True Confession (or I doth profess too much)

I'm going over some old ground here.

I insisted that I didn't want to get published for the recognition, but just to fulfill a goal.

I have to confess that I lied.

I have fantasies about getting published, about becoming well enough known that someone from my hometown contacts me, and I can snub them.

It's horribly unbecoming of me to be like that. I don't even like to admit I have that fantasy, but I do. Let me explain, and maybe you will understand me.

I grew up different. Intelligent, socially awkward, overweight -- I lived in my own little world. I suffered from pica and ate glue and pencil erasers, as well as handfuls of sugar and Bisquick. I bit my nails. I laughed when nobody else laughed, I sang out loud for no apparent reason, not caring if someone else heard. I cried when people attacked me. I whined. All together, I was that unattractive kid that nobody liked. I don't know if I would blame them.

Being that child, I was prone to bullying from my fellow classmates and adults. By the time I reached high school, I had been beaten up by classmates repeatedly, sexually abused by a few people, raped by classmates, threatened with desertion by my mother.

I made myself a coccoon from the outside world -- from my parents, extended family, and classmates.  That coccoon was made of my fantasies, my behaviors, my wishes. In my coccoon, the monsters that everyone feared were my friends. The monsters would nurture me through the bullying, the attacks, the lack of safety I felt.  As I grew older, I fell in love in my fantasies -- and when I told my best friend the name of who I had a crush on, she yelled it out the window, and every popular kid in the class shamed me in the hallways.

My childhood marred me. I have trouble making friends because I don't want to impose myself on them. I have trouble loving my snot-nosed, eraser-eating inner child. (I tend to wish I had been Marcie as a child. Marcie is me without the snot nose and eraser eating.)

I entertain sadistic fantasies about my classmates from Marseilles. I entertain the thought that someday the tables could be turned and I could, if not bully them, reject them soundly. I feel guilty about that because it's not a "pure" reason to want to be published.

I exorcise myself by writing. This blog post is no exception.