I’m shutting down another blog of mine and I am moving some of my favorite articles over to this one.  The original date for this post is Oct. 15, 2010  And in honor of my 20th high school reunion which was last night, and I did not attend, I thought it was perfect timing for this one.

I’m not gay. I have no idea what being gay in a world that is so damn homophobic would be like. I can’t imagine having to deal with that on top of other trials and obstacles of adolescence.

I was different from most kids  And I was bullied.  So if there is anyone out there that might read this in the same circumstance then I hope it helps.

Since college I have suffered a bit of an identity crisis.  People tend to assume that I am from a solid preppy middle class background.  Or that I was at least a popular girl.  Some have even asked if I was a cheerleader.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

My father had a blue-collar job, my family life was chaotic and full of screaming fights, money was_always_ an issue as we never had enough of it.   There are also some issues with my family that I don’t feel comfortable printing on a public forum like this, so I won’t, let’s just say there was a tremendous amount of pain in my childhood.   I was an awkward, insecure, beaten down mess, a flat chested girl with wide hips, round thighs and baby fine hair that refused to take a perm or curl.  And this was in the days of_huge_hair!  I was also a little too smart for my own good and the world’s worst athlete.  Gym teachers would make fun of how uncoordinated I was at pretty much_every_ sport.  I also developed chronic and impossible to treat acne.  None of this was helping my poor social skills.  In social interactions I was blunt and too the point, I had no subtly.  I didn’t posses any of the tools of to make or keep a lot of friends.  I was basically a disaster.

The worst of it was in Junior high.  Who doesn’t hate Junior high right?  I really didn’t have any close friends.  I actually had a birthday party when I was 13, and no one showed up.  NO ONE. Even though I had invited about a dozen or so girls who supposedly were my “friends”.  They chose to go to another party on the same day for a popular boy who happened to share my birthday.  Yet none of them had the courage to tell me they weren’t going to come to mine.  So it was all a shock to me when 8 o’clock hit, then 8:30 then 9:00 and still_no one_showed up. I knew I had stiff competition with the other party but I never thought I would be alone on my birthday.

I had decorated my room with balloons and streamers,  bought a cake (in my best friend’s favorite color) and my family had helped get everything together.  It was beyond heartbreaking.  Humiliated in front of my parents and siblings and utterly devastated, I never spoke to any of the girls again.  I cut them out of my life completely and then I was socially entirely alone.  I couldn’t understand why no one wanted to hang out with me or seemed to like me.  I got along better with adults than with kids my age, or with children.  I developed a social numbness that I still deal with a bit today.  My depression was so bad that even my grades fell and I had been in advanced courses before that.  My parents way of dealing with it was to try to shame me into getting my grades up, which only made it worse.

There were multiple other humiliating and degrading incidents that I won’t catalog here.  My senior year being the most absurd.  The first gulf war broke out and my little band of friends and myself were quite vocally anti-war.  We were harassed in the hall ways and my friend had her car vandalized once after school.  A group of people had written anti-peace signs all over her car and “Hippie go Home” and things of that nature.  Then at the end of the year and the war over, when after I had won a competition to speak the benediction at my graduation, I found out that there was an emergency meeting by the student council and they voted me out.  Apparently my anti-war and left-wing politics seemed too risky to allow me access to a mic.  It sounds like an after school special but it actually happened to me!  HA!!!!

My speech in the senior speaker competition didn’t contain anything political.  The speech that I was to read at graduation was written by someone else.   I had no editorial control over its content whatsoever and I had not been planning on using my graduation as any sort of soap box.  I had gone to speech tournaments for years, had won multiple awards and I took public speaking very seriously.  When I found out what had happened and I almost didn’t attend my own graduation because I was so upset. Maybe they had banned me because I tended to hang with the “art fags” or foreign exchange students, gay boys and girls and other artistic types.  We were a tiny band of freaks and we really didn’t make any apologizes for it.

But all of this did do something to me.  I knew I had to get out of Missouri and get out of that community and eventually I did just that.

I have suffered some recent heartache with the collapse of my marriage, but overall I never imagined that I would be living and performing in New York City at any age.  The prospect of coming from a home where I was always told that “We can’t afford it” and “We don’t have any money” to living in the most amazing and expensive city in the country?  The whole prospect seemed insurmountable.

This city is magical to me, and has been since I moved here in 2001.  I am surrounded by friends, really amazing friends who have listened to me cry about my divorce, go on and one about my situation and seen me meltdown multiple times and they were always there to pick me back up.  They didn’t desert me, they stood by me and in doing so they have really blown my mind.  And this is the greatest part, they are all creative people some are film makers, artists, writers, dancers, singers, musicians, actors, directors, sword swallowers, fire eaters, trapeze artists, trick rope artists, burlesque performers, clowns etc. etc. etc.  Nearly all of my friends share the same values, roughly the same politics, similar belief systems.  Instead of being in a tiny little band of freaks who might call themselves LIBERAL or DEMOCRAT, I know have an ARMY of folks that are like me!!!!!!

I don’t even remember the names of people I went to high school anymore.  I only really remember fellow girl scouts, my friends and the other kids in my Advanced Placement classes.  If the bullies and the jerks look me up on facebook, I might friend them.  I don’t really care at this point.   I have toured the country twice, performed on cruise ships, in the Soviet Union, in an Off-Broadway theater in an award nominated show.  I been an “extra” on a whole list of films and Television shows.  Not that being an extra is that exciting, but still shows like Boardwalk Empire, 30 Rock?  How is that not fun?   I never would have thought any of this would happen.  I am not a bitter actor/performer wondering when my big break will come.  I feel like I have already kinda made it, even though I don’t make a lot of money and I own basically nothing except my furniture and my clothing.  🙂

To go from that 13-year-old birthday party where I thought my life had ended to my life today, I never would have thought it would happen.  Or to the bullies that decided to silence my voice my senior year, when I get to go on multiple stages all over this city and speak my mind.  It really does get better.  Those punks have no bearing on my life whatsoever and they never will again!  🙂

So if anyone out there thinks that the cult of mediocrity will always keep you down, know that it is the weirdos and freaks that eventually take over the world.  At least the kind of world that I love living in.

Oh and I just realized that part of my motivation for writing this was a recent incident at a comedy show where another comedian basically said words to the effect of

“Your so gorgeous you don’t have any problems”.

And well I nearly killed her verbally which I regretted, because she didn’t mean anything personal by it, it was actually written into her act.  And well, I am not always so proud of my verbal tirades. But it is another lesson of never judge a book by its cover, not every “pretty” girl has had it easy.  Not in the least.

Related articles

• Tips for Parents: Teasing, Bullying, and the Role of Friendships (education.com)
• Bullying (laraeparker.wordpress.com)
• Watch: High School Specializes in Bullies (abcnews.go.com)
• ‘Cool’ kids in middle school bully more, psychologists report (sciencedaily.com)
• Bullies (socyberty.com)
• Sexual Identity and Bullying (nlm.nih.gov)
• Bullying and Cyber-bullying (irishmantx.net)
• OK school says ‘zero tolerance’ for bullying after teen shoots self in bathroom (rawstory.com)
• What Makes a Bully? (education.com)
• Bully-Proofing Your Child (education.com)

Follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/JulietJeske

Add me on Facebook Juliet Jeske Facebook Fan Page