other, but we had to deal with each other, we had to get along to whatever extent we could, and I think that in those circumstances, that unconditional, familial love just kind of happens.
Even that teacher… she was my teacher for a very long time, in many different subjects, and is someone I’ll come back to in the next post. She did terrible things to, not just me, but to my mother later on. Eventually she was ejected from the community and shunned for many years. As many resentments as I may have toward her, though, she’s still part of that family, and she still did give me certain emotional tools that stay with me.
They’re my family, too. They’re my other family. They can’t be anything else, and even though most of the things that I have to say right now put some of those people, and much of the overall experience in a less-than-positive light, I can’t let it stand that way. For good or bad, they shaped me. For that, I have to love them.