The Stalker Inside: Erotomania

It was the end of a long day when my fellow English teacher and I stood in a destroyed but quiet classroom behind matching desks and enjoyed the companionship of adults. She looked pensive, more so than usual, and she began to tell me a story about her husband, a professor at the local college in the town where we worked. She was a part-time professor there too, and they had a spunky little girl who combined the wildness and charm of both of them. I particularly admired my colleague because she had such a happy marriage with a cherub for her and her husband to share, and they lived in the all-encompassing world of academia.

Why she was teaching middle school in a private K-12 country day school was beyond me. I understand it’s hard to get college jobs, but that seemed like a strange stretch of skills and patience. However, she had both and did okay. I had talked the principal into letting her have the upperclassmen because they were much closer to what life was like at college. I’m not so sure she liked the change, but she was adaptable–at least, as long as I was there. She quit the same year I did.

Anyhow, she told me that her husband had encountered a student in one of his classes that seemed to be a little “different” than most. She claimed to have a special relationship with my colleague’s husband and that they were close. Too close? She would write to him, stay after class, and her husband talked to her about the strangeness of how the woman was treating him as if they had something going on when there so obviously wasn’t.

My colleague was unnerved, I could tell, by this encounter, and I could understand why. Her husband was obviously doing nothing and was highly devoted to his free-spirited wife, enough to where he told her what was going on. I’m sure he was uncomfortable, too, as this woman’s emotions became more transparent and approval-seeking. She frowned as she explained that this woman saw herself in a relationship with her husband. How can this be?

“Well, be careful. The ‘relationship’ is real to her,” I intoned, intuiting more than I could truly explain to my fellow teacher. “In her mind, [your husband] has been sending her signals and signs, and she really thinks he has feelings for her.”

She looked at me strangely, wondering how someone could think there was a relationship when there truly wasn’t. Was her husband doing something to “egg” this woman on? He didn’t have to be at all. I brought up the term Erotomania, and she looked it up as I talked to her about what this woman could be thinking. In this student’s mind, this professor shared her feelings, and it would feel “natural” to her that they were together, if only privately or for short sprints of time. My colleague was fascinated because most people don’t encounter this phenomenon.

Almost everyone has had a crush or infatuation of some kind as one grows older. As much as that is normal, some people have a disorder where their crush becomes more than just that; it is conceived as a relationship built on stalking and fantasy. Moreover, erotomania is a type of disorder where a person focuses on someone as a love interest and believes that his/her interest is returned when it isn’t. The focus is so intense, though, and real to the subject that simple things can show how much a person loves him or her back. Even negative attention is misconstrued as a signal of love. The normalizing of fantasy becomes full-blown, and one thinks the relationship is central and strong.

I wish I could just say that it was intuition and my degree in Psychology that allowed me to understand erotomania, but that isn’t the only truth. I suffer from this myself. When I moved to Bellwood and started the 2nd grade, I met a boy who would stay in my thoughts for 40 years. In 4th grade, I remember rollerskating around in front of my house, thinking of this young man and wondering why I couldn’t get him out of my thoughts. I stopped skating abruptly as my mind cleared, and I made a stark realization at such a young age: this is what love must be like.

If he looked at me, then he must love me. Even as a young child, I realized that my thoughts may not be accurate, so I would ask friends and family that went to the school, too, if they thought he liked me. Most said they didn’t think so, and my brother, who was in the school’s band with this boy, clearly stated that the kid didn’t like me. However, I always had a reason they were all wrong: they were racist people who felt a girl of color and a white boy shouldn’t be together, and my brother was just being a jerk to me. That would be nothing new. Another Black girl that went to school with me, she and I were the only people of color for years, told me that she thought he saw me as “hot to trot.” I had no idea what that meant, and she explained he thought I was sexy. That reinforced my thoughts that he liked me and that he was just shy and chased around other girls because he wanted to make me jealous.

