Secrets Kept…
I posted this story a few weeks ago, felt icky about it and removed it before anyone read it, and here it is again. It’s not so much an “icky” part of my life anymore, so why would I feel bad about telling this story? And, why, if it isn’t a sensitive part of me presently, would I need to write about it or tell the story now? Do you ever get the feeling that you will never understand yourself? Anyhow… might be an interesting read for you and a little bit of airing for me…
(Greg Dirks, top left, Terry Sanford High School 1994)
I’ve had a nice glass of wine… the house is quiet… everyone is asleep… and I do some of my best (maybe worst) reminiscing under these circumstance.
You know, if you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time, that I had a rough childhood. I know, I know… Who didn’t, right? But, really, I can’t think of a horrible situation that a child could go through that I didn’t experience. Some of them I can talk about. Some of them, not so much.
The only advocate I knew as a child was my mother. And she wasn’t very good at it. She couldn’t have possibly had me witness or experience more things by the age of 8 than most people see in their lifetime. But when she passed away, in the most horrible way a person can, I found myself pretty alone. I found myself, at the sensitive age of 12, in the middle of all kinds of a mess. I spent my 7th and 8th grade year in murder trials. If you’ve ever been a 12 or 13 year old, or any age for that matter, and have lived through the heartache of watching the nastiness that is a murder trial (of a loved one, for that matter) and wondered if justice really will prevail– then you can understand how completely disturbing it was. Bodies exhumed for more autopsies, skeletons falling out of closets, secrets, taboos, pictures, witnesses, hurtful testimonies, and the press… It was one of the darkest and scariest experiences of my life. And. Finally. To add insult to the ultimate injury… Watching as the jury come through with their verdict of innocence, after a mistrial, on a man that murdered my mother in the most horrible way… Well, it shattered my heart. It shattered any faith in the system (of life) I’ve ever known. And that’s the most simple way that I can put it.
Add to that that I was, and I’m now more sure of it than I was then, everyone’s burden. I wasn’t cute and tiny like my sister. Everyone with a bloodline to my mother wanted her. But, I was tainted. I had seen things that no child should see. I wasn’t cute. I was in pain. My heart was broken. I saw all the things those adults in court saw, only I LOVED the person they were trying to relate to and she was my LIFE! She wasn’t some name or some picture or some memory or some victim. She was a real live person whose loss completely shook the earth I stood on.
I was the custody of the State of NC for many years because no one could decide where I belonged, but no one was quite honest enough to just admit that they didn’t want me. My sister was adopted quickly and smoothly, and offered the most loving and stable of environments. I was left dangling for the rest of my childhood years.
The courts ordered counseling for me, but every hour I spent in the therapists chair was spent on any other menial, trivial issue that my grandmother had with me but the issue of having lost the most important person in my life, or the horrible and painful circumstances behind the loss. That is what the courts had intended, for me to find some peace. But, I wasn’t aloud to mourn. I wasn’t aloud to mention her name. I wasn’t supposed to talk about it. And it saddens me now that the only advocate I ever had was a Judge in a black robe who couldn’t hug me, embrace me, or tell me that it was all going to be OK.
And what I’m trying to express is this: When I was 12 years old, there was no greater loss that I could have had except my mother. What you may relate to, as a mother or grandparent, is that losing a mom is normal… It’s a normal, though painful, part of loss and life… And I would agree if I were 40 and she were 60, maybe even 20/40. But there is nothing normal about losing the only person you love. At any age or stage. Especially to a brutal murder. Murder takes away any closure or peace or anything a normal loss might have to go with that loss. And to give this sort of loss to a child who has already been through enough, for Jiminy’s sake. It’s unbelievable. If you could see what I’ve seen…
So I went into my teen year with so many loose ends. And if the teen years aren’t hard enough, I didn’t have one single person on Earth left when Mom died. I had a curfew, sure. I had rules, yes. Someone looked at my report cards and nodded or frowned, indeed. But, I was very much alone. My last year at Terry Sanford high school proved that. My dad (officially) abandoned me in my senior year, but really he had already done that around my second year in life. My mother’s mother didn’t want me around, I disturbed her routine and “corrupted” my little sister, who she had so willingly adopted and wanted. I slept in my car, in hotels, or at friend’s houses and toughed it out until I graduated. When I tell you I toughed it, I did. I really, really did. A crime ridden, corrupt town like Fayetteville, a teen girl sleeping in her car or in skanky hotels… Enough said… Ohhhhh, I had Angels. If God made up for my pain in loss, abandonment, and loneliness, he did it with many, many Angels. And I’m here to tell you about it.
