The Need to Belong

The last time I can remember feeling like I belonged was when I lived with Dee (my grandmother). I was only six when I left her and even if I was living with mom in Highlands it somehow never felt right, somehow I knew I was the 5th wheel. It didn’t seem to matter if mom was dating someone, living with a man, or crying over one - somehow I felt/knew that I wasn’t the important one in her life.

As I got older and especially if I was living anywhere but Highlands, the feeling of not belonging grew and grew. Even in Highlands I never had more than one friend at a time, sometimes two. Beth Edwards and Herbie Potts. They had been there longer than us by 20 years or more. Then there was Brenda and Kathy Henry, they were native to the land - literally, the dad was Cherokee. The point of this is to say - that for all the years I spent in Highlands, every summer until I was 10, plus the first 6 years of my life and several full years afterwards, those are the only names of children that I remember. Part of this is to be expected as Highlands was a tourist town and the population exploded by 30 or 40 thousand during the summer. Still, there were enough kids to build a school and even though the school went from 1st grade to 12th all of the lower grade had enough kids to make two classes.

I remember 3rd and 5th grade being OH so lonely, ( I don’t remember 4th grade at all) I really can’t recall even one friend in 3rd grade. Midway through 5th grade a Girl, Brenda, moved into the apt. right behind us - we were back yard neighbors and fast friends. We shared so much in common - children of divorced parents which meant working moms, poor, we both felt like misfits and were treat as such, and though we didn’t realize it then, both of us had past molestations if not continuing, but most importantly - we both knew everyone of our peer thought we were ugly - we thought we were ugly. I can’t remember anyone ever telling me I was beautiful, cute, anything of the such with the exception of Dee. Anyway Brenda was my age but a year ahead of me in school so we went to different schools. That didn’t matter we still found plenty of trouble to get into ( more on this later). All gppd things come to an end - she moved away, mom married and we moved here- to Winston Salem- but not before we met long haired freaky people. Hippies - we finally belonged and felt right at home.

My teenage years didn’t get any better on the inside, but on the outside I was having a blast. I was one of only a few “hippies” in the whole of middle school, other kids looked up to me, some were afraid of me - they thought I may have some kind of disease, but secretly, some of them thought I cool. I quickly fell and fit into a much older group. By the time I reached 14 I had overdosed on LSD, hitchhiked to LA, been in training school , begged to be placed in the Children’s home, almost given up on life completely, and had made several suicide attempts. Somehow, for some still unknown reason, I held on.

Life as it most often does went own and own as did the pain, fear, sadness, and molestation - different men same old shit. And the anger, it got deeper, meaner, and more uncontrollable. Even after I married I continued to be psychologically abused by my mother. I married had children, failed at motherhood for the first 7 years, maybe longer. Still only had one, maybe 2 friends at a time, hated going to parties if I didn’t know most people there, didn’t want to be around groups of adults like Sunday school or even Tim’s family ( somehow our friends didn’t count as adults). I was absolutely terrified of sounding dumb, saying the wrong thing, or embarrassing myself in some other horrible way. And now another even more devastating emotion was creeping in - self hatred .