Chapter 3, part 11
Love Covers All ThingsI learned from this experience that love and hate are equally intimate. As much as I thought I loved Melissa, I hated my perceived competition for her attention. As much time as I spent fantasizing about our imaginary romance, I spent equal time fantasizing about combat with this other boy. In truth, we had become intimate in ways that made me uncomfortable.
Even though I had ceased to hate Adam, I still felt a strong sense of competition with him. He had still taken the only girl I thought I had a chance with, and I was at least partly convinced there was a way to win her back.
As members of a small Christian school, separated from normal school experiences by a great divide of culture and belief, we were clueless about certain experiences like formal dances and proms. One opportunity for all of us to feel a certain normalcy came in the form of the local teen formal held by a Christian radio station. Though I would normally have avoided the experience at all costs, my friends managed to convince me that it would be fun to dress up and go to a formal event. At the last minute I parted with my hard earned cash for a pair of tickets. I chose a ridiculous outfit of black slacks, laced poet shirt, suede vest, and chuck taylor sneakers for my formal attire… and I began to search for someone to ask.
All the girls I knew were already claimed, and Adam and Melissa were obviously going together. My options were so severely limited that I began to wonder if I might as well forget the whole idea. At the last moment, someone suggested that I ask the oldest of the McKay sisters to be my “date.”
I knew very little about Amanda, and I was slightly resentful of being stuck with someone as if we were both luggage. I think she wanted to go even less than I did, and I’m certain that going to a formal event with someone as fashion-ignorant as myself was a grim prospect. For some reason, perhaps because her mom wanted her to keep an eye on her sister, she agreed to accompany me.
Adam drove us in his family’s Chevy Suburban, and the quartet of us rode in idle conversation to the large hall where the teen formal was held. I remember wondering, as we sat in awkward silence at our table, if that night would EVER end. I was uncomfortable. I was out of place. I knew I would regret having agreed to this whole idea before the night was through.
As the event wound down, Amanda and I were equally disgusted with the entire experience and looking for our ride and our chance to escape and forget the awkwardness of the evening. We suddenly realized that her sister and my rival were nowhere in sight, and we became increasingly frustrated as we searched for the two teens so smitten with one another that they would be rude to all outsiders.
The moment of realization came when we strode into the parking lot to see if they had already left, and found Adam and Melissa alone in the darkened truck his parents had loaned us for the evening. I will never forget their perfect silhouettes created by the orange light from the street lamps in the parking lot. Like a scene from a romantic movie, their heads tilted and leaned as Adam and Melissa shared an intense kiss, oblivious to our observation.
Grabbing my stunned arm, Amanda dragged me inside the building and attempted to collect herself. Cautioning me to tell no one, probably in defense of her sister’s honor, Amanda left me standing alone to plot while she went to the truck to break up whatever romantic activities were proceeding in the dark.
I knew that this was possibly Adam’s greatest physical demonstration of his feelings, but it also represented his greatest lack of caution and tact. His moment of weakness was apparent, and I was determined to engineer his downfall.
After we left the formal, we stopped as a group at McDonalds for a diversion. I’m sure those romantically inclined wished the night would not end, but for me it was a mere continuance of pain and grief that I wished to be through with.
As I sat and fumed at my inconvenience, I struck up an idle conversation with Amanda.
“I will not,” I ordered myself silently, “like another girl for a long time.” I was quite through with pain and frustration, and even passive rejection was becoming a constant source of emotional distress.
But a new seed was planted even as the old flower withered and died.
chapter 3, parts 8, 9 and 10
Love Hopes for All ThingsHow simply first love is won!
This woman, named Melissa McKay, won my heart with one simple act of mercy… or perhaps pity.
One morning before school my brother and I began to quarrel. He was a senior in the high school, and under the same types of pressure I felt in that closed and oppressive space. As I readied myself for classes, he ordered me to make him a lunch.
I chafed at the wording of it, but it was nothing less than a command from him, as if I were a servant. Rather than succumb to servitude, I spun on my heel and pitched the half-shelled hard-boiled egg in my hand at his face.
The throw went erratically wide, but his eyes lit from within with a rage I’ve seen in few other humans. He was on me in an instant, smashing his fists with a relentlessness designed to literally beat me into submission. He was walking away by the time my tired father walked into the room, but the damage was done. My eye was ringed with a beautiful knuckle printed purple bruise.
I avoided classes for days, moping at home in the realization that my black eye was a badge of my incompetence as a man. I was unable to defend myself, mastered easily by my own flesh and blood. I wore evidence of my weakness for the world to see.
