Struggling

I woke up this morning, and sluggishly rolled out of bed. Showered, took my hand full of medication, and downed some water. I'm dressed and ready to start my day, and that's a big deal because I don't want to be around people right now. I don't even want to exist at the moment.

Outside everything is gray, clouds cover what would be a clear blue sky. The world is damp and muted, it fits my mood perfectly and makes it even harder to walk out that door this morning. The other day I came within inches of harming myself, it would have destroyed my year long streak of being kind to myself. I didn't, if anyone is worried. Instead I powered through the awful emotional trauma that had crawled it's way back to the forefront of my mind. I suffered the pain I should have felt when I was ten, and relived, in part, one of the most awful years of my life.

That's the thing about being a kid and living in awful situations. You don't have the skills to handle them at that age, the only thing you have to fall back on is instinct. Raw animal reaction, and that reaction is to survive by whatever means possible. Subconsciously you would do anything to take away the unbearable trauma, pain, abuse. . . Even if it means burying those emotions—reactions—deep within yourself, leaving them to feaster into unhealthy habits.

It happened to me. I live with these, 'cooping' skills that are destructive in nature. At thirty-three I'm learning how to live all over again, and right when I think I have a handle on things—when I believe there are no more awful things to recall—I get slammed by memories. My mind thinks, “Hey, you're feeling better. Here take this!”

The bastard.

I'm not ready to talk about what I remembered, but when I am—when I'm ready—to fully face that year of my life that I only recall in pieces. Then. . . then I'll post it here. Until such time know that this is what my depression looks like. . . This is how I became the strong person everyone tells me I am.

I suffer. . . I live beyond horrors most would surrender to, and honestly—in truth—I don't know how I do it.

I would like to tell you that I have some greater cause or reason for hanging on. Something like, I don't want my abusers to win, or I want revenge. But it's none of those. For some reason—some mysterious reason—I won't let the darkness drag me under. Maybe I'm just that stubborn. I wouldn't put it past myself, but know that when you grow up with abuse, trauma, awful events. You don't live them once and then they pass by never to be heard from again.

They return, over and over again. . . In your happiest most productive moments—when you head believes you can survive the flood—they return, and challenge your strength and resolve once again.

Today I'm battling, and that will be my life forever. A battle between past and present, of now and then. My abusers will always be with me, but I'm determined to make them nothing more than harmless phantoms.

#Abuse #Fighter #Warrior #Struggling #Memories

~Jax~

Lunch Shaming

Lately there has been a lot of talk about kids being shamed for not having lunch money. Okay, not lately. This kind of talk tends to come in waves along with bullying in school. These are big topics, ones I feel our lawmakers should be talking about instead of what stupid thing Trump is tweeting.

I know people read the articles going around social media, the news, and net and for those that have children it hits them deep. Then there are those of us who don't have children, but feel a little binge of sadness in our hearts for these kids. Well, I'm about to make you feel more than the passing, “Oh, that's a awful. Poor kid.”

While I don't have children, and don't plan to have any, stories about children being singled out or shamed in school hits me deep. Throughout my life I've been to over ten different schools. . . Yes, you heard that right.

TEN different schools.

It wasn't abnormal for us to move every one to two years, which always meant a new school, new friends, and a new system of rules to learn. It wasn't fun, by any means, and while I tried to stay positive the consent changes wore on me. Enough about that though, what I want to focus on is the lunch shaming tactics that most schools use to punish the kids for their parents lack responsibility.

I've been to every kind of school you can imagine, private school, public, religious, and each one has their own ways of doing things. When I was younger my schools didn't serve lunch, we always brought our own. However, in my Catholic school we did have snack-time. Which was AWESOME!

Why, you ask?

Because we were living in a Philadelphia at the time, and if you had a quarter you could buy a fresh soft pretzel for snack. They were delivered every morning to the school. Soooooooo, good!

Now, I wasn't one of the kids that didn't have my quarter or didn't have my lunch, but there were a few kids that never seemed to have anything to eat. School policy was to feed the starving (Catholic school and all), so the staff would come together and make sack lunches for students who parents couldn't afford to send them with lunch. We helped each other out, and even other students would share parts of their lunch with those that had none.

I have always had my reservations about Catholic school. There are things they teach I don't agree with, but in the bigger picture it is truly a beneficial schooling system. I wish I would have stayed at my school, because what was to come in later years was. . . a nightmare.

