Come Out Come Out Where Ever You Are

After my roommate's doctor's appointment, we were both starving.  I drove us to McDonald's and went through the drive thru.  We thought about going on to the parking lot by his pharmacy, but the bag ripped (cheap MickyDee bags!) so we opted to stay in the McD's parking lot and eat in the van.

From our vantage point, my old high school was there to watch, in all of it's ugly glory.  Yes, my high school is right next to a McD's, and several other fast food places.  We had an open campus too.  Some people faced guns and gang violence at school, we faced the danger of crossing four lanes of traffic to get to Pizza Hut.  So any time I want to eat (most) fast food in my town, there is the school.  That day, I tried to ignore it, but my roomie was curious about the box-shaped brick building that stood out from the rest.

"Oh, that is the library," I told him. "Or it was when I went there. It was a good place for awkward girls to go and hide when they didn't want to face people."

As a fat girl, an abused child, and a former rape victim, I've spent quite a lot of my life hiding.  In fact, my therapist tells me (as to many other experts in the subject) that the fact that I'm fat IS a form of hiding.  People don't see ME, they see "a fat girl." Well, okay, that's a nice way to put it. We all know what people normally say.

I'm somewhat of two minds about hiding. On one hand, I know I shouldn't do it. No one should. On the other hand, do we really OWE anyone our visibility?  I suppose the logical compromise there is while we don't owe our visibility to anyone else, we owe it to ourselves.  That gets complicated though. It means we're always having to ask if we're allowing ourselves to be seen because we want to be seen, or because it's just expected.

And because I'm somewhat schizophrenic about most things, I vacillate between "fuck you, I don't have to let you see me" hiding and "fuck you, I'm right here you fucking deal with me" not hiding.

I'm sure some people think this is even a strange topic.  How often can people hide, after all?  Many people think they're not hiding.  But you have to ask yourself, are you?  There are so many things to hide from.  We can hide from thinking for ourselves by allowing others to shape our thoughts for us. We can hide from moral decisions by adopting the moral codes of others. We can hide away from the truth about ourselves and who we are by merely following the rules and codes of the society around us.

And yes, I know, some people aren't hiding when they do these things. They really believe them. Others? I'm not so sure.

Let me state again, however, I'm not sure that's such a bad thing.  Wearing a mask, mental or physical, may be a way for us to stay safe, or stay sane, or just stay as guarded as we need to for the moment.

As this is a Friday post, I will now list some of my habits of hiding over the years.

1. My first semester of college was brutal. I had this cheerleader roommate who delighted in being the stereotypical mean girl about it.  She made no attempt to conceal her scorn of me. My best friend was in the dorms as well, but we weren't rooming together, nor was she around during my lunch break.
   
   So I would go to the student union and buy my lunch from the food court. Then I would go to the girls's restroom in the union and hide in one of the stalls and eat.  Yes, that sounds about as sanitary to me now as I'm sure it does to you. Back then, though, it was, I felt, the safest way to handle this. The roommate and her friends were always in the food court at that time.
   
2. When I was a freshmen in high school, the other band geeks wrote a song about me and my audacity to be fat.  We were going to a band contest and I found out that they were going to make me sing this song.  I went to my mother and asked her if I could change schools. I didn't explain why, I just asked and, because she had a new husband and was fighting with my grandparents at the time, she agreed.  Yes, folks, I changed schools to hide.
   
   Now, in this instance, I actually wish I would have been in the "fuck you, by god you deal with me" phase of things, because it would have saved time. I think if I would have just gone to the band contest, sang the song at the top of my lungs, with an accent, and then perhaps spit on someone, everything would have been fine.  But I was 14 and in a very emotionally damaged situation at home, and just didn't have the strength to do that.
   
3. It would have kept me from the annoyance of the other school though, because that high school was shit.  They made up another song about me. I guess "make up songs about the fat girl" was just the IN thing at the time. Now all the kids are fat, so they probably don't do that anymore. It would take up too much time.  Anyway, at said school, I had a DREADED PE class.  It was the hour after my study period, so most of the time, I'd just skip the class and go there.
   
   It wouldn't have been so bad, but it was a co-ed PE class with kids from all four years in it.  I could have faced another group of 14 yr old girls. But I couldn't handle boys from all ages seeing me suck at sports. So I hid. And the only probably gay boy in the school hid out with me.
   
   The crazy thing is, the coach knew where we were.  Out of some random and wonderful kindness, he never called us out on it.  It was a P or F class, and when I left my mom and moved in with my grandparents, the class was marked P on my transcript. That was very nice of him.
   
4. Over the years, I've gotten somewhat better about the hiding thing. As I get older, I've been far more into the "fuck you, I'm here" phase of things.  But there are exceptions and often they happen without me even planning them.
   
   Last Fall, I spent Thanksgiving with my aunt and uncle.  My aunt has a medical condition that requires a nurse to come and monitor her every couple of days.  I was completely cool with this until they told me the nurse was male.  In fact, I thought I was fine even then, but as the hours passed by, anxiety was pooling in my guts.  By the time he was supposed to be there, I was almost shaking.  I couldn't take my eyes off the windows at the front of the house. And the moment I heard the doorbell, I bolted to my bedroom.  I sat on the bed, quiet as I could be, hardly breathing, and listened for him.
   
   Looking back on it, I was very much in some strange panic attack.  I'm pretty sure I was rocking back and forth as I waited.  It's one of those moments where I can put myself back into the memory so vividly. I even remember the pulse of my heartbeat.
   
   Once he was gone, once I was completely sure he was gone . . . I calmed down and walked back out like nothing had happened. My uncle said it was like I just disappeared. 

So okay yes, even now, I still have problems with hiding. I still have moments where I have to really fight the impulse to get as far away from others as possible.  And sometimes, I don't even fight that impulse. Sometimes, hiding is completely worth it.

Unless you choose to be seen, you owe no one your visibility.  Just keep in mind, that you do owe it to yourself.