Finally my parents told me I had to return to classes on that Monday. My dread was overcome by a more potent realization: Monday was the day of class pictures.
Dressed up but wishing to crawl into a hole and die, I shuffled into classes with the faintest of hopes no one would notice. Of course my friends noticed, demanded the story, and offered their sympathies, but nothing could lessen my inner pain.
This girl, who I then knew so little about, evidenced a very womanly compassion for my pain. She drew me aside in the hallway and opened the smallest purse I had seen a woman carry. Drawing out an array of tiny vials of makeup, she began to apply cold alien substances to my face, and converse with me in a distracted way that seemed free of prejudice.
I truly believe I saw in her eyes the kind of woman Melissa McKay could and would one day grow to be. She was strong, confident, and compassionate – a fit companion for any man who wanted peace in his home. I was lost in her eyes, grateful and determined to win her admiration.
With every high comes the unavoidable low. It is the way of balance, the way of life. All birth must foretell a death, riches fade, and beauty must eventually fade into the very Earth whence it came.
My newfound dreams of companionship were destined to be dashed in a way I could neither foresee nor avoid. My love-inspired vulnerability was destined to lower my defenses to pain.
I remember the day like it was yesterday; shuffling my books and papers for another average day in Christian high school. My friends were bristling this Monday with the adventures of the weekend.
Because my family lived so far off the beaten path, and my transportation options were limited, I often missed the little spontaneous adventures teenagers engage in. Unless the event was planned far in advance and cleared with my parents, I was destined to sit home and find out the details later.
Details were exactly what I could see in their eyes.
Spike seemed to hesitate, to bite his tongue on this news. Something about his look included a new emotion: pity. Steve and Dave firmly believed I should share the news, if for no other reason than my own entertainment.
They eventually overflowed with enthusiasm and told me a tale of a late night visit to an overlook in our city. This giant hill was known to people our age as a sort of make-out location. Sitting on one of the swings or benches overlooking the sleepy little city, one could feel free, isolated, and amorous without inhibition.
Spike finally explained that, as our group of friends approached those swings, they saw familiar faces that made them freeze with curiosity. Seated on the edge of our world and oblivious to the intruding gaze of my friends, my hope – my new interest – Melissa was in the arms of none other than Adam Schrader.
I swallowed the news like molten lead. It hit the bottom of my stomach and churned there, eating a whole in my fragile plan to gradually woo this woman with my subtle qualities and romantic nature. How could I compete? While I hesitated out of fear of rejection another had sailed in and won the day.
Furthermore, the object of her pseudo-public affection was a boy from my brother’s grade, someone three years older from a more prosperous family. He was well-liked in the church, well known and respected. He was tall, thin, he owned expensive clothes which fit, lived in a nicer home, and he possessed something I feared I could never have: confidence.
Love Never FailsAnd so began my first heartbreak. Had I known the awful truth that dozens would follow, many more painful than the first, I might have thrown myself from a tall building on the spot. Instead I bore my disappointment with the silent set of my jaw.
I learned instantly that shy flowering love was no comparison with money, looks, and popularity. I learned that women don’t actually believe the drivel they promote about loving men for their hearts, but choose their mates by instincts every bit as powerful as men’s lust for the curve of the female breast.
While these realizations are a part of the human experience, they were compounded with the realization that there was literally no one else available. Every fish in my sea was literally taken from me by a rough hand, and I felt desolate in the wake of that realization.
I lived in the shadow of my misery, writing angry poetry in the evenings and cursing my lonely fate in the still silence of night. I withdrew from many social events knowing that I would see him looking at her, and her looking at him. Their hidden love would cause me to bleed within and ache for wanting something so simple.
I began to hate him. I hated the boy for being born. I hated him for being born better. I hated him for being everything I couldn’t be, and for laughing easily while I was in pain.
I memorized the Richard III speech from Shakespeare, dripping conviction with every word when I recited it for my friends. I was, as poor Richard stated, deformed and unfinished. And like Richard, I wanted to prove myself a competent warrior and a villain while this child of favor enjoyed the gifts handed to him on a silver platter.
I began to write short stories where I was a hero, brandishing my blade in the face of my tall and awkward enemy. He would draw, and our short exchange of blades would prove that my determination was more powerful than his privilege. I was not so naïve as to write that she loved me afterwards, but since that was already lost I craved some form of justice. In my mind, a world where the sympathetic underdog had no chance with the girl of his dreams was more of a prison.
