From: blchapma@eos.ncsu.edu (BEKKI LYN)
Subject: Re: another poem
Originator: blchapma@c00467-224wi.eos.ncsu.edu
Reply-To: blchapma@eos.ncsu.edu (BEKKI LYN)
Organization: North Carolina State University, Project Eos
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 23:04:35 GMT


In article <2AC4DE7A.4152@news.service.uci.edu>, cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
|> In article <1992Sep26.001746.23988@ncsu.edu> blchapma@eos.ncsu.edu (BEKKI LYN) writes:
|> >In article <NagiRB1w165w@ailanth.UUCP>, ailsa%ailanth.uucp@wang.com (Ailsa N.T. Murphy) writes:
|> >|> ailsa%ailanth.uucp@wang.com (Ailsa N.T. Murphy) writes:
|> >|> > blchapma@eos.ncsu.edu (BEKKI LYN) writes:
|> >|> > > In article <2ABA69A5.8204@news.service.uci.edu>, cortese@skid.ps.uci
|> Yep.  I got this, too.  I was EXTREMELY tall for my age (I'm now 5' 8"
|> and would be 5' 9" if my spine were straight), skinny as all hell, with
|> crooked teeth, aquiline nose, and frizzy, crackly, dry brown hair.  Now
|> if someone compliments me, I accept it, but must keep a defense of very
|> vicious comebacks JUST IN CASE.  When shit like this happens to you, you
|> learn reflexive defenses.  I just can't take someone who compliments me
|> seriously.  I just wonder what they're pulling, and I'm waiting for them
|> to do something like this to me -- AGAIN.

Oh cool!  I'm 5'9" and was always pretty tall, but no one ever gave me
any trouble because of that strangely enough.  They were too busy making
up other things about me to bother with that.  I was real skinny until
I hit puberty, and now I'm of pretty normal weight (based on the
doctor charts).  I've never considered myself either exceedingly
beautiful or ugly.  I could always find someone I thought better or
worse looking than I pictured myself.  Of course, I've gotten called
things like "ugly as a dog", but I never truly believed that because
I felt that I looked the same as everybody else, not really better or
worse.

At the time this was going on, I'd always wonder if someone was
complimenting me just because they hadn't done their schoolwork
the night before.
 
|> I do, however, take a really perverse pleasure in dressing up in heels
|> and a really tight little dress (Sally told me the same thing; she's 6'
|> tall and blond with mint-green eyes -- very pretty but painfully tall
|> and skinny in school) and going out with friends or whatever, and
|> stomping on the ego of one of those bastards who looks like he would
|> have pulled that shit on me.  And boy, I grind `em hard.  And like it.
|> It many be defined as "mean" and "small," but I really don't care.  I
|> have some demons to exorcise, and I'm going to do it.  

Every now and again I get the urge to dress up like that, and it seems
great at first.  Until my feet start hurting.  And until I find myself
starting to act real dainty or prissy like I'm ready to enter
a fashion show or something.  It is fun when men come up to you,
expecting you to be a real airhead, and then seeing them get so
crestfallen when you just happen to mention that you actually
know something about computers or some other intellectual persuit.
"Oh my!"  I can just hear them exclaiming.  "She has a *brain*!"
Then I watch them run away as fast as they can run.   Heh heh heh.
 
|> When one of them comes up to me, I can feel myself trying to protect
|> that skinny little kid in me.  I can almost HEAR myself think, "Get away
|> from her, you son of a bitch!  GO FUCK YOURSELF!!!  You're not getting
|> NEAR her!"  Maybe the recovery thang means more to me than I realized. 

Sometimes I wish I could return to those school days with the knowledge
and experience I now have.  I have a feeling those kids wouldn't
be getting away with what they then got away with.
 
|> I know this is illogical, but every time I hear about someone who went
|> back to their old high school and blew someone away, I have to ask
|> myself what hell they went through while there.  I'm not a really
|> violent person, but when I imagine someone doing that to someone else,
|> and that someone else turning around and blowing them away, I shed nary
|> a single tear.

I'm not really a violent person either, even though I know I wasn't
assertive enough in those school days.  I did have a neat dream --
had it twice with two different individuals -- where I met some
little tormenter in a dark back alley, picked him up and bashed his
head into the concrete numerous times.  I almost cannot imagine doing
this in real life, but at the time I was on top of the world.

[Story about rotten little kid deleted to save space]
 
|> How awful does a person have to be before things like this are said
|> about them?  What does this say about someone when no one even cares
|> about their death, especially such a violent one?  I feel bad for his
|> parents, his brother, and the man who drove the truck, but as far as
|> that little monster?  I feel only satisfaction that he can hurt no one
|> else.

I probably would have felt the same, but this did not happen to 
anybody I've known or known of.  I do always wonder what really causes
some kids to act this way.
 
|> And the worst of it is, no one but others who have gone through this
|> will understand.  "What's wrong with YOU?" would be the question, not,
|> "How horrible is school and how torturing can some kids be that they can
|> leave this legacy behind them?"  

