Angora Yarn

I’ve had a remarkable life (both first and second) and I have struggled mostly alone. Firstly because everyone I leaned upon was more interested in leaning on me. Then out of habit I never leaned again.

That has made me both strong and weak. Others can see my independence and some fear it, some admire it and many don’t have time or the interest to give a darn about it.

For a long time I used to long to be weak like all the other girls I saw around me. This started when I was in high school and first noticed many of the really pretty girls had managed to snag a jock with a letter sweater and were wearing his class ring, well wrapped with lots of pretty angora yarn.

But not me.

I carried my own books -- thank you very much! And I was in the top five percent of my class for academics. I was in more activities and groups than most everyone I knew – which was a blast when everyone had to sign my class year books and I had more stuff from more people written in mine that anyone else.

I could hop from one group to another with no difficult and got to know a wider cross-section of the population…everything from the physics club to the butterfly collectors and Bible study group.

I was lonely.

My life was a mile wide and an inch deep or so it seemed. My family life was not typical and this “hidden secret” kept me happy to stay at arms length away from everyone while appearing close to everyone. (a neat technique I fall back on even today in RL (remember real life) and in my virtual life.

The greatest amount of my time in high school was spent in developing and polishing my singing and speaking voice. I had and have the lung capacity of a trained athlete. And in high school and for many years afterward, had the most remarkable voice coach. I had a surprisingly wide high soprano range, with the ability to clearly hit notes most found completely out of reach – which helped me achieve many awards in competitions (and also helped pay my university fees).

In my senior year, I decided to change to be popular. Now that was a mistake if I ever made one. I would sneak clothing that was a little shorter out of the house under my “conservative and well accepted” clothing. For instance, I remember a wrap skirt I would be sure to wear a little open (even with a full slip under it, if you know what that is nowadays) that made the boys take notice of me.

And I flirted.

I’m sure I wasn’t very good at it, but the boys seemed interested (but then they had just noticed hair growing in all sorts of unusual places and muscles where smoothness once was).

I giggled a lot too because I was scared to death someone would actually like me and I would have to go buy a lot of pretty angora yarn.

I enter theatre and speech classes and found heightened excitement from having to play the part of a wife or girlfriend (I had no idea what a lover was and absolutely no idea where flirting was supposed to lead, although I had a clear picture of fallopian tubes and the art of sperm swimming against the tide).

Anyway, enough of those photos that still flash in my mind….In theatre class, I would get to play a part across from some really cool guy that was likely a jock and who had a class ring and a letter sweater.

Really Cool Parts

Once I even played the part of a girlfriend and had to get regularly chased off the stage by THE hunk in our school -- who not only had the ring and the letter sweater -- but his dad owned a new car dealership and he was going to be the valedictorian of our school that year. (BTW: His name was Jim Berry and he died a year later of Hodgkin’s Disease in the university hospital I worked in at the time.)

What I found out during all this time and even today –- is that some people just like me and some people just don’t like me. But what I still have not figured out was what to do with that knowledge.

I like people and always find my greatest joy is being there for someone and just caring about them. To make time for someone when my needs are screaming at me. To take abuse when I should turn away and deflect it. To make excuses for bad behaviour. I struggle to always believe the best about someone until I have bloodied my forehead against a brick wall just one too many times with trying to believe.

Someone once called me Braveheart, from the movie, but I didn’t know what he meant at the time. Now I do -- and perhaps, being hopelessly romantic and sincerely optimistic is not actually wise, but I like living my life (first or second) this way more than I would like to live it by being suspicious and distant.

Who knows, perhaps this inner passion is why I still have that ball of lovely, lavender, angora yarn.