Love Endures All ThingsMy epiphany came from the words of Spike’s older brother. He was driving us somewhere, and asked who we were planning on spending our evening with. In the course of conversation, he noticed my obvious distaste when Adam’s name was casually mentioned.
Although Spike tried to change the subject to avoid some sort of confrontation, his brother Aaron persisted and eventually drew a confession of why I so hated poor Adam.
“That’s ‘angst,’” Aaron said evenly, “have you ever heard that word before?”
I would never have admitted if I hadn’t.
“Well,” he continued, “in German the word ‘angst’ means ‘petty anger.’ Being angry at Adam is beneath you.”
“Yeah but he’s stuck up,” I was defending a shrinking patch of moral high ground.
“No he’s not. Don’t get me wrong, Adam is a bit goofy, and he’s not like you guys,” Aaron gestured casually at Spike and I, “but deep down he’s not a bad guy. He’s just normal.”
As I climbed out of the car, Aaron left me with some of the best advice I ever had as a teenager, “You should let go of this angst.”
And he was very right.
Chapter 3, parts 5, 6, and 7
Love Does Not BoastIn addition to the new social pressures of high school, there were a host of normal difficulties that accompany the later stages of education. For the first time since fourth grade, higher math and science became very difficult for me to remember and follow. Perhaps partly due to the distractions of being in enclosed spaces with these young women, and perhaps because of all the social conflicts and changes around me I found myself losing scholastic ground.
My brother, then a shining example of what HCA was created to inspire, taught the required Spanish class in our high school. Even though he was himself only a student, he became faculty at HCA, and brought reports of my consistent failings in class home to my parents. This forced an unnatural conflict between us, continuing the rift begun in our early childhood.
Unable to evade the stress of school even at home, I took to long periods of sleep. Often I would sleep on the morning ride to school, on the evening ride home from school, after dinner, and all night until the morning again. Truly I began to hate and avoid my life as much as possible.
My issues with obesity began to ride on my mind as I watched my friends in their first high school crushes. I was always the quiet boy whom the women failed to notice, and not having any examples of ugly men with girlfriends or romantic success, I felt like my weight was dooming me to lifelong loneliness.
I often sat in the moments I was awake in the recliner chair in my room, locked in a duel of wills with God Almighty. Balanced on the roll of fat above my navel was the point of one of my father’s knives, its point drawing a small bubble of blood from my white skin.
“Send me to hell,” I thought (for the penalty for suicide is understood to be Hell.) “I am already in hell.”
Sometimes I would dare God, “Change things, or I will end this pain now. Prove to me You exist. Prove it.”
Other nights I would retreat to fiction. I escaped into the “Lord of the Rings.” I had adventures with the Dragonriders of Pern. I read about Asimov’s robot mysteries and delved into the spectrum of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Alone, in my room, I was an eclectic scholar of the human condition. Only when I left that sanctum did I cease to be interested in anything but survival.
In this same period of time I turned my mental focus upon the mysterious phenomenon of sex. Pouring over my mother’s textbooks from nursing school I first learned of female anatomy and the concept of orgasm. For all this fascination, I was forced to keep that information secret and hidden for years before I was even strong enough to admit I had an interest in sexuality.
I believed strongly that, although sexuality was a part of human nature, it was somehow even less pleasant than the functions of defecation. As such, no woman would ever be interested in me if I was attracted to her physical form or curious about her in a sexual way. Even though no living heterosexual teenage male can avoid being curious about women and sex, I thought I was alone in my obsession, and kept it hidden like a criminal hides his crime.
My outward face to the world was a cliché pulled from the pages of “Morte de Arthur,” the chivalrous code of the romantic knight. Medieval armor became my protection from the prying eyes of my world, and the cruciform sword was my defense against my most hated adversary, myself.
As I read Arthurian lore, I found the dark secret of King Arthur’s incestuous bastard child Mordred, and felt kinship with those romantic attitudes about forbidden sexuality. I rejoiced with Tristan as he drew his naked blade and lay it between himself and Isolde to keep his promise, and I saw Lancelot ruin an empire by indulging in physical temptation with Gwenivere.
That Medieval European mythology would perfectly compliment fundamentalist attitudes about sexuality never worried me. I was lost in a maze of circular thinking, viewing the female form as a source of destructive temptation and simultaneously believing the spirit of womanhood to be a redemptive force in the world.
Only Fundamentalist thought could so thoroughly divorce mind and body as to make these ideas seem feasible.
