Black sheep bio., part 2

...continued from the earlier post...

I never fit in with the popular people in high school and I never wanted to. I just feel like I never completely fit in in any way or anywhere. Even my geeky tendencies aren't full blown - I was never quite smart or bookish enough. I was a Star Trek and Star Wars fan, but not someone who dressed up or learned Klingon jargon, though I might have enjoyed that. I'd read some Ayn Rand, but lacked brain power to engage the super smart set. My enjoyment of all that though, kept me from being absolutely a part of the fun-loving and lighthearted party people. I did hang out our at our school's smoking area (can you believe that a high school had a smoking area for students?), because I had been smoking since age 11 or 12 (another Baaalacksheep thing -cough). The smoking area was greatly populated by the stoner clique. So, I had a reputation as a stoner, when in fact, I never smoked pot or did drugs while at that school. I did smoke clove cigarettes, and maybe that confused some people. I was variously too rich, or not rich enough, too slutty, not slutty enough, too dumb or too smart, you get the picture.

The little hardcore punk scene in our city/town, was where all the punk misfit kids from various high schools came and hung out. It was often fun - we went to concerts (shows), wild parties, and did petty crimes (think grafitti, putting soap bubbles in fountains, borrowing golf carts), all in the name of our generation's brand of fun and teen rebellion. Big Daddy recently chatted with an old friend from those days and his friend said, we were like pirates - doing what we wanted, taking what we wanted, it was crazy. No one backed down from a fight, and there was plenty of brawling. They spray-painted graffiti on police cars right under the cops' noses. We were crazy, wild kids. We really did trash houses, hotel rooms, etc., and we weren't rock stars, we were hardcore. I remember feeling a strong affinity for the 'straight edge' movement, but never fully committed myself to that. Still, I embraced vegetarianism, eschewed my former promiscuity, protested racism, joined greenpeace. I fell in love with someone, and never would have thought that lasting real love was possible for people so young, but it was. A rift began to emerge within the little hardcore scene. As I understood it, a number of the kids were leaning towards white-supremacist beliefs and becoming more involved with all of that. At the time it seemed like some of the people I knew could overlook the racism because of the other things they had in common like the love of the music, shows and hanging out. I (We) just couldn't abide that, so I excused myself. But while it lasted - before those dark things crept in, it was wonderful, and I felt some kinship. Again these are the impressions of one person, and my own experiences. High school was ending, anyway, and people were naturally growing up and moving in different directions.

I spent a couple of years at community college before I went to Art School. Art school is a haven for black sheep. Need I say more? Probably not, but I will. It was great with free-spirits of all stripes and individuals of all types in abundance. I was beyond expressing myself through my appearance and sowing bunches of drunken wild oats, as some of my peers were, because I had already done so much of that when I was very young. I was in a stable, long-term monogamous relationship at a time and place where most people were growing up, falling in and out of romances, sensing freedom, partying and dating. My class was a very unique and varied group of complete individuals, each one of them like an interesting novel. We had some older classmates and some fresh out of high school, it was an interesting mix. Imagine the entire class as a a small library of great books. To be around all the talent of my peers and our instructors was incredible. It was a great time in my life.

Then my family began going through a crisis, a legal and criminal trial, and my parents wanted everything hushed, so I couldn't even really talk about it with people who were my friends, except my boyfriend. He became my fiance, he is my constant (hehe Lost reference) and my friend, and the guy I married and now call Big Daddy. While my art school peers were concentrating on learning and education, which what we were there for, I was torn apart by a family situation. It was a tragedy and a scandal, and it really affected me during my time at college and my work output. The trouble began my first year, and seemed to be minimal, but it escalated each year and by my final year, I felt I was a wreck in many ways. I never really shared it or could tell the entire thing to any of my peers, but I know I did talk a little about it with my roommate. My work and education suffered because of it. There were good times even in the midst of the trouble though, and our marriage happened during this time.