But, within my senior year at Terry Sanford High, a world of hurt fell upon me and it had nothing to do with sleezy hotels or sleeping in church parking lots… And I’m sure if I’d had one single person who advocated for me, things might have been different. It was, without a doubt, among the 5 worst things that have happened to me. And when I tell you that, trust that the other 4 things were pretty darn bad…
I think it was so bad because of me this time, though it didn’t help that there were so many experienced adults that could have helped and chose VERY much not to. It was bad because I was weak and vulnerable. It was bad because it bad. And I remember every little detail of that era because it was such a rough time for me. It’s been hard for me not to carry some animosity and disgust for the adults in my life then, because surely SOMEONE could have taken some time, or pretended, to care…
In 11th grade I had a Chemisty teacher, Greg Dirks. Not just any Chemisty teacher… No… He was young. He was beautiful. He was cool and easy going and everyone’s best friend. He was not only an outstanding teacher (in that he gave everyone at least a B or C, even if they didn’t deserve it), but he had this magnetism. The kids LOVED him. He spent his lunch breaks and his time between classes hamming it up with the kids. Mostly in the most inappropriate ways, but in ways that the kids related to him, confided in him, trusted him. He had additional pull in the “cool department” because he was also a football coach. He was certainly charming and gorgeous, and he knew it. He was so nice and funloving though that you couldn’t see all the sly narcissism through his all of his wit and charm. He was a magnet. And the children couldn’t help themselves, boys and girls. He was an unworthy, though beautiful, Hero.
I followed him like all the girls did. But I guess I had a “leg up” on the other girls in that I was the football trainer (or water girl, whichever you prefer) for those 3 years of high school. I had more “intimate” time with him, let’s say. Where the other girls giggled and swooned over him in the hallways, I got rides home from him in the rain after games. So you can see why it was all too easy for him to take advantage. And he did.
Now I don’t claim that I had no part. I did. I was old enough to consent, and I did consent. But I had spilled out every angle of my hurt, and longing for love and approval, long before we became lovers, in the summer of 1993, and I truly believe that he knew I was vulnerable, inexperienced, and wanting. He was older, married, wiser, and he took full advantage of his position.
The affair only lasted a few months. Other students, one of which was my “Best Friend”, Leslie, witnessed our affair. About a dozen kids witnessed our inappropriate relationship first hand. He would buy us all beer, get us drunk, and then he naively trusted that his secrets with me would be forgotten by the others when the buzzes wore off. Not so. Not so at all.
School started in August of 1993. Dirks grew instantly cold and withdrawn towards me. He finally “broke up” with me ont he first or second day of school, but assured me that it was just temporary, that the beginning of a school year was always difficult and stressful for him. I was a love sick puppy over him and I wanted some reassurance that things were OK. They were OK for him, he was moving on…
Leslie, I found out a few years ago, told her mother about my affair with Dirks in the beginning. She grew increasingly distant and cold toward me during that summer, but I thought she was just having boyfriend envy. I thought it would pass. When I tell you that she was my best friend, I do mean that I loved her more than anything. She was my world. We spent every moment of every day together for years. And losing her was probably the hardest part of all. I think I will always, always miss her and regret that we didn’t find closure and peace. She told me towards the end of our friendship that she was angry at me for putting her in an uncomfortable situation– one where she knew that something VERY wrong was going on between me and Dirks, but that she couldn’t help me out of and still be loyal.
