Jesus Freaks, Crippling Fear

                                          and Marching 

                                      To My Own Drum                                 

              The night before high school started my stomach was doubled over in fear.  I had started to run to the bathroom, out of control.  What was going on?  I was so drained the following morning I couldn’t make it to the first day of school.  I stayed home and during the day, the ache subsided.  The second night, it started again.  My mom tried to talk to me in her calm voice.  She called the nurse who lived across the street from us and she brought me something to help my diaherra.  I would try to talk to myself, know that something deeper was going on.  The familiar ache in my stomach had reappeared several weeks earlier out of nowhere.  Finally, I knew I had to go to school and managed to get there on the fourth day, shaking inside every step of the way.    

  My best girlfriend from Texas had become a proclaimed born-again Christian.  Everything to her was about Jesus…everything.  She would sit with a group of kids on the front lawn of the high school at noon and they had  their lunches and their Bibles.  It was really weird.  Chatter was going on around school about how weird they were and I listened.  My girlfriend had invited me to be a part of the group but I didn’t want to be labeled “weird.”  I knew who God was.  I had grown up in Sunday school and church.  Who did she think she was anyway?  What gave her the cornerstone on God?  You were only supposed to read the Bible in church, weren’t you?  Why did they have to do it so “in your face”?  No, thank you.  I have to get on with my life.  It was the beginning of the end of our friendship.  I didn’t want to be called a Jesus freak.  Besides, I had coattails to ride on and my goal was to be everything I could in high school.      

  Due to the fact I had missed the first three days of school, I couldn’t be nominated for some popular contests I was interested in.  You had to be physically present to be nominated for anything.  No absentee nominations were allowed.  Missing those first three days literally began to change my life.  My heart was broken.  I went home and went to bed.  I felt there was some sort of unseen force that didn’t like me and had tried to scare me from attending school, knowing what was in front of me and keeping me from attaining goals.

  I managed to finish the first week of school, knowing something different was going on but couldn’t put my finger on it.  The second week of school began and after gym class, I was standing in the girls’ locker room fixing my hair.  Some girls I knew rushed in there and said there were black people lined up and down the hall waiting for me to come out.  They said they were going to bodily harm me.   I was completely baffled and had no idea where this was coming from.  The only kids I knew were the ones I had gone to school with and I was well liked by them.  Who were these people?  Why was this happening to me?  I stared in the mirror looking at myself, scared to death and not knowing what to do.

  The bell for the next class had just rung.  I had the presence of mind to tell my friends to go quickly and get the principal.  I had no choice but to leave, so I walked out of the locker room and these black kids, who I didn’t even know, started kicking me.  The principal came running down the hall and shuttled me into his office.  He proceeded to call my dad who had to come and pick me up.  I was expelled for three days until things could settle down.  The principal said they had picked me out of the crowd because of my brother’s popularity and that it had nothing to do with me personally.  So, home I went.  I could not believe this had happened, especially after I had just gotten used to going to school!

  My older brother was away at school but found out through my parents what had happened.  He got in touch with a black friend of his from the football team, whose name was Paul Hurst.  He was the current Senior Class President and a football captain.  It was decided that Paul would walk me from class to class for as long as it took to get others off my back.  He met me at my locker in the mornings and we would walk down the hall together, which let everyone know to keep their hands off me.  God bless you, Paul, wherever you are.  The black and white issue had never been an issue with me personally, but it certainly was becoming one in our school and around the country.  Why couldn’t we all just get along I wondered?  What was the big deal? 

  Things eventually subsided.  I became withdrawn but I still had great passion in my heart to do more at school but it seemed out of my grasp and I had no guidance.  At home, I was “on” and ready to do anything but around school I was the opposite. 

 I really didn’t have much self-esteem or self-worth.  I fought the feelings inside of me that wouldn’t allow “me to be me” but most of the time, I let the feelings take over and they crippled me from doing things I really wanted to do.  I felt as though two people lived inside of me.  Any time something good was going to happen, something always tried to stop it.  Majorette tryouts weren’t until the end of the school year.  I thought if I could just hold on until then, things were certain to turn around in my life.  Wasn’t I supposed to be everything?  

  I was still corresponding with my long distance boyfriend.  Absence made my heart grow fonder and it gave me something to hold on to.  Upper class girls knew who I was dating and I became friends with them as well.  They thought he was cool so it just reinforced the way I felt about him.  The only reason I had gone to Homecoming that year was because he didn’t want me missing out on high school life but I wasn’t really that interested in going.

 I felt comforted at home among my family and carrying on a long distance romance by mail was harmless, yet somehow magical and romantic.  Girls would ask me to go out running around with them but I didn’t have any interest in it.  Besides, the ones who asked me didn’t have boyfriends and I had one, even though he was at college.  After a while, people quit asking me to do anything or go out with them anymore because they knew my answer would be no.           