Ye verily!
  
|> >|> > > It took me a long time to get used to the idea that it was okay to b
|> >|> > > a female.  I had identified myself for so long with males, that I lo
|> >|> > > down on other girls/women, I guess.  Now, I know that I was terribly
|> >|> > > wrong to believe that.  I suppose I was just trying to forget the fa
|> >|> > > that I was one of the "inferior ones" myself.
|> >|> >
|> >|> > try using that sort of a defense and being a lesbian! 
|> >
|> >Even though I've never been lesbian, I've had people believe that I 
|> >was.  Unfortunately in those days, I thought being a lesbian was some
|> >evil thing.  Only weirdos were gay.  Later, I didn't care whether they
|> >thought I was a lesbian or not.  Now, I'd say "What's wrong with being
|> >a lesbian?  What is it that you're afraid of?"
|> 
|> If a guy asks this, try, "What?  Are YOU my alternative?" 

heh heh....

|> >Now this *does* sound familiar!  I was always bringing some sort of
|> >"strange" book to read.  I still hate those dumb Harlequin romances
|> >the other girls thought were so cool to read.
|> 
|> These things are so incredible.  "Heaving breasts," indeed.  I have a
|> pair of breasts, and while they have at times done some unusual things,
|> they have never ONCE done ANYTHING that can be remotely described as
|> "heaving."  Makes it sound like my breasts get carsick or something.  

hee hee hee!  
 
|> >Then again, sometimes I'd go for the "male" look when I got really
|> >irritated.  I chopped my hair off real short and wore unisex-type
|> >shirts and jeans.  I didn't really like my hair short, but I would
|> >get so angry.
|> 
|>  . . . that you'd punish yourself for attracting this torture.  At
|> least, when you punish yourself, you have some control over it.  When
|> you put yourself down, you know it's coming.  It took me the longest
|> time even to buy CONDITIONER for my hair.  Shitty, dry, crackly, brittle
|> hair felt like home.  So did thick glasses -- I was almost out of high
|> school before I got contact lenses.  Even now, when I dress up, I
|> sometimes have to fight this little voice that tells me that I'm just
|> another ugly dog who's playing dress-up in a pretty person's closet.  

I've worn contact lenses since the 7th grade.  I had glasses since
the 3rd but I never wore them and my eyes kept getting worse and worse.
I just knew that if I showed up at school wearing glasses, it would
get even worse than it was somehow.  

Yes, I've punished myself much for things.  Sometimes I'd get so angry
that I'd scrape a design on my arm with something or I'd beat my
head against the wall.  No, I wasn't suicidal or anything, though
I had thought about it and decided against it, but the pain would
concentrate my frustration.  Fortunately, I haven't felt the need
to go to such extremes in the present.  Throwing a text book across
the room and into the far wall is about it for me now.

|> As far as looking down on other women go -- well, I lose total patience
|> with them.  I probably still look down on them, but I've been stuck in a
|> male sphere for too long.  I'm glad I'm out. 

I've made it a goal recently to try to understand where these women are
coming from even if I don't agree with their individual outlooks.  

|> >I hear ya!  I had an awful lot of fun at the last University I attended.
|> 
|> I don't think I was really aware of what I had to do to recover until
|> about two years ago; college wasn't reaslly wonderful for me, although
|> it was pretty okay.  I also had to deal with my dad dying VERY suddenly
|> the beginning of my second semeter there.  I was pretty much on
|> autopilot the whole time I was at the main campus.  I missed a lot, but
|> there wasn't much I could do. 

That must have been difficult for you.  I know it would have been for
me.  
 
|> >It was a small Southern Baptist school, and I was certainly *not* 
|> >mainstream.  Ah, the good old days...it was great to have them assume
|> >stuff about me, and then watch their amazement when I'd prove their
|> >assumptions wrong.   
|> 
|> GOD this is fun. 

Yes, I remember when I was sitting in the lounge in the library studying
something for a class.  This guy had been watching me.  He got up and
came over after a while and asked if he could pray for me.  No, this
person had never known me before, had no idea what my religious beliefs
were.  I suppose he just psychically knew I was into something he
didn't approve of.

I've even gotten it here at NC State in the computer lab.  I got into
an argument with someone over Eve, Adam, and the serpent.  The guy was
trying to insist that woman was meant to be inferior to man because
of the serpent thing.  I don't think he expected any biblical arguments
to what he was saying.
  
|> For me, permitting myself to dress up and look nice was a big step in
|> recovering; you know, "Im ugly and deserve to look it."  Now, I have a
|> tendency when I dress to think of myself (as I've mentioned before) as a
|> big middle finger.  Wearing dull, shapeless clothing was my way of
|> punishing myself.

Yeah, being able to dress "weird" was my way of recovering.  I still
like to dress unusual at times, but sometimes I just like to be comfortable.
If I "dress up", I mostly feel like it's being forced upon me like
it was when I'd have to go to church or to a wedding.  Never the real
me then.  Just a little baby doll.
 
|> It's kind of nice now, though -- as I mentioned before, I get to scrunch
|> the egos of a few guys who desperately need it.  And don't tell me I
|> don't have the right to judge them, and I can't tell who needs it and
|> who doesn't.  After YEARS of dealing with this shit and having to defend
|> myself from it, I can spot a bastard a MILE OFF.  You learn how to do
|> this when it's life or death.  Spotting assholes and avoiding them is a
|> survuval skill.  I can size up a person's basic personality in seconds,
|> so if you're going to tell me how awful I am to do what I do, just shut
|> up.

Well, I've tended to give people the benefit of the doubt even if I was
pretty sure they had asshole personalities.  Most of the time, I was
right.  I should have avoided them right off.  Then again, I thought
my boyfriend was a snob when I first saw him, but it turned out he was
just shy.  Live and learn.
  
-- 

Bekki Lyn

************************************************************
"All's well at the midnight hour; you're ready to fly
 Don't think about the darkness, or the rumbling in the sky.
 Somewhere on the morning road just waiting for you
 Some things that just could never be are calling up a
   spell so you can see..
 Dream Evil, the dark that you find in the back of your mind
 Dream Evil Dream Evil -- DIO --
************************************************************