I Has a Sad

Sometimes, even at my age, I find myself in the shoes of that sad little girl I was who didn't understand that "different" meant something bad to a lot of people. I have two friends from the Mill Village in South Carolina where I lived for most of my growing-up years. TWO. Most of the rest are merely civil or ignore me. In that hotbed of fundamentalist religion and strict, right-wing politics, I am not the most popular figure in the bunch.

The sad part about it is that many of the people are folks I like, folks I know have a good heart and want to do their best. I might question WHAT they believe and why they vote the way they do but I don't question their innate right to either.

I wasn't a very happy little girl. I was from a broken marriage and we were not well-to-do. Even on the mill hill, most of the kids had more than us, but we still had food, clothes and what we needed. I was old enough to remember when my father left and also young enough to feel rejected, abandoned and responsible. It was something I couldn't describe and my elders couldn't understand. I was just "over-emotional and moody."

When the kids on the hill found out that I cried easily, that was all it took. I became a target of cruel teasing, gossip and derision. I was never able to figure it out. I had friends that I really liked and I would find myself shunted aside, picked last and picked on. I didn't realize that the parents of those kids had a lot to do with it along with the fact that, to them, I was an exotic creature....a kid without a Dad who couldn't even say their father had died, honorably. My father was a pathological liar, a womanizer, a bigamist, and (*gasp) a Yankee! I went to the same church, I attended the same school but I was on the outside looking in all the time.

I guess I thought that, being all grown up now, even with grandchildren and great-grandchildren, that these childhood tormentors would be kinder, gentler and more tolerant. I thought wrong. They don't torment me. They don't call me names to my face. They just do not want to have anything to do with me. My politics and lack of religion are too foreign and scary and, in their eyes, just plain wrong. Then there is the fact that I make no bones about being a natural mother (birth mother) and do not apologize or feel ashamed for that...at least not now. When it was going on, I had enough shame for ten teenage girls.

So, though I have outgrown that need to be liked by everyone, and I have learned to respect and like myself...even though I no longer judge my insides by their outsides...every now and then, I think about some of those kids that I really liked and I realize that I Still Has A Sad.