Within the first few weeks of school, Leslie’s mom called the school board and informed them of my relationship with Dirks. I’m sure she knew no adults on my end were paying any attention, and they weren’t. In fact, most of my “encounters” with Dirks were in my Father’s home, and no one ever knew. We were caught one time, and yet my father never asked why an older man was in his home, being intimate with his teen daughter. I don’t think he wanted to be bothered. I can’t relate to that at all as a mother of a daughter. NO MAN will take advantage of my little girl.
The drama that followed this was the most intense and horrible I had experienced yet. I felt like I was being interrogated– Principals and Assistant Principals and God knows who else were suddenly informed of every sexual and intimate detail of my life so far. Tape recorders, interviews, questions, accusational questioning. Within a few days, every student and every teacher knew every angle, every secret, everything. Things that I would never have shared. Things I would never have told. My secrets. Leslie told the administors which students had witnessed the affair. Those students were interviewed. Then the rumors spread like a bad virus…
Dirks was immediately forced to resign. Not a second before he whispered in a few student’s ears that I was a liar and a phoney, that I was making up our affair to get popular. Of course, I wasn’t the cutest girl in the school. I wasn’t the most popular. I certainly wasn’t the most available or “easy”. So in the minds of those children, they thought, “Yeah, right. Why would he fuck her when he could fuck so and so…” And that wasn’t even the point. I didn’t care if they thought I was a liar. I didn’t tell. I didn’t TELL! The most hurtful part about it (at first) was the betrayal– by Leslie, by Dirks, by everyone involved…The implication that I betrayed my secret with Dirks, when all I wanted in my innocent, inexperienced, silly little mind was to run away with him… get married… have babies. And no matter what anyone thought… even a married, jobless, advantage taker of parentless children… I was the one who suffered most.
If you can’t imagine how horribly I was treated, at least try to imagine how people (teachers, students, parents, administrators) react in the South to a little motherless Lolita who has no one to defend her. No one to advocate for her. No one to speak for her. And I didn’t have the sense God gave me to tell them all to go piss up a rope!
I went to school every day, despite that no students would speak to me unless they were spurting nastiness or passing judgment. I sat alone. I ate alone. I walked through hallways, alone, where students stopped long enough to chastize or threaten me, or to just gawk silently at me. Whispering. Gesturing. If you have ever smelled hate and disgust, you would have smelled it most obviously anywhere that I was. My car was keyed. Threatening messages left on my windshield. Laughing, taunting, jokes, and fun… all in my name. And children hold grudges. They don’t forget. They held contempt for me for the rest of that year. It was a bit muted after the first few months, but none the less hurtful. It was relentless torment, they had no idea how hurtful it was. To have one or two threats or nastiness given to you in a day in high school is NORMAL, but when you have an entire student body and all of the faculty slinging judgment and disgust at you daily, when you’re barely 17, is just too much. It was impossible to feel or experience childhood after that, as if I’d had any ideas left of how a childhood should be, or feel, without their help.
I showed up for football practice, as I always had, the day of Dirks resignation. Coach Yeager stopped me upon my entrance into the gym. “What do you think you’re doing here,” he said. “I’m here to make gatorade for practice, Yeager,” I said. “Oh, no you’re not. You’re not welcome here,” he said. He fired Leslie as well. She cried and turned a cold shoulder to me after that. We had been filling water coolers for those thirsty jocks for years– gone to all the games, had history with the athletes and coaches! This was only the beginning of how hateful and spiteful the faculty and teachers treated me. If you were there and didn’t notice how thick the contempt was for me, you weren’t paying attention. And if you were an adult who witnessed it and never said anything, or even participated, SHAME ON YOU!
If you ever hear the song by the Police, “Don’t Stand so Close to Me,” you’ll know why it was my song. I was sure it was written for me. For Dirks. For a terrible grand finale ending to a sad childhood.
Fuckers.
Within a few months of my Senior year, I had just reached a breaking point. My dad threw me out of the house over some silliness or another (better yet, he finally did what he had wanted to for years)… The drama at school…The loneliness… The nights sleeping in Church parking lots… It all got to me something fierce. I didn’t have much to work with either. My best friend was gone. I had no loved ones… Have you lived any single second in your life where you knew no one, at all, would notice you were gone? Have you ever known a time in your life where no one AT ALL cared… beyond a stranger’s smile or friendly southern nod in a grocery store? I’ve known that loneliness, and I will never forget it. It makes me even stronger in who I am now and more thankful for those that REALLY DO LOVE ME!
