My life, in someone else's words
If you ever want to know what growing up in Reno in the '80s was like, read this blog.
I'm not sure I actually knew Courtney. We ran in similar circles, but she's a few years younger than me, so we likely didn't actually cross paths. But her stories feel like my stories. To a frightening degree.
The stories are horrifying, of course. Basically everyone who wasn't middle class or higher who grew up there at that time had similar levels of life suckage. But they're comforting in a way, too. It's validation that what I remember actually happened; that it's not just my imagination that life did, indeed, suck like a jet-engine-powered Dyson. It's validation that the scars I bear are real, and evidence that I didn't do anything wrong to earn them.
There were things about my life that were better than hers (my parents were considerably more sane) and things that were worse (living out in the boonies = social isolation) but the overall quantity of suck was pretty much the same. And there's comfort in that. Comfort in shared experience that makes it all real, and helps us acknowledge that we went through some truly horrible things that no kid should have to experience, and managed to survive anyway.
D and I were chatting the other day and lit upon a rather cool-but-sad epiphany: somehow, being odd/queer actually helped us survive our trailer-trash beginnings. We knew early on that we were weird, and not like the other kids (and were, of course, constantly reminded of this by said other kids) and that forced us to find community elsewhere. We gravitated to the other odd kids, and were united in our oddness, and that helped us avoid getting sucked into the downward spiral of the lifestyle that all the other kids eventually grew into. We knew there was life beyond where we were right that second, because we'd found other people who were determined to make that happen. We knew survival was possible, and that made all the difference. So we worked our asses off, and made it happen.
Now, of course I'm always going to be at least a few steps behind where I really should be (on an effort-to-result scale.) Starting out the race of life while wearing concrete running shoes means you're pretty much never going to make it to the finish line ahead of anyone else. But I kept on pounding, and eventually the concrete disintegrated, and now I can see that line. And dammit, I'm going to give myself credit for getting here even despite those handicaps. Because they WERE real, and they DID take a monstrous amount of effort to overcome.
I'm not sure I actually knew Courtney. We ran in similar circles, but she's a few years younger than me, so we likely didn't actually cross paths. But her stories feel like my stories. To a frightening degree.
The stories are horrifying, of course. Basically everyone who wasn't middle class or higher who grew up there at that time had similar levels of life suckage. But they're comforting in a way, too. It's validation that what I remember actually happened; that it's not just my imagination that life did, indeed, suck like a jet-engine-powered Dyson. It's validation that the scars I bear are real, and evidence that I didn't do anything wrong to earn them.
There were things about my life that were better than hers (my parents were considerably more sane) and things that were worse (living out in the boonies = social isolation) but the overall quantity of suck was pretty much the same. And there's comfort in that. Comfort in shared experience that makes it all real, and helps us acknowledge that we went through some truly horrible things that no kid should have to experience, and managed to survive anyway.
D and I were chatting the other day and lit upon a rather cool-but-sad epiphany: somehow, being odd/queer actually helped us survive our trailer-trash beginnings. We knew early on that we were weird, and not like the other kids (and were, of course, constantly reminded of this by said other kids) and that forced us to find community elsewhere. We gravitated to the other odd kids, and were united in our oddness, and that helped us avoid getting sucked into the downward spiral of the lifestyle that all the other kids eventually grew into. We knew there was life beyond where we were right that second, because we'd found other people who were determined to make that happen. We knew survival was possible, and that made all the difference. So we worked our asses off, and made it happen.
Now, of course I'm always going to be at least a few steps behind where I really should be (on an effort-to-result scale.) Starting out the race of life while wearing concrete running shoes means you're pretty much never going to make it to the finish line ahead of anyone else. But I kept on pounding, and eventually the concrete disintegrated, and now I can see that line. And dammit, I'm going to give myself credit for getting here even despite those handicaps. Because they WERE real, and they DID take a monstrous amount of effort to overcome.