It is Not DiscourteousOne of the prime experiences HCA had to offer the high school students was the annual trip to WEC, a missionary base in northern Pennsylvania.
Because of the vast number of stories about the pranks and adventures that occurred on the yearly WEC trip, I was naturally thrilled to imagine my chance to experience a genuine adventure, not to mention a break from the daily grind of classes.
Apprehension about the long ride not withstanding, I claimed a seat near my best friends in the back of one of our school vans and settled in for our rambling conversations about nothing and everything to fill the time. Unfortunately for me, I was in Pastor Dave’s van, and I knew from past experience that he would attempt to be involved in and direct our conversations as much as possible. Sometimes I wondered if he was afraid we would talk about something other than God or church, and did everything in his power to keep us from straying from his life’s work of molding young Christian minds.
Chatting in hushed tones, Spike and I sat and compared events from the “Fellowship of the Ring.” I was particularly fond of the section in the mines of Moria, wondering what strange things lurked in the depths of that awful dungeon.
About fourty-five minutes into the drive, Pastor Dave called Spike and I to the front of the van. Like guilty children caught talking in class, we faced his barrage of questions about our quiet conversation in the back.
Earning himself a harsh glance from me, Spike calmly stated that we were discussing the works of Tolkein.
“These are books you guys are reading?” Dave asked us.
“Well, I just finished and I…” I was about to try and change the subject. I could think of nothing less pleasant than to summarize the entire plot of those books for the pastor of our church and face harsh discussion about books containing sorcery and magic rings.
“Yeah,” Pastor Daved said almost to himself, “Those were good books.”
“You read them??” I blurted out.
“Of course. Did you know that Tolkein and C.S. Lewis were good friends? Probably a lot like you and Spike.”
I was floored. Speechless. I had no idea if he was serious of if it was some sort of trap.
What I learned from those few minutes of conversation before the subject was carefully turned to the wonders of Biblical literature was that David Hackett was a normal man, in most respects. He had once been interested in fine literary works, in beautifully crafted fiction and in the power of the word upon the page. On some level, perhaps long past, he was one of us.
It is Not SelfishI often ask myself what kept me going to HCA. I hated my life, I considered suicide regularly, and I had nothing left to lose. So why stay?
There is but one power that can tame the mind of a teenage boy in turmoil. It is the power of the possibility of love.
Somewhere along the path, I believe at the end of seventh grade, the beginning of eighth, there was a sudden infusion of change into the upper grades of HCA. I heard about this change from my friends, who had been at the local mall the first night these beauties were spotted.
Four of my friends sat in the food court overlooking the escalators as four young ladies – the daughters of missionaries supported by our church – made their first entrance into our social scene. The joke, of course, was that the family was a variety pack of beauty, A redhead, two brunettes, and a blonde for our appreciation.
I learned that one of these four was in my grade, which I had endured by myself for quite a while. Arthurian romanticism poisoned me in the moment I learned this simple fact. A sense of fate, of possibility, and of change all dawned upon me simultaneously.
Here was the daughter of a missionary, sent into the world to save lost souls, and I was very lost. Here was a beautiful woman for the boy with no crush. Here was a classmate for the lonely student. In a world governed by the will of God and providence, this was no whim of Chance.
I was doomed from the moment I first saw her. Doomed to wish, and pine and write poetry and waste away inside at the miserable joy I felt in knowing her company. She was, quite literally, the most beautiful girl I had ever spent so much time with, and I felt increasingly attached to her. In my mind, she was the beautiful damsel of my Don Quixote impossible dream.
chapter 3, parts 1 through 4
If I Speak With the Tongues of Men and of Angels
One of the most profound experiences any boy has around this age is his discovery of the opposite sex. While there are certain distinctions of personality, there is a universal sense of awakening that all boys feel as they awaken from boyhood to appreciation of this aspect of their design.
For me, it was a surreal and powerful change.
Walking back into HCA in the fall of my sixth grade year, I was suddenly aware of things I had never known existed. Like a scientist who makes an earth shattering observation of the nature of the universe, I was fascinated with what I was seeing, and afraid that perhaps I was a little crazy.
The magic of those moments is with me even today: the first time I saw these blooming women in my classes stand with their hand on their hip and think, the first time I really heard the music of their laugh, the first time I really looked into their eyes and realized that there was something otherworldly about them.
We were still memorizing Bible verses about lust and purity. We were still hearing about Christian character and temperament. How could I tell anyone what I was seeing? Who could share my observations of this new world without condemning me for wishing to see those bodies revealed in their glory?