Shortly after I ended up in a rural public school system, and while it was public school it was still a small community and they took care of everyone. If you forgot your lunch money or you didn't have any you still got lunch, and the office would put a call into your parents. That's right, they settled the debt with your PARENTS! It was never left up to us. Besides, the lunch laddies were too nice to not feed a kid.

Seriously, they would give me an extra bowl of peas when that was the vegetable of the day because they knew I loved peas (and no one else seemed to eat them in school).

And this whole, “You don't have lunch money so go clean a table.” Was something that never happened. In fact every grade assigned two students every month to be lunch hands. We would head down to the lunch room early for the first lunch service, and our job was to clean the tables between lunches. We had our own special table to sit at, and we often got extra lunch for helping out! Being assigned for lunch duty was an honor in my school. Everyone wanted to do it, and it taught us responsibility.

But on my next move—my next new school—I experienced what happens in the bigger world when you don't have lunch money. You have to sit and watch your friends eat. Starving, you sit there watching them shovel food in their mouths because their parents can afford to send them with money. This is of course is after you waited in line with your friends, and then had the lunch lady tell you in the nastiest of ways, “No money, no food!” And snatch your tray out of your hand. No compassion, no remorse. Then you witness that whole tray of food dumped in a large trash can, and you are forced to walk away—all eyes on you because the woman made a scene of it—holding back tears as you slide into a seat. No lunch, no pride left because the entire school knows you wouldn't afford lunch. A simple thing, and you don't deserve it because. . . money.

As your friends arrive at the table with their lunches, trays full of tasty food that you are dying for by this time, you laugh off their questions as to why you're not eating. You say, with a bright painful smile, “I'm not hungry today.” When in truth your stomach is killing you, because you didn't have breakfast (there was never anything in my house to eat for breakfast).

Try making it through a full afternoon of classes when your stomach is cramping, your blood sugar is so low it gives you a massive headache. Have you ever been hungry enough that you feel sick all over? Like you want to throw up, but there's nothing in your stomach to throw up?

I have, that's how I spent my life in middle school, junior high, and high school. I wouldn't get anything to eat until 6pm, or later, at night. Even then it was often a small meal. That's how I lived for a long time, to the point my metabolism is shot to hell, and I have very unhealthy eating habits to this day.

It gets worse. (Like nearly everything else in my life).

Up till middle school I was eligible for free lunches, but when I hit the 8^th grade that changed. I no longer got free lunches, mom made too much money. Instead I got reduced lunches, which was twenty cents. . . Twenty cent lunches! Not bad, right?

Not according to my mom.

If I asked for the twenty cents she would yell at me, and demand to know why I don't get free lunches. Like I knew why? I wasn't the one that filled out the paperwork, I just did what I was told. So I often went to school without my twenty cents. . .

TWENTY CENTS PEOPLE!

(Later it became forty, but still!)

My mom would make me feel like shit over twenty cents.

Often I would dig through the car or couch for the change, I stopped asking my mom for anything. I would steel from the bottom of her pocket-book for the dollar it would cost to eat for the week. If I got caught it would be the usual shaming lecture. She would yell at me for not going to the school and demanding free lunches. She would lecture on about how poor we were, and how low in statues we were that I should get free lunches. Did she ever go to the school with these complaints?

No.

It was on me to do it, and at school the lunch laddies were nasty hags that were the keepers of the food gates. How was I suppose to stand up to them? Who was I suppose to tell/demand these free lunches from? I had no idea!

My view of my friends and kids around me changed. I no longer saw us as equals—as friends—they were all better than me. Richer, higher in statues. They were better than me because my mom said so, the school said so, and the system said so. This crushed whatever self-esteem I had left. I learned not to respect myself because I was beneath everyone.

Thankfully, my junior and senior year of high school I had a boyfriend that bought me lunch everyday. He was willing to pay the forty cents. While he wrecked me later in life, I want to thank him for what he did for me then.

Thank you Dustin!

Shaming a child for their parents lack of action has a big impact on the child. As you can see it destroyed me. I started to see labels on people in a world that already judges too harshly. Our systems are wrong, and bent on profit seeking instead of compassion.

No child should starve, and no child should be shamed for it. Animals take better care of their young than we often do. Speak up for the lunch practices in your community, stand behind your child and fight the system. It's the only way we can effect change in a flawed world.

#StopShaming #FeedTheChildren #FreeSchoolLunchs #LunchIsARight #LunchWarrior

~Jax