  Finally, the time came for majorette tryouts.  I had been approached and urged over and over again by the cheerleaders to try out.  They told me if I would just show up, I would be chosen.  They had all been close friends with my brother and his best friend (my boyfriend) and said I would make a great cheerleader.  Had they heard me scream when I was young?  I was nice and said, “No, thank you.”  I had to be a majorette.  I went to majorette tryouts but much to my dismay, I was not selected.  I was so scared of rejection that I didn’t even go to school the next day.  I stayed home and my childhood friend called me from school to give me the news.  That hurled me into a deeper state of depression.  I felt I was just merely “existing” and I did nothing more than I had to on a day-by-day basis.  It was unbearable.  In the back of my mind, I knew I would have one more chance to try out.  It was a glimmer of hope I kept locked away in my heart, my secret place where my dreams and hopes were stored.  Two or three more majorettes would be selected at the end of the eleventh grade to compensate for ones who would be graduating….if I could just hold on mentally until then.      

  My tenth grade Spanish teacher showed us a film one day about the Peace Corps and I was deeply touched by what I saw.  I wrote a letter I planned to submit in an effort to join them.  I took it home to read to my mom.  She was standing at the stove cooking dinner with her back turned away from me and listened as I read.  I finished the letter and she said in her calm voice, ”Molly, why would you go halfway around the world to help someone when you can help people right here?”  She continued, “If you can just help the people around you, you will be doing a lot for humankind.”  She ended the conversation that night by stating I didn’t have to try to save the whole world.  But, something in me wanted to.  I wanted to help others and save them all.  From that moment on, I just pushed the notion of the Peace Corps deep down inside along with every other feeling that was not being allowed to manifest.  I thought, now what am I going to do?  Once again, I felt shot down with no clear purpose.  But, the fact remained that others around me were talking of college and life goals.  I had a friend who kept saying she was going to graduate early and go to Ohio State where her sister was.  She was about six feet tall and very bright.  Maybe, I thought, I could graduate early too.  But, what would I do?

 We had a neighbor who lived across the street who had a basketball court in their back yard.  Anyone was always welcome to come over to play.  I would go over there sometimes in the evening to shoot hoops.  We had played over there as children and it always took me back to an easier time when things didn’t seem to be so complicated.  I loved shooting hoops.  It helped me clear my thoughts.

  One evening, I jumped up in the air and stepped down on my ankle, twisting it.  Several hours later, it ballooned up so big we thought I had broken it.  I woke up in the middle of the night in excruciating pain.  My sister-in-law happened to be there and gave me a Darvon.  Well, let me tell you, it not only took the pain away from my ankle, but it took the hell away from my heart.  Hello! What was this?  I don’t know but I want some more!  Who cares about green nerve medicine?  Give me some more of those!  She ended up giving me a couple more then said, “No more.”  As it started to heal, I would hit it on the end of my bed so it would appear to get worse.  I wanted some more pills.  I had become very clouded and dark at the age of sixteen.  I was still able to put up a front and a fake persona, so much so that no one knew what was inside my mind and heart.  The sick feelings and thoughts I had as a child were starting to resurface and take over.

  The popularity I had attained for that brief time in the ninth grade started to wane within a two-year period.  At the same time, what it had done for me was give me something that made me feel good about myself.  I liked being the winner.  I just didn’t know how to get it back.  Every time I tried something, the door would shut in my face and I started to hate my life.

  Summer came again and it gave me a break from all the disappointments I suffered beginning high school.  The fair pulled into our town each year bringing excitement.  There would always be a “Miss Town Fair” crowned.  That summer I decided to run for the title.  Every girl would be sponsored by a woman’s league of some sort.  The goal was to see who could raise the most money either by selling tickets to the fair or by having car washes, spaghetti dinners, bake sales or anything else you could think of (that was legal) to raise funds.  The money collected would be donated for different projects in town and the most money raised determined the winner.  I rallied the “younger troops” in the neighborhood together and it was all out warfare to see who could raise the most money.  We all worked hard.  It was exciting and gave me something to think of instead of myself.  I was awarded second runner-up at the culmination of the fair.  I wasn’t a majorette but I got to ride in a convertible in the parade that summer with them marching right behind me.  I loved it.    

I still kept in touch with my long distance boyfriend but it was a stretch.  My dad had flown me down to his parents' house in Georgia the previous spring for Easter break.  Both sets of families wanted us to get married but I was starting to feel not much of anything for him.  I had achieved what I had set out to do by having an older guy fall for me and now I just wanted to shrink back and be a sixteen year old.  I no longer wanted all of the pressure of a deep, older relationship.  He had pressed me into having sex with him when we had last seen each other but that didn't happen.  What would my parents think about him if they knew that?  The thought of sex with him repulsed me.  Why couldn't things stay the way they were?  Wasn't heavy kissing enough?  Did every guy have to have sex?  It was really over for me in my heart but not in his or our families' hearts.  I had successfully convinced everyone previously that we could just get married and live on love...Was I going to have to follow through with my declarations?  The ache started coming back at the thought of it.  How was I going to get out of this?