There was no perspective to tell me that these feelings were normal, that God had designed me with these wants and the power to observe and appreciate womanly beauty. I lived in constant fear of the wrath of God, knowing that deep down he hated my powerful and unfailing attraction to the angels around me. My innocence was faltering.
In addition to these feelings of alienation and subsequent loneliness, hormones flooding my body increased my passions to a frightening degree. Anger became unshakable rage, fear was magnified to epic despair, and solitude became a throbbing ache at the center of my being.
Lastly, as a human isolated from human culture, there were few words or songs to lend me comfort. The music that lonely lovers listen to was unknown, most books about love were forbidden, and most films depicting romance were either boring or far too sensual for the elite children of our Great God.
Love is PatientAs I began to approach the transition to high school, I leaned heavily on the support of my friends. Although I lacked the strength to discuss what I was going through, moments of childlike levity let me forget the passions and worries that plague me every other moment. We often disguised our obsession for all things female by characterizing them as profound enemies, guilty of stealing our childhood before we truly appreciated it.
In this time, the teachers at HCA saw fit to take a strong interest in my personal life. Quarterly meetings with my parents brought report cards laced with negative observations about my character, and the final quarter of the sixth grade year brought one of the first powerful shocks of my new life as an adult.
My mom broke the news that Mr. Falkenburg, the principal of the school, and my current teacher Mrs. Kennedy had decided that I must adjust my social habits for the welfare of my soul.
I was expressly forbidden from fraternizing with the “older boys,” particularly Spike, with whom I had cultivated a powerful brotherly friendship.
Anger, sadness, fear, and righteous indignation swept over me in the moments after I heard this proclamation. How could I lose my closest friend? How would avoidance of the only person who remotely understood me benefit my soul? How could they not see the pain and confusion they were causing me?
For the first time, I acted in overt defiance of authority. I told my mother, without hesitation, that she needed to either remove me from that school, or countenance my friendships in silence. Begging her to have faith in God, and in her formation of my values; I pleaded with my mother to let this edict from the church leadership pass.
Seeing my grief and anger, my mother relented with a single qualification: she promised to arrange some social events with other children my age.
The only one of these events that I will relate occurred at the end of my sixth grade summer, and sent me spinning headlong into the dark, fanged mouth of my teenage years with reckless abandon.
Lori Kennedy, my sixth grade teacher, had a small awkward son in the grade below mine. While his intelligence eclipsed mine to an intimidating degree, he was even more socially awkward than myself.
I was invited to their house along with Luke Oliver, a boy I had been friends with on and off since the school began. Luke was an interesting character, as conflicted as all of us (and Spike’s cousin) with a deep current of anger.
We spent the waning moments of my boyhood in the Kennedy’s back yard having childish adventures. I remember the grass burning with sun-spawned heat beneath my bare feet as we quested for shade from the summer’s intensity.
As we ventured from cover one afternoon, I rounded the corner of the Kennedy house to find Lori standing brandishing an armed garden hose. With malicious precision she opened fire on our trio, spraying us with icy cold and intensely pressurized well water. For some reason I will never fathom, the prime target whenever this frigid fist of water hit me seemed to be my groin. No matter how I turned or dodged or ran, that stream pounded into my crotch relentlessly.
Something about all that icy pressure on my newly awakened manhood sent me into a rage. Perhaps I was angry for attention on a part of myself I feared. Perhaps I was merely incensed because the cold stung my sensitive bits. Or perhaps I was afraid because some primal part of me actually liked the feeling.
Regardless, I organized our trio into a unit, and we wrestled the hose from her grasp, chasing her into the house with the power she once held over us. There is a potent Freudian image to those young men chasing a single frail woman with a garden hose, I’m sure.
In a final confusing touch to the story, after about a half hour of play I returned to the house for something to drink. I found Mrs. Kennedy sitting on the floor in a quiet room, still soaked and crying wordlessly. Filled with guilt, I escaped from the house and wished with all of my passion to be free of these strange types of experiences.
Love is KindEntrance to the seventh grade of HCA was presaged by numerous warnings from my newest teacher, Mr. Falkenburg. While I had had some level of interaction with him since the school began, I was never his constant student. In the pre-Fall teacher’s conferences, he warned my mother about my negative habits and personality traits. My excitement of entering the final leg of my education was almost overridden by the fear that my lack of Christian character would lead to expulsion.
