The Blank Years

If you’re a smart and observant child, you don’t need much bullying; you can read social cues closely and adapt before the ostracization begins:

I took myself out before I could be kicked out.

This was after the soft cocoon of early childhood, when I passed the days effortlessly with my female cousins. I’d continued to prefer the friendship of the opposite sex until the boys at school started pointing and yelling ‘GIRL!’ as if it were a slur.

That’s when I awoke to realize I was on the wrong side of the playground, doing cartwheels and swinging from monkey bars instead of fighting on the fields.

I was initially proud of these differences, but by middle school, the girls had moved to the benches to admire the boys I evaded, or had paired off to hold their hands and strut the sidelines.

So, I banished myself to the band room to practice scales after dashing down my lunch. Then I spent my evenings at the gym, where I began competitive gymnastics. The perfect sport for the overcompensating perfectionist, always room for improvement, another flip or twist to add. By 13, I won silver in the State Championships and set my sights on the Olympics, where I would achieve complete redemption. My only concern was that I was already too tall and still growing, so I counted calories and worked out excessively. If eating 1500 a day and burning 700 on the treadmill was good, the next day I could be better. I spent every spare moment planning and tracking as my focus and energy slowly slipped away.

I shivered through school that Winter, no matter how many layers I wore, and then shaved my head when my hair started falling out. My parents were concerned, but it was when my coaches cornered me that I stopped. To have my efforts acknowledged by the authorities was a proper accomplishment, a relief to let go of the drain on my life.

But it was the weekends when I suffered the most.

It’s not just that I had no one to hang out with; it’s that I didn’t want any witnesses to my solitude. But there was Mom, asking if I had plans, growing increasingly concerned each time I brushed her off. I would’ve done anything to avoid that pained look in her eyes, her pursed lips holding her back.

My parents had recently divorced, and my sister was now in college, so it was just Mom and me at home, and I was extra-motivated to perform normalcy for her. Which, as I entered high school, meant a social life. Not a son who stays home all weekend, practicing piano and reading fiction as evidence that the split had ruined him.

But it hadn’t. I was just unacceptable. And I had to hide it.

My only friend, Christian, was from a religious family, so I followed him to his church youth group. I wasn’t particularly righteous, but it was something to do with free snacks, organized games, and kids who hadn’t yet rejected me.

But it was Pastor Ed who impressed me the most: a young, handsome, and passionate preacher, he struck a fearful chord just by ‘asking questions’ or ‘sharing what other people have said’.

Like, ‘some people think God created HIV to punish the gays’ or, ‘some people claim the world is going to end on September 9th’.

Maybe it was my lack of religious experience, deep-held belief system & strong male role model, or perhaps I just wanted the control his prophetic visions provided, because I was deeply susceptible to him. From September 8th through the 10th, I slept on the floor in my Mom’s room so we could be together for the apocalypse, and when I thought about men while touching myself in the shower, I followed up with a simple prayer:

‘Please, God - don’t make me gay.’

I’d still think about fucking guys every time I jerked off, but then follow up with my plea and not think about it the remaining 23 hours and 50 minutes of the day.

I was still young. Anything could happen.

Meanwhile, the boys at school progressed from calling me ‘girl’ to ‘gay’.

Despite my secret confirming their claims, I decided it was a catch-all insult for someone different they couldn’t understand and ignored them, but retreated further just in case. If they couldn’t find me, they couldn’t mock me, and I would bypass the milestones my peers were navigating, but I feared.

Eyes down, I buried myself in books between classes, hugging the walls to navigate the halls with zero risk of eye contact.

After training privately and competing for myself, joining the high school gymnastics team was the closest I came to a social life, surrounded by classmates attempting the sport for the first time, not unsociable obsessives like myself.

But my score alone was half the entire team’s, so they were on my turf now.

That’s where I met Justin. Three years older with spiky gelled hair, a crooked smile, and a beat-up old car. He was immediately my ‘best friend’, but his best friend, Aaron, had a sharp, sarcastic tongue of which I quickly became a target. He tried to torture me over my now single mother’s dating life by graphically depicting what she got up to on her dates.

But at least he didn’t call me gay.

Lacking armor and desperate to be included, I laughed along and hoped it away. By 15, they were 18 with fake IDs, and the alcohol helped, except for when I went too far and blacked out.

I craved a less toxic substance I could use regularly to dull my thoughts and desires when I wasn’t practicing, training, or studying. My methods were draining and impossible to maintain; I needed to withdraw with passive consistency. So when I bumped into my ‘burnout’ neighbor, TJ, late one night while drinking on the primary school’s playground, I gave him my number and told him to call me the next time he smoked pot.

Rebellious and negligent, TJ was my antithesis. He listened to Rage Against the Machine, got bad grades, and forced his short blonde hair into dirty little dreadlocks. I didn’t understand why he accepted my company, but when we were fucked up, we flowed, waxing philosophically until we passed out, sharing divergent music tastes and approaches to life.

