Labels and Identities-Then and Now

I went to high school in a mid-sized suburb of San Francisco. It was this weird little enclave though because despite it's nearly 50,000 people population, everyone knew one another or knew of one another and a large percentage of the kids parents also knew one another. If I go back now, I still see someone I know when I stop in at the grocery store. It is very surreal and a very painful place for me to experience.

The identity my school claimed was one of being a "hick" town. Football, flannel shirts, chewing tobacco, and pick up trucks accompanied by either country music or Metallica made a man in that school. Girls fit in by clothes, drinking, hanging out with the right guys and making sure their hair was bleached the right shade of blond. It feels like a different world from where I am now but at the same time it seems like my whole life was dictated by the events that occured during those 4 years.

During the 4 years I was in high school, there was local girl kidnapped and killed, 3 kids from my class died, and I watched more than forced groping take place. School was not a safe place. I remember being scared to walk down the hallways because older girls would threaten me, guys would spit chewing tobacco on me, gossip would ring out hardily and name calling of some of the corsest language would be screamed out when I walked in the locker room. I wsn't the only recipient of this treatment. Anyone lucky enough to have allienated one of the football players received this star treatment.

What did I do? I came from a screwed up family and my boyfriend's family decided that my family was so screwed up that he shouldn't be around me and neither should any of his friends. So I became a parental approved parriah because my stepdad was removed from our house for abuse when I was in eighth grade. Every where I turned someone kicked me when I was down.

Was I mouthy and angry? You betcha. I also knew how to throw bottles and break dishes. But mind you I was 14 years old and I now know that is what a 14 year old temper tantrum looks like. I was hurting and my escape was to cut school and sleep so not to have to face anything or anyone who might be judgemental or cruel to me. The answer to my painful situation was that my mom kicked me out of the house for two weeks when I was in 9th grade on the advice of some tough love counselors. It was a very lonely time and in 10th grade the chaos continued as my father who disappeared 10 years earlier suddenly decided to reappear. I ended up leaving my school and transferring to a continuation school just to escape the drama that pervaded everyday. I needed an easy way out and cutting back on school was the only thing that made me not feel like I was drowning. I ended up returning to my school in 11th grade and finished out the last year with a continuation of the high school stigma and accompanying drama.

But there is one moment that stick out of the muck that is my memories of my teenage years. When I was a senior, a girl I never really knew well invited me to go on a Christian retreat. My mom was apprehensive about letting me go but acquiesed after I assured her it was not a cult. That weekend was just such a deviation from my normal scene. It was an escape from a dark place. Although I didn't rekindle my childhood relationship with God at that point, my life did slowly start to turn around. I went to youth group for a few weeks and then just started making my own choices. I started working and pretty much checked out of the whole high school scene going so far as skipping my high school prom to work instead. I opted not to go on the senior trip to Matzatlan and instead went with a small group of girl friends on a cruise. I started junior college that fall and received straight A's my first semester. Two years later I transferred to a 4 year school and graduated summa cum laude with a degree in English literature. It took a year out in the work force and a move away from that town to finally break away from the labels and the definitions that others placed on me. I left when I prayed one night and said to God, "Just tell me what to do" and I heard words spoken in a way I had never heard before and have never heard since. I heard the word "Leave." At that moment it was time to move on to a new path. A few months later I met the man who would be my husband.

My husband obviously knows all this past and he helped me get into counseling when I struggled with my family during the early years of our relationship. But it is interesting. Even though he knows all this history, I don't think he really gets it. He has never seen me as a lower class citizen and he can't really imagine it. But I remember it and it very easy for me to slip and feel under attack when faced with critism and judgement. Because I developed a coping mechanism of hiding and retreating, I will often withdraw when I feel overwhelmed even now. And when others judge me and tell me that I am not good enough, I feel it in my soul because I have tried so hard to be the best person that I can be and to not be the loser that I felt I was. Frusturatingly enough, I even have some people in my life now who like to remind me of how awful my behavior was back in those days. There is no recognition of the fact that the behavior being discussed happened 18 years ago. It is really amazing how people can label and perceive you one way and hold you to that identify for the rest of your life.

It is then that I have to remember that "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." 2 Corinthians 5:17 As a Christian I am no longer that wounded girl who lashed out in pain with the voice of anger and defiance. It has been almost 20 years and I am a different person. To continue to identify me as that person is to deny all that I am and all that I have done since then. My counselor once told me that I had a choice. I could continue to be the girl from that family and define myself by my past and call myself a survivor of my past or I could move forward and define myself by my present as God does. I have made the choice to define myself by my present. I am a Christian, a wife, and a mother. I am a homeschooler, a Brownie leader and a Sunday School volunteer. I love to read, celebrate holidays, work on my computer, take pictures of my kids and do digital scrapbooking. My life is so very full of all these wonderful things. I have been very blessed and have so much. This is who I am. This is my identity and these are my labels.

This post on labels was inspired by a wonderful entry in which a female firefighter identifies herself and her labels. You can read it at Firefighter? Burn Survivor? Mother? - Identity & Lables.