and as usual these days, this is where I turn for help.
The memoir is set up now in this rough format:
a letter to my younger self
narrative describing what’s behind the things mentioned in the letter
resolutions to those problems (if any).
That works great for all the stuff EXCEPT the house/camoflauge stuff. This has been going on ever since I was a small child and is still going on now.
The letters were written at pivot points in my life. There is NO pivot point here. In trying to figure this out yesterday I made a list:
Little Big Horn mosaic-something I made at camp, put on display in my room and got laughed at
Dog and Pony Show – the toy dog story
Hiding in the cabinets – my safe place = hiding in my dad’s stereo cabinets
Blanche Dombeck- a person (unknown to me a well-known artist) who gave me a picture she made because I liked it so much, housekeeper’s dog peed on it nd it was thrown out
boarding school various stories, mostly not told here, 2nd thru 5th grade
LETTER 1 (2ND GRADE)
Locker jr high-
6th grade being bullied by an 8th grader coz my locker was a mess6th-8th? being locked in a locker, because I was so small they could
Joan E.- the school counselor who tried
private high school (AZ, 9th grade) -Fishpond: being thrown in, coz I was small enough they could
Recording-sr year in hs, my “friends” recording me making love w/my boyfriend, they all thought (incl. bf) that it was “funny”
Rape-date rape w/4 witnesses
neighbor’s cigarette raid-neighbor kids decided I shouldn’t smoke so they came to “visit” and broke all my cigaretts. When I protested, their Mom said “you shouldn’t smoke.”
LETTER 2 17 YO (?)
Philip/cigarettes- I had a carton of cigarettes and a friend wanted a pack. He broke in in the middle of the night. I was masturbating in my sleep, he announced both that he’d broken in and taken the cigs and the other to my friends/Dad the next day.
LETTER 3 1974/MENTAL HOSPITAL
Mental Hospital- no comment!
Messy Bessie- I worked for some people in college who called me this. The fact that the process I was doing involved two glues, which reacted with each other was not supposed to be a factor?
S.B.- college – Trashcan- Being picked up and put in a trashcan by my boss, because he could
LETTER 4 DH
Using My Screwy Past as an Asset – Revealing my past as an asset in a job interview to possibly help troubled teens. I didn’t get the job, but it was the first time I presented my background as an asset rather than a deficit.
CSC/security check – If I haven’t told the story of how I was “certified sane” here I should have….
Present day – camoflauge*
OK, the one thing that became obvious to me when I made this list was that my privacy issues are all wrapped around the camoflauge thing as well as the “feeling safe” part.
As far as I can see there’s no neat category here, no neat time line where x or y or z happened. There’s no resolution, the only aha in this that I can think of is about 15 years ago my friend J finally convinced me that I really could have some privacy, a weird concept to me.
Comments, questions, ideas, whatever input you can provide will be welcomed. Thanks!
Judith