I became disillusioned with so many things. If innocent people could go to prison, if people who I thought were my parent's family, friends and colleagues could do such evil and underhanded things over greed, what was sure in this life? Not much. My family suffered though this crisis and the fallout took years and had a myriad of results. I feel like I slogged through that last year of school and graduated with my nerves frayed just to the point of splitting. I ran from art, piling on excuses about why I keep from doing it, and am only now regaining that part of myself. Other members of my family seemed to act out in other ways. Some never fully rebounded, while still others seemed to find a granite-like strength and resolve.

Many people come to Christ and have a religious experience and awakening when they are at a low point in their life. Though I had some troubles due to my family's legal burdens, in most other ways I was quite happy when I became a Christian. Again I was different from the deathbed and jail house converts, and I don't mean to lessen those amazing transformations, but I was like, ummm my life is pretty good but still I feel like there is something missing and wrong. I just always had a sense that something was missing in my life - it dogged me, and that is why I write it in bold italics. When I started believing in Jesus and looking into all of that, it was as if I found what I was missing, just like the old song, "I once was lost but now am found." I tried to fit in as a Christian - to become very conservative and traditional - but I'm never quite as conservative as the other Christians and I'm too Christian for my un-Christian friends. I threw myself into friendships with some of my husband's family members - because they were also Christians. I had some commonality with them at the time, like being parents of young children. In retrospect I see these were people with whom I had very little in common with other than that, and I can see now the friendships were now rather unadvised, probably for both of us. I really gave 'fitting in' a good shot but it didn't exactly work out. Still, I learn from all these experiences, I try to anyway.

Now I'm a minister's wife, so I am either put on a pedestal or sized up and found lacking. Some of our dear church people even call me 'first lady' which is sweet, but very weird to me, some think I can do now wrong and must be kept at a saintly arm's length. Still other people view me under a magnifying glass looking for every flaw to prove I'm not holy enough and just another hypocrite.

So all of this biographical blather began as I thought about that blog post at Tamera Out Loud. All I can say is that I am mostly at peace with being a black sheep nowadays. This is what I wrote under a reply over there:

The only place where I have ever felt I totally fit in with anyone are a few transcendental moments where, for one reason or another, I felt a tangible presence of God and His Fatherly love. That experience messed me up in a good way and carries me through. Carries me through what, you might ask? Everything. Now, there are times when my my husband comes so close – with this wonderful simpatico kind of lovely friendship-passion soul-mate thing we have.

I suppose that coming to God, believing in Christ and all of that - Christianity, being saved, having a spiritual awakening, all those kinds of names we call it, well, that is the circumstance and encounter within my life where I have felt truly and utterly 'home' and accepted and loved and understood. Being accepted by Him, now has been enough for me, so that when I feel misunderstood or lonely as I still often do, I know there is One loves me 'just as I am.' Baaaaa!

Black Sheep, a biography of sorts, part 1

"There's a lot of things about me you don't know anything about...things you wouldn't understand, things you couldn't understand. Things you shouldn't understand. You don't want to get mixed up with a guy like me. I'm a loner... a rebel."

The above quote is from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and for me it has always been somewhat of a signature. *I think* am all of those things (except that I am a girl not a guy) wrapped up into one kind of nerdy, geeky person. If you know about Pee-Wee Herman, then you know he is not what your mind conjures up when you first think, "REBEL." The Sons of Anarchy are rebels, the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse is a rebel, those are some dangerous characters. James Dean, Marlon Brando, Cyndi Lauper, Jane Fonda, Patti Smith, Dorothy Parker - all pop-culture rebels of one kind or another (we're not talking Che Guevara, MLK or Ceasar Chavez here). I was never that cool, (or that righteous). I concede I was a little cool, just a tad, as my Mom would say, not about my coolness but when she wanted a little more martini from the shaker, or a little more lasagna from a pan. I was never the coolest person you knew, or I knew. Anyway, I'm writing about this because I read and entry called The Parable of the Black Sheep over on the Tamara Out Loud blog and she ended with the question, "Have you ever felt like the black sheep?" (Girl, don't get me started!) "Where have you found people or places that you fit in?" She got me started. Rather than hijack her replies I felt like elucidating (Read: BLATHERING on) about this subject because it's one of those journaling and working through my stuff things, and after all, that's why I started this little corner of the internet. So here this goes, it's long it's personal and it just might bore you to tears, and believe it or not, this is the edited down version.