I kept a journal where I described fellow classmates, and he was saved for last. I wrote pages and pages of what he did in school. I tried to give him a note through a friend, and he said he’d thrown it out. He said this to her. I figured he threw it out thinking the note was from her and it had nothing to do with me. I had a friend give him a Valentine’s Day card in 7th grade that I had taken hours to pick out and inscribe. A girl in his class came to me and said, “You know that he’s going out with [so and so], right?” I pretended that I didn’t know, but I did. I just didn’t take it seriously, as he had to be as in love with me as I was with him, and we were trapped in a world that didn’t appreciate interracial romance. He had to go for the pretty blonde at the time because it was more acceptable.

I told myself many lies to keep the fantasy of this love affair alive. It felt satisfying until it wasn’t. When I went to a different high school, I suffered deeply. I fell into a deep depression and didn’t want to talk to anyone or do anything.

In gym class, the ball would sail past me as I sat there glumly, not caring that the girls yelled at me. I finally started talking to a girl who would be a friend for years before she moved back to India, and I told her about the boy and my love affair. I showed her his 8th-grade picture in my yearbook, and she was impressed, almost to the point that I was angry that she thought he was so hot.

I saw him twice after middle school. Once I had taken my sisters and their friends (who were also sisters) to McDonalds for a snack. He was there with his 8th grade girlfriend and a friend of his. I ignored them, offended that my love would be with someone else. My sister nudged me and whispered, “He’s looking this way.” I shrugged my shoulders and kept eating my sundae. They followed us for a while and I couldn’t stand to see him with the girl for too long and I left them to go home. The same sister who had whispered before told me he showed up at the same park we played at and was kissing the girl. I was glad I didn’t stick around. The next time I saw him he was in front of me in the same McDonald’s drive thru. I was looking at this boy’s face framed in his rearview mirror thinking he’s the best looking boy I had ever seen. It had been years since I’d laid eyes on this boy, and I almost had a heart attack when I realized it was him. He stared back at me and looked terrified. Perhaps I was too good a stalker?
Memories

Forty years later, he is still on my mind even though I’m married and lots of life has happened. I tried to find him about 10 years ago, and I happened to mention that I wrote him a note to my doctor, and she immediately said don’t ever do that again. That’s when I realized it wasn’t just a note or some harmless gesture; I was contacting someone who hadn’t thought about me in 30 years. We weren’t friends in school and ran in different crowds altogether. He had 3 girlfriends (that I knew about) between 5th and 8th grade, none of whom were me. They didn’t even look like me, with all 3 being pretty blondes. So why did I think he’d be dying to see me again and hear from me? He has a type as he’s been married for over 20 years to a pretty blonde and has two children. Don’t ask me how I know…

What is Erotomania?

It’s three times more likely to involve women admirers than men. Most likely, this type of disorder would start just after puberty, when concepts of love and an idealized love object would take shape. For me, it started a bit sooner than that. Some people seem to be able to form these types of bonds before puberty. Mary V Seeman, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto, Canada, in her article “Erotomania and Recommendations for Treatment,” asserts that wanting to be loved isn’t such an outlandish desire. Still, the idea that one is in a loving relationship with someone who doesn’t even realize it or possibly even knows who one is shows the “mania” portion of the disorder. The admired is usually someone of a higher social status, like a star or someone famous, and the feelings of admiration and love increase as these characteristics in the admired do:

physical attractiveness
perceived authority
socioeconomic status
general renown

(Seeman, 2015). A professor would definitely have the “perceived authority” and “renown” to trigger this phenomenon. For myself, I was a child, and so was he when this was triggered for me. However, I did perceive him as one of the more “popular” boys in the class, and I predicted his future success, which he has found as an adult. Also, I thought he was the best-looking boy I had seen then; in other words, physical attraction was a big deal.