This fear was not without cause, several students that began the school with me had left for varying reasons. Usually we were told that so-and-so would not return because they had chosen to attend public school. The unspoken word was that these children had abandoned Godly education in favor of some type of hedonistic pursuit. They had faced the decision between God and the World, and found earthly delights more to their sinful appetites.
Now that I had one genuine friend, I could think of nothing more frightening than exile in the great unknown of public school. Horror stories about sex and drugs made me secretly panic at the thought. Even at that age I knew with certainty I would be unable to blend in with such an environment.
It is Not JealousWhen I look at that first year of high school, I find ironic humor in the “yin and yang” of it. My social experience can be categorized in the realm of extreme positive and its opposite, epic negative.
Nowhere were these opposites more firmly embodied than in the personages of Stephen Harrell and Mark Bryce.
Visually, they were the two most dissimilar people in the school. Steve was thin, lean, close to six feet in height, African-American, and radiated with a sort of derisive humor. Mark was short, fat (like me), had a bad complexion, was prone to the foulest gas, and mystifying for one simple reason: he was developmentally disabled.
Like the movie “Rain Man,” Mark was capable of remembering the most random of information and bringing that information into discussion at the least appropriate of times. He was strangely obsessed with my friendship with Spike, and loved to say little barbed comments like, “Cannonball, you fatty, I’m Spike’s friend not you.”
While these statements were so obviously ridiculous, they hurt because the teachers never contradicted these little insults or defended me. It felt as if Bryce and I were somehow under constant comparison, but I was unable to argue in my own favor. I was showered in guilt every time I accused him of wrongdoing. Of course he did wrong, he was “special.” Why couldn’t I just grow up and let it go?
And yet, the moment the teacher’s back was turned, there he was leering at me with his moon face, reminding me that I was fat, that I was an outcast, that I had so little to look forward to in a day.
And, like a strange tasting medicine to my illness, there was Stephen smiling in the corner. Each time Bryce would fill the tiny room with an unfathomable stench I could turn and see Steve barely keeping his laughter inside. Steve could talk Mark out of the best part of his lunch and make it seem as if it was the deal of the century. Steve could almost get away with more than Mark Bryce could comprehend.
At first I wasn’t sure what to make of this thin, dark prankster. Sometimes his humor would be at my expense, and my Christian seriousness required that I somehow personalize each of these jokes and bring them to the intermediary of Jesus Christ for approval. I also knew that he had been to Public School, and had values (or so I was told) that might be in conflict with the godly teachings of HCA.
But laughter heals, and nothing was more of a balm to my seething pain than his ability to make me laugh without reservation or control.
In addition, Spike and Stephen had known each other for years of Sunday school. Their childhood bond was almost stronger than our similarities, and made for interesting stories and conversations.
The fit of Stephen into our friendship, and the fit of me into theirs was almost perfect. We became like the Three Musketeers, divergent personalities in full compliment as a way to fight a common enemy.
Intermission
IntermissionI have to apologize to my readers for a moment. It has been weeks since I even allowed myself to sit and consider these things and write carefully about the days of HCA and those events that first inspired me to make this record. Though my life has become more busy since I first began to set my thoughts into order, I have to admit there are very selfish reasons why I have withheld for so long.
To be honest, the period of time I was beginning to reach in my story is perhaps the very darkest time in my life. Walking back into that environment, if only in thought or word, is a frightening ordeal. Perhaps this seems a bit melodramatic to those of you reading this, but allow me to submit a simple explanation.
Whenever I go through a period of extreme stress, confusion, or conflict (even now, a decade since I wore that uniform and walked the halls of HCA) when I sleep I have the same recurring dream: that I have been sent back to HCA to finish some missed class. Without fail, the best way my subconscious can express its extreme displeasure with some part of my present life is to remind me of those years at Hope Christian Academy.
Fortunately for me the worst experience I can boast is eight years of fundamentalist Christian schooling. And yet, my psychological response to that experience is very similar to flashbacks and depression experienced by veterans of bloody wars and victims of abuse. Thought should be given to the present plight of those who graduated from these schools, what happens when the bars of the cage are opened and we walk free in the world?
When our identities were determined by the terms of such a rigid and strict environment, with almost no bearing on real world social strata or interactions, we must invent ourselves again or face the concept of failed integration into society and inability to cope with the real world.
A wise friend of mine gave me this little bit of advice: if I’m truly healed, nothing from that part of my life can hurt me. And so, with this in mind, I plunge back into the darkness.
