On the fifth day of this journey, I am still cleaning out the basement of my mind. The past has shaped me into the person I am today, much like the ocean pounding on a rock, wearing it down changing how the rock interacts with its surroundings, either making it smoother or eventually smashing it to pieces as the weight of the world comes crashing down upon it. Does the Rock win if it is buffed and polished by the water, remaining unmoved and holding up the shore, or does it gain something by becoming the pebbles that make up the beach? Only time can tell...
I was 9 years old when we moved from the town in South Dakota, It was time for change, after what had happened with David there were to many bad memories. We stayed so my mom could finish college, but once that was done, there was nothing for us. At least that is what i was told. it is hard to understand such things when you are 9, but I had no choice. Clearly God had a plan for us because our house sold ten hours after it hit the market. We packed up a Uhaul and headed out. I shed a couple of tears as the kids in our neighborhood gathered to send us off.
My dad had landed his dream job at a small market radio station, so back to northwest Iowa we went. My parents had found a house in a quite rural town not to far from the radio station but had already closed on the previous house and we had to wait a month to move into the new one. Luckily my old man hand an aunt that lived on a lake, also not far from the radio station and she let us stay there while we waited. It was a good way to adjust to the move.
Ten days after we moved we started school. I was excited. It was a fresh start, which meant new friends, and with everyday that passed I was thinking less and less about what had happened with David. The deep wound had scabbed over, and slowly a scar had formed. Slowly my faith in humanity had been restored.
The town that we moved to was the smallest that I had ever lived in. From kindergarten to third grade me and my brother had always been in separate classes, we had our own friends on the playground, it allowed us to have our own identities, it was healthy.
This new school was not big enough to have separate classes, in fact the entire fourth grade was comprised of 18 kids, and that was counting us. 15 of my class mates where related to the teacher. To say it was a tight knit community would be an understatement. I have never been so greatful for my brother. Going in at least i knew I would have one friend.
He has always been the more confident of the two. He has the ability to read people and doesn't really have a tolerance for taking shit. He just knows how to talk to people. It is a skill that i often been jealous of. I, on the other hand, have a hard time not saying exactly what I am thinking. My mouth has gotten me in trouble on more than one occasion. I have always used sarcasm as a defensive measure. It hides how awkward I feel in new and social situations.
As I walked into the classroom for the first time fear had a tight grip on me. My heart was pounding out of my chest. I had been well liked at my old school, but i had never been the new kid before. The teacher made us introduce ourselves to the class and pointed to our desks.
The thing about being a twin is this: it makes you competitive, people are always pitting you against each other. One of you has to be the smart one, one has to be funny, one has to be better at sports, one has to be better looking, soon it just becomes a way of life, it becomes ingrained. Ironically people also assume that you are the same person, and it becomes easy to lose your own identity.
This competitive streak started to show through during recess and in the classroom. Things started to change about 2 weeks into school. Nobody wanted to play with us any more. Kids can be cruel. The first six months we lived in our new home we visited the emergency room six times. Things got physical.
We only lived a block away from school, so we would ride our bikes, some of the older kids would see us coming and lock arms so we couldn't get by, if we tried to go around they would chase us down, drag us off our bikes and beat us to teach us a "lesson" and some "respect".
Once again my faith in humanity was starting to wain. By the time I got to fifth grade I was sure that there was something wrong with me. I didn't know what, but i also didn't know why I had no friends. It got to the point that we would walk to school, wait for our parents to leave for work and walk back home. Any confidence I had was destroyed.
By the end of that year my parents decided it would be best to pull us out of school and home school us. They both had full time jobs so we would have lessons at night and do our home work the next day. To this day I have trouble doing long division and multiplication, because i cheated my way through the sixth grade.
My parents finally caught on and that was the end of school at home. We were open enrolled to a larger school district for seventh grade. By this point I didn't know what confidence was. I had no friends, besides my brother, I had gained weight over the previous year because all I did was eat and watch soap operas. My family did not have a great deal of money, so my clothes where second hand, and definitely not name brand... I would have rather jumped into a tank full of hungry sharks than start at a new school again, however it was my own poor choices placed me into the predicament, so once again i started over.
I kept to myself for most of that year. It was difficult to make friends because we lived miles and miles away. Work was the only reason we could stay in town so I got a job as soon as i could working at the local YMCA, me and my brother actually got the volunteer of the year award, it came with a hat and a t-shirt.
High school came, and with that experimentation with drugs and alcohol (mostly drugs, i will talk about that later...) and girls (I will also talk more about that later...). I was so desperate to fit in I was willing to try almost anything, and i did.
So why is all of this relevant? Because, I had to forgive each and everyone of those people. 19 years after that first day in school, it is still painful to think about it. I still question why those kids never learned to like me. For the longest time i thought that there was something wrong with me. There had to be... It happened time and time again, and still does, I am the only common denominator, so it had to be or has to be me... Right?
Wrong. It is 100% their problem. As i have gotten older and grown into my own skin, i realize that i am pretty great. I am intelligent, well spoken, have been described as "uber" attractive (that one I dont see...), I have a good sense of humor and i work hard. Many people have come up to me and asked: how can you believe in a God that would allow such cruelty? My answer is this, what the devil intends for evil, God will use for the good. Did it suck all those years ago? Of course. Was I mad about it? Pissed, but what good was that doing me. I can remember the day I decided to "let go and let God" as they say in rehab, it was one of the most liberating days of my life.
In closing i would like say thank you to every person who was nasty to me. It showed me exactly what I don't want to become. Those people where and are probably dealing with some kind of pain that I will never understand. They don't need me holding grudges or standing in judgment of them. They gave me a thick skin and taught me about compassion in some ass backward kind of way. So, if by chance you stumble across this blog, (you know who you are, just) know that I owe you a debt of gratitude, and all is forgiven.
-Micah
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