Bully Bait: An Explanation

I've been wanting to write here about my childhood. I had a rough time of it growing up. Not as rough as some, but definitely rougher than a lot of people I know. My home life was dysfunctional, I was picked on relentlessly at school, and I had undiagnosed, barely even heard of at the time, learning and social adjustment disorders that guaranteed I would fit in wherever I went about as well as a tattoo and piercing enthusiast at a Church Ladies' Sunday Social. So yeah, I have some pent up sob stories.

The thing is, I don't want to tell sob stories. I want to be frank and honest, in a "names changed to protect the hopefully grown-up enough by now to know better" kind of way, but I want to approach it all with a sense of humor. Because I do have a sense of humor about the whole thing, most of the time. Some of it was too horrible to laugh at, but those parts are probably too private to share here anyway. But most of it, I can joke about. I've put off writing about it because I'm not sure how to joke about it in writing without turning it into one big joke, and I don't want to do that. I'm also wondering how much embellishment for humor's sake I'm willing to do. I want to do it in an entertaining way that's funny and relatable and also real.

I've also put it off because I've been examining why I want to write about it. I'm not interested in getting back at anybody, hence the plan to change names and certain details. Part of it is therapy. I've made some pretty great strides in being able to forgive a lot of people, but I'm having trouble with the forgetting part, and on certain days, when I'm in a certain mood, I have a tendency to brood on this stuff, and it can get me really down. I think--hope--that maybe putting it all out here will help me let it go and stop thinking about it.

Another reason--a big reason--is that I want these essays to say, "Hey, look! I'm okay! I lived through some awful stuff, but it's okay, and I'm relatively happy, and if you've gone through it, or you're going through it, you can be okay, too. If your kids are going through this stuff, they can be okay, too." I want parents of disordered kids to know that those kids can go through life without being drugged into conformity and those kids can still grow up to be healthy, productive adults. I want parents of kids with Autism Spectrum Disorders to know that their kids can eventually learn to do a passable-enough impression of normal to get by in the workplace and even get them invited to parties and out on dates. I want any teens or tweens reading this to know that not only is there life beyond high school, but that, for the most part, it gets so much better. I want twenty-somethings struggling to keep up with their peers to know that it's okay to cut themselves some slack and stop trying to plan their lives according to other peoples' schedules.

I want to give all of these people a big hug. Barring that, I want to be able to share a laugh with them, and help them learn to laugh at themselves.

Also, I just really want to practice memoir and comedic writing.

So that's going to be an occasional column here, starting this week (schedule permitting). I had kicked around the idea of doing a separate, anonymous blog on the topic, but seeing as how maintaining one blog with any regularity is proving a major challenge right now, that didn't seem like one of my brighter ideas. Plus, for me, the anonymity felt like a cop-out, and I wondered if anybody would believe I wasn't making it all up. An occasional column here seemed like a good compromise. So for now, that's the plan.