Why do I think I'm a black sheep, loner and rebel? I just don't feel like I have ever fully fit in anywhere. For starters, I was adopted. So, from the very beginning of my life I was a little different from everyone else among my family, friends and peers. Other people made some kind of note of that fact, usually positive, and my parents always made me feel special, loved and wanted. They were a wee bit older than most of my friends' parents, another distinction, but not radically so. I was blessed with great parents. They sent me to very good schools and provided for my brother and I many good things, experiences and lessons. I'm just talking now of the factors in my life that I believe contributed to my being different but believe me, my life was far from negative.

A couple of years ago it dawned on me how often we moved as my Dad climbed a corporate ladder and followed his career path. I lived in three different states, I went to eight different schools, lived in five different houses and three different condominiums. We also had a small and cozy summer place near a lake in Pennsylvania, which became a blissful haven for me as one unchanging little nook in the midst of all our moves. I had a good friend that lived nearby, and plenty of woods and the lake to explore. It was a favorite place until my family finally sold it. Our many moves took place all through my schooling years (kindergarten-high school). I was the new kid more times than I care to remember. I never really fully fit in, though I did make some good friends along the way, but people already had established friendships before I came along to whatever school, neighborhood or group. And they had those same kinds of friendships after I moved away, and when you move away, no matter how good your intentions, contact tapers off and the close relationships aren't quite the same, and that's also true of my extended family.

I began acting out in my pre-teen and teen years, some of that could have been from the moves, but I can't say for sure. Some of it was due to other darker things that I don't need to go into, but those things had an affect on me. I was sort of a poor little rich girl, or more accurately a poor little upper middle class girl. I began getting into the usual troubling things that sidetrack or derail teenagers, looking for some kind of comfort. I can see now in retrospect it was a spiritual search within me as well, but at the time I didn't realize that. It was also that garden variety teen angst that hits almost all of us in some form, along with the colliding of the culture and politics of the day: growing up, waking up, flexing the muscles of independence and person-hood. I fell in love with music even more, and found some comfort and solace within the heavy metal and punk rock genres that were emerging in sight of my affluent middle class radar.

Then I found the hardcore music scene of the early-to-mid-80s. That was definitely one of the places where I felt I fit in better than anywhere else. By the time I got to my 3rd and final high school, I was the first person with a notable punk rock look. At the time, that school was in a semi-rural, agricultural area of the state. So I was not lovingly embraced by the locals. I spent the previous semester at another high school on the east coast, and it was a dreadful time for me, in some ways a rock bottom. Right before that I went to school in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. I loved and missed that place, but mainly my old life there and some very dear friends. It was a difficult time for me with that move.

In my new school, it was culture shock for me (and them). I was no Lisbeth Salander-style punked-outcast by any stretch, but I was odd and different for that time and that place. I was treated with some disdain by all but a handful of people, at first. Things did get better though. I made some friends - and even found some that embraced punk, together we discovered the hardcore scene and a larger group of punk/hardcore people from various high schools around our county and the neighboring ones, I found a little niche for awhile. That's probably where I felt most "at home" but I still was kind of an outsider, a late-comer, and never 100% fitting in. I was the weird girl who liked Fleetwood Mac and Black Flag, I remember catching a little flack for it. I think living near beautiful San Francisco for several impressionable years, and the 70s era I grew up in, probably influenced this huge soft spot I have for hippy culture and values - and I lean that way in some respects. That was a little incompatible with some aspects of the hardcore scene at the time. Remember - punk and hardcore were a reaction to the kind of music, lifestyle and ideas that came before each respective genre. Hardcore itself was a reaction to punk, but you didn't come here for a mini-music history lesson (or did you?). Back then, punk and hardcore music were the antithesis of hippy music culture. My Allman Bros. affection and Stevie Nicks admiration were under wraps when I ran with certain crowds, except with the most trusted and open-minded of friends.
to be continued...