So, I bought a big bottle of sleeping pills, pulled into the school parking lot an hour before school started, and… one by one.. swallowed a bottle of pills– too many to count, too many to not count. I knew they would find me, alone, in my car, in the school parking lot. And I wanted them to have that connection. I wanted them to own some guilt for how far they had pushed me. I wasn’t secure enough in myself yet to know that things would get better, or that Carrie didn’t have SHIT on me and I could have been fantasizing about burning gyms instead of taking a bottle of pills! I saw this massive, big picture. I saw that the world was cold, judgmental, and heartless– all because of this minor (or major) injustice that had befallen me. Children are sensitive creatures, and I certainly was no exception. Difference being, most kids didn’t go through that. Most kids had loved ones. Most kids had something.
The pills, all 40+ that I gagged and choked down… one by one… didn’t exactly do what I wanted them to. They made me very ill. They didn’t make me sleep. They made me very aware that I had made a huge mistake. And they wouldn’t numb my hurt and fear like I had hoped. I stumbled to my first class thinking that the medicine would kick in more harshly. I hoped they would. I saw swaying lights and the ground beneath me moved, but sleep wouldn’t come. I left school as discreetly as possible, afraid, and drove to my grandma’s house. I told her what I’d done, hoped she would take me to the doctor because I couldn’t drive very far, I was really bad off. But she instead put me in her guest bedroom and waited… She waited and watched. I laid there having uncontrollable convulsions, and from time to time I would be coherent enough and would see her standing over me, watching. I didn’t know what was scarier– the fact that something very weird and frightening was happening to me, or that she didn’t even care enough beyond her own embarrassment to get me medical help. I thought I was dying. I just didn’t know that I’d be so aware of my demise when I passed… or the fact that maybe they might all just watch, like my Grandma, as it happened… with no connection or feeling or regret…
I didn’t die, obviously… Angels, I believe… I shook and convulsed and drooled for a few hours, but eventually I came through on the other side. The other side wasn’t beautiful. It was back to the same old, same old reality. Only with a secret guilt and embarrassment towards myself for being so ridiculous, dramatic and weak. No one knew, no one cared, and I guess that was the only time I was happy about that.
I don’t know why I’m sharing this story because I don’t think it’s one of those things people can comfort or feel comfortable hearing. But it’s part of me. It was definitely a big ending for a little southern childhood. It’s part of why I welcomed the love that Austin would offer me when I found out I was pregnant with him a few months after I graduated. He offered me hope. And we have a connection that I’ll never have with anyone else because he gave me a fresh, new start and a reason. He was the only person, for a long few years, that would have cared if I were there or not there. He’ll probably never know how thankful I am for that.
The bad news is that Dirks continues to work with young people, I’ve heard. Probably having learned nothing from our experience because he, unlike I, got to walk away without punishment. He just went and got another job, apparently, where he was surrounded by young admiring girls, more vulnerable little minds. Rumors were that he had done this same thing at another school (West Over) in the same county (Cumberland County School District) before coming to my school and doing it to me. He also was preparing to have a little rendezvous with a another student while he and I were seeing one another, he was just waiting for her to call him on her 18th birthday (how polite of him). Go figure.
How’s that for some reading material, y’all?
Just so you know, I would say I’m as peaceful as a person can be with their past. It just is what it is. It was unfortunate and cruel. But I lived through it. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right?
My 15 year reunion is coming up next year. We didn’t do the 10 year thing. I’ve been contemplating whether to go or not. The last year of school wasn’t great, but I have some good memories of the years I grew up with those youngsters before that. And we’re all adults now. It would be interesting, I think, to engage with them again. They have had less to forgive and forget than I, of course. And I wonder if it would be healing and fun for me, or just spark up some icky feelings of a time I’ve moved away from. We’ll see what comes… Would you go if you had a similar experience?
Posted by: stepherz | 09-10-2008 | 03:09 AM
Posted in: Just Me | Comments (14)