The disorder comes with its delusions. The admirer usually faced social rejection or isolation with little to no relationship experience. To save some self-love, they resort to fantasy and imagine that a “superior being” loves them and is as committed as they are. Due to this preoccupation with a need that isn’t being met, the admirer becomes overly interested in their own needs and hyper-aware of what they deem as romantic cues, be they positive or negative. The professor gave no sign to his admirer of a loving relationship, yet his student figured things out in her own way and assigned any and all gestures to romance despite the lack thereof. It was the same for me. Any look I got was his admiration of me, also. I sent him notes that he openly rejected, but I made excuses for why he would do so. He was terrified of me, and I imagined it was because he was so attracted to me that he didn’t know how to handle it. However, I was a stalker that I’m sure he didn’t know how to handle at such a young age. I didn’t even realize this until the doctor told me to never write him again; I thought my letters were going to someone who had feelings for me, too. I didn’t see myself as a stalker until it was years and years later.

Mainly, this disorder occurs when someone faces “heightened emotional distress,” a recent loss of some kind, or other emotional vulnerability. The student mentioned earlier might have been distressed at dealing with the class the professor was in charge of or college life in general. I can’t remember any distress I felt when I started feeling things for this boy in 4th grade, but I stated that I was the only one of two black children in my class. This can easily lead to feelings of social rejection and isolation that would have me attached to what I perceive as a romantic ideal and who might have shown some interest–or none, but I perceived it anyway.

For such a vulnerable person, perception is faulty at best and downright wrong at worse. There’s lots of “wishful thinking” and imagining what seems just within reach when it isn’t. Unfortunately for myself (and I hope NOT for that student), the delusion of affection can become “fixed” as it can serve an “important intrapsychic purpose.” For me, the boy I thought could secretly love me too became a permanent dweller of my dreams and fantasies and has never left my side, virtually. That may be why it was hard for me to perceive that he doesn’t even know who I am anymore. For that student’s sake and the family that she could affect in more ways than one, I hope that she can break free of the delusions before it becomes the support that she feels she needs and can’t live without. These imagined affairs aren’t just bandaids; they are your self-esteem. Someone of such grandeur loves you, and therefore you are as “grand.” Suddenly, you are on top of the world, and you don’t want a therapist to pull you back into reality. There’s only one problem: it’s a long way down when you fall–and you will, one way or another.

The Erotomaniac (that seems a strange thing to be called) is naturally isolated, and this only serves to reinforce the delusions as they don’t have to answer questions or revise their dreams to match a reality that is forced upon them.

Egocentric bias or self-centrality refers to the assumption that one is the center of all actions, and gestures must refer to oneself. When this boy looked around when my class was walking by, it was to look for me, of course. It would never occur to me that he would have any other intention.

One would think that a person suffering from this type of disorder would have low self-esteem since one is using the love object as an esteem booster. However, low self-esteem does not mean the person isn’t self-focused or self-absorbed. There’s even something called intentionality bias that happens where nothing is just a natural occurrence but is meant to form messages from the universe or whomever. If we ended up in the same place, it was an opportunity or a sign. I didn’t believe so much in that as I knew we lived in the same area and went to the same elementary and middle school. We were supposed to attend the same high school, but his parents put him in a private school.

According to an article by Gaia Sampogna et al. in the International Review of Psychiatry in 2020, this condition is “chronic” and resistant to treatment because of the need for the love object.

The delusions create faulty or false perceptions where all actions by the love object are seen as amorous, including refusals and negativity. The erotomanic is happy in the delusion and experiences a heightened ego and sense of self–so why would this person seek help? This disorder doesn’t cause bizarre delusions or overly erratic behavior. How many people on social media stalk their friends, interests, exes, etc.? Most people try to read “signs” and “guess” what someone feels about them; they just aren’t delusional about it and will not have this type of fake relationship that occurs in isolation.

So How Does Someone Get Treatment?

Trust. The difference for someone with this disorder can be how well they trust the person attempting treatment. The imagined love affair serves a strong purpose for them by tackling incompleteness, unworthiness, rejection, and loneliness. Why would one seek help if the love object and interest are fulfilling their needs? After a while, admiring from afar won’t be enough, and the admirer will want physical closeness. That will not happen because the love object doesn’t even know they’re in this type of relationship. The letdown can be catastrophic to the admirer’s ego.

However, it’s a necessary evil. The admirer can’t go on in an irrational, “fake” relationship no matter how good it makes them feel at the time. As therapy begins, it’s important to build up the admirer’s self-esteem through understanding, emotional support, and social and emotional skill building.