Between gymnastics, piano, and getting fucked up, I was rarely unoccupied or alone now, but every chance I got, I’d sneak into my sister’s room to play her CDs amidst floral scents and pastel tones. This was the closest I came to feeling anything, extreme emotions held in the safe container of strangers’ voices. When I felt brave, I’d insert these emerging tastes into the queue of songs at our weekend group hangs, now including TJ. But when I diverted everyone’s attention to The Smashing Pumpkins, I was derided for their drama and muted. When Tori Amos’ new album came out, I immediately bought the CD, but, halfway through the 2nd song, I was told to, ‘Turn that lesbian shit off! which I promptly did, burning a bright red.

The only thing that shifted the dynamic was when Aaron finally started smoking pot too, and would pick me up at night from my solo gymnastics practice to get high in the Wendy’s parking lot. That’s when we honed in on the soft underbelly of everyone else in our group, causing a rift between him and Justin, who refused to smoke. And then between TJ and me, who was now relegated to the back seat, serving merely as a laugh track to our cruelty. It felt good to have the target shifted from my back.

Then it was just Aaron and me.

Then it was just me.

I told myself I wouldn’t smoke pot alone, but there was always an excuse. And I was good at it. I could steer the car with my knees while smoking a bowl, locate every stray bud under the seat when I ran out, and scrape the resin from the pipe when I accidentally smoked carpet lint.

If I didn’t get high at night, I couldn’t sleep.

The first sign of dependence camouflaged as a shift in my lifestyle: I was approaching Senior year, and instead of seeking an athletic scholarship, I decided to apply to art schools to study music and writing. The increase in unstructured time weighed on me as I wound down my training. I was no more ready to be with and see myself clearly than I had been at 13. Even after rehearsing for auditions and writing college essays, I’d lie in bed feeling incomplete, like there was something essential I’d left undone, but couldn’t remember what it was.

Only if I were stoned could I attempt to relax, so I got high every night, but the relief was offset by guilt. I was ambitious by day, taking college-level classes and craving the approval of my elders, but also my peers. Ashamed of whatever I did or failed to do; it was a double bind I couldn’t release myself from: a Chinese finger trap I’d slipped into.

As my discomfort increased, I grew increasingly bold to offset it and quickly escalated from sneaking out on stoned bike rides to sneaking hits out my window. When my Mom caught me late one night, she deflated into sobs on the corner of my bed, afraid I’d be a chronic pot smoker like my Dad, her now ex-husband,

‘Mom, I’m not gonna end up like that,’ I promised, holding her narrow frame, pained yet trying to write off her concern as overly dramatic.

‘Flush that shit down the toilet,’ she said, giving me one last squeeze, wiping her eyes, and leaving me alone in my room.

But instead, I just hid my stash better, deep in the recesses of an old guitar case, coiled around sharp, snapped strings. I hated hurting her, but by the time the sun rose on another sleepless night, I’d fully justified that it was only pot, or ‘grass’ as Dad would say. If I need to take a few hits each night to attempt equilibrium, that was no one’s business and no different from the glass of wine she indulged in nightly.

There was no way of knowing that ‘night’ would come earlier each day, as I quickly came to prefer smoking alone after cutting out the middlemen I once called ‘friends’. Or that I would come to use marijuana daily for the next 25 years, despite the shame it spawned. Sometimes it was euphoric, other times anxiety-inducing, but always a distraction: Leading me to perform presence in relationships instead of actually being present, thinking I needed this to hold me together when it had long failed to serve its purpose, and the filter it created between me and the world became the very problem itself.

Eventually, I would be less technically alone after ‘coming out’ because I could attract men with my athletic build and keep them around by intuiting what they needed and then appearing to provide it. A good listener and nimble conversationalist, I could shape-shift to display their version of my best self even when it inevitably stopped satisfying me. But I satisfied no one, and ultimately was using them to avoid seeing me. I thought it was love, but I was never truly seen or willing to be seen, and every promising connection ended with their frustration and a shrug of my shoulders.

Living in California now with weed stores everywhere, it’s such an accepted part of the culture, which has lessened my guilt: No one’s asking me to stop, it’s just me against me now. I haven’t smoked in over 3 weeks after ruining a 9-month streak last year when I got high with my Dad over Christmas. I hoped I could moderate my use after such a long break, treat myself to an edible on the weekends, armed with my new self-knowledge, true friends, and coping skills as a ‘wiser adult’, but it quickly crept back in as an ubiquitous presence in my life. So I reset my sober app and am back to sleeping 5 hours a night as it exits my system.

But I’ve cultivated a life where I can create my own flow, and if I need to crash this afternoon for a few hours, I will. And when I share this story online, I know I’ll repel men who could have possibly wanted to date me, but I’ll also attract the special few who might actually understand.