Once trust is established between the admirer and their therapist, the admirer has to tell their story in full detail. Between them and the therapist, they will hash out the cognitive biases, the impulsive conclusions, the wrong interpretations, and the egocentric delusions and set the record straight where it had not been before.

An admirer has to learn that stuff can happen just by chance and have nothing to do with them. They need to go back through their “playlist” of signs and romantic gestures and realize what they really were, their egocentric cognitive tendency to centralize their involvement and cognitive bias that makes them think it’s all about them no matter what.

This sounds easy, but it’s destroying a narrative someone has lived with and believes in. Years could have passed or simply days, but the story is central and tied to someone’s sense of self. The longer the fantasy has survived as someone’s supposed reality, the harder it will be to be pulled back from the edge–or to be fished out of the abyss, if it comes to that. And just think: the person being rescued will resist the rescue!

This type of disorder isn’t a diagnosis in itself (the DSM-V has it under delusional disorders, and schizophrenia has to be ruled out; the difference is that erotomania doesn’t have prominent hallucinations, and the delusions that have taken hold are only related to the admiration and nothing else). In fact, most who suffer from this disorder (including myself) still function and don’t show overtly bizarre or odd behavior. The mania tends to be in short periods or blips and related only to how long we are in the holds of the fantasy. Depression is nothing new for this disorder as this is a natural inclination for the admirer, and the fantasy depends on keeping the delusion alive. Most admirers are resistant to letting go and allowing treatment to take hold.

Treatment could include cognitive behavior therapy, medication, and some risk management for stalking and harassing behavior that could be taking place. Therapy has never worked for me, as I expect too much from it. I suppose romantic relationships aren’t the only ones I have high demands for. Medication has helped me with anxiety and keeping the runaway thoughts from controlling me. I have learned what haunts me–my own irrational attachments. When I saw the ghost that haunts me, it became the grown-up version of the boy, drenched and stiff, following me no matter what other relationships I have or where I go.

About the time I tried to contact my love interest, I started having dreams that he was chasing me. In the dreams, I just knew that I had to get away from him, and I would do anything to get away. Other players in the dream have warned me he’s coming and we all go running off.

I’m not sure what I thought he was going to do when he caught me, I just knew I had to get away. I used to wake up wondering why I would want to escape from the boy I thought I loved. Then I realized that it wasn’t him I was trying to escape from but the irrational love that consumed me and took up too much of my time and energy. Subconsciously, I had realized that my delusions were trapping me and I wanted out. The dreams went on for years, until I couldn’t escape anymore. He used to be far behind me and I could easily outrun him. Then, it seemed he’d be right behind me and tackle me immediately, not letting me up no matter how I screamed and fought. I suppose my subconscious self was desparately trying to work out my delusions and showing me how strong and dangerous they were. That’s all I felt in those dreams–danger.
BTW

Thankfully, I have some insight into why I’ve held on to feelings that should long ago have dissipated as a first crush and nothing else. I hope that that student also learns to deal with her feelings and not disrupt the life of a happy family too much. Though I still have lingering moments of delusion, I promised myself there would be no contact with the young man who is now older with kids the age we were when my delusion was in full swing. I only wish him well.

References

Seeman, Mary V. “Erotomania and Recommendations for Treatment.” Psychiatric Quarterly. 6 Oct 2015 87: 355-364.

Sampogna, Gaia, Francesca Zinno, Vincenzo Giallonardo, Mario Luciano, Valeria Del Vecchio and Andrea Fiorillo. “‘The de Clerambault Syndrome’: more than just a delusional disorder?” International Review of Psychiatry. 2020. 32.5-6: 385-390.

A Year in A Life: IFS

When MS called me to interview me for the English position at the Islamic Foundation School, I was in bed. I woke up quickly, put on my professional voice, and answered her multitude of questions as I lay in bed.

You think you know until you know you don’t know.

I applied for a job at a private, Islamic school not understanding what this would entail for me. That is how I live my life–jump in, head first, and then discover what it is I’ve committed to. Exciting.

Photo by Alexander Suhorucov on Pexels.com

Comfort zone? Who needs one when the world is so wide and so different. Jump in!

She had SO many questions. The questions went on and on for what seemed like forever. I should have realized then that MS was going to be a handful as a supervisor, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I wanted to teach. If you’re a teacher, you’re used to the ridiculous amount of questions you’re asked. Some of the questions won’t even pertain to what you do. For instance, on the state test to become certified, they asked me about elementary classes when I’m not interested and will never teach elementary school. It was also about science, which I have nothing to do with as an English teacher. I’ve stated before, and I’ll state it again, that teachers go through crazy amounts of inspection to teach people’s children. I understand that we are entrusted with today’s youth, but it’s not in a dark alley somewhere. We’re always accountable every day all the time; people hear of teachers messing with students, but that’s because it’s a salacious story to report. Therefore, it seems common, but it’s not a common occurrence at all. I satisfied all of MS’s questions, and she let me know that I would have to come in and meet with a committee to answer more questions. Again, this is a common thing for teachers to interview while several people are in the room, including Board members, administrators, department heads, team leaders, other teachers, etc. Even students. I kind of like those interviews where students are asking me questions. They’re as nervous as I am and what a strange position to be put in: to have to evaluate an adult who wants to teach them.

It was a bright, hot day when I showed up at the Islamic Foundation School or IFS. It’s in a busy, older neighborhood West of Chicago. The neighborhood is crowded with middle-class homes, and to get to the school one has to do some fancy maneuvering through tightly packed streets. I was wearing a blouse and a skirt, with pantyhose and everything, carrying a portfolio with a pad and copies of my resume.

The school is not impressive to look at (see Shayan Beg’s 2017 photo to the right). It grew out of the mosque, which appears more utilitarian than many mosques that I’ve seen. I interviewed on a Friday, the day they hold services at the mosque, which is on the far, right end. The office I interviewed in was right next to where people were going to worship.

I was early, so I had to wait outside the office with lots of people milling around me. Concordia University, my alma mater, is a Christian university that makes its students study religion–9 hours worth (3 classes). One class I took was World Religion, and in this class, I studied Islam along with Judaism, Buddhism, and Christianity. I thought I was so worldly. Alas, no. There I was in a knee-length skirt at a mosque during their prayer service time. I couldn’t be more inappropriate until someone came up to me and asked me what I was doing there.

He was handsome and kind looking as he eyed me, this stranger in their midst who appeared wholly inappropriate and lost-looking, I’m sure. I stood up to talk to him, letting him know I was there to interview for a teaching position. Pure instinct led me to reach out my hand for a firm shake, something I would prefer as a greeting. He backed up quickly, a bit of shock stretching his features, as he held up his hands and quickly stated, “I can’t touch you.” I would learn that in the Muslim faith if a woman isn’t your relative or wife, you aren’t to touch her. Later, I would meet his lovely wife and their super-pretty, smart daughter. At that moment, I found out I was 0 for 2. The knee-length skirt is normally considered modest, but not at a mosque where no leg is to be shown. He spoke to me politely and tried to make me feel more comfortable, but I was in over my head.

Flower pattern design by Olga Pylaieva is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0

I was ushered into a room of men and women, the women in hijabs and the men dressed in traditional, American formal wear. They shot questions at me again for a while.

In the end, MS and I took a tour around the campus.

MS was a handsome woman covered from the top of her head to her feet, with olive skin and a face stretched tightly over curvy bones. I liked her right away because she reminded me of the seriousness and strength of my mother (see Elfriede’s story in All About Me post 1). What bothered me was that I couldn’t read her at all. Very few people are closed to my ability to understand and feel for them. I’m a natural empath and can usually read things like mood, desires, emotions, etc. Usually, I can. There have been cases where I was caught off guard by someone’s emotions or desires, but it happens so rarely that it shocks me deeply when it does. With MS, the best I can say is that she looked “tight”, so stretched that she had no expression. Some people are not open with their emotions and have this affectless expression that goes beyond being tired or hopeless–it shows nothing. My mother I could read for the most part because I suppose I was close enough to her, but MS–it wasn’t good at first because her lack of feeling was a bit on the disconcerting side. However, like I said, I started out liking her earnestness and her dedication to the school.

The school was not cute. That’s the best way I can describe it. It was one story, the gym towards the front, a bunch of vanilla rooms to teach in, trailers out back for more rooms, and a moldy basement for announcements and a teacher’s lounge. It was the first time I was to teach in a trailer, but it wouldn’t be the last.

MS and I started as friends, or at least as much as a new boss and nervous new employee can be friends. It was friendly, let’s say. She confided that they felt an “American” should teach English (someone not of their community is what she meant–Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Muslims). They hired me and an older, white gentleman who was intelligent, quiet, and very sweet. I would teach Junior and Senior English and the Speech class. He had the other half.

The trailers or “portables” were at the back of the school. I decorated my part of the trailer and got ready for school to start. I was told that I didn’t have to wear a hijab, but I had to wear my medium-length hair up, no tight or revealing clothing, and no leg showing. They weren’t too hard on me, but they did make one Muslim teacher of European descent (she was Polish) put on a different covering because they felt her original one was too tight. I had seen it and it wasn’t that bad. However, the school’s standards were not my standards. I would learn this the hard way.

The Muslim faith, like any organized and culturally-based religion, has a myriad of ways to worship. Some organizations are more conservative than others. I would meet people at IFS who were very modern and worldly. I would also meet people who were super strict and didn’t want anything to do with a modern culture that wasn’t their own. The school was stuck in the middle of these views and opted towards the harshest of believers: no photos, birthdays, music, dancing, or touching of any kind. If a parent complained, a rule was made to appease that parent’s sensibilities, no matter how strict.
BTW

The trailer I was assigned to was divided into two parts: one for me and one for another teacher. This other teacher couldn’t stand me. I’m not sure why; I guess I made too much noise for her. She would complain about me and didn’t talk to me. I can think back now on the harsh looks some of the employees and mosque members gave me as I was on campus. They were decidedly unfriendly and never let me forget that I was an outsider. At the time, I didn’t care. I was there for the students.

I had MS’s daughter in my senior English class. I liked that she was softer, but she had the same determination as her mother. Like I’ve said, I admire this type of authoritative personality for the most part because my mother had the “bull in the china shop” drive most of the time, too. Still, MS was missing one thing that my mother had: heart. The passion came from her desire to be “perfect” in every respect, especially with her Muslim faith. So, we couldn’t celebrate birthdays and I was scolded dearly when the students threw me a surprise birthday party and I refused to punish them. I was told my behavior was discussed at the board meeting like that was supposed to scare me. I didn’t see how that was my fault since it was a surprise birthday party that their children initiated. If anyone should know that they aren’t allowed to celebrate, it would be their kids. It was my job to put the kids back into place and reprimand them severely for the birthday party. I couldn’t. It was done innocently and not as an affront to the faith.

When I played music (the noise!), I was reprimanded yet again. My classes rest heavily on discussions as we study literature, and I got in trouble for allowing the girls and boys in class to discuss together. On a side note, the boys were so mad that the girls were talking back to them. Sometimes the disagreements were hilarious because the boys had just never been talked back to in that sort of way by girls. And the girls were good at discussion and rhetoric. They knew how to handle the boys who figured their maleness was enough to dominate a discussion. They were wrong. Nonetheless, I had to learn and abide by the rules.

the boys and girls could not sit together. The boys would be on one side of the classroom and the girls on the other. They were not to be close together and they definitely could not touch.
the boys and girls could not speak to each other. My discussions, of course, became a problem, but I refused to back down from this and even MS had to realize that discussion was a necessary part of the class. Therefore, we compromised and they were allowed to talk in class, just not directly to each other. The comments had to be directed to “everyone” or myself, though they may be answering the opposite sex person in the class. This was awkward and just downright strange, but we made it work mostly by bending the rule.
No birthday recognition, no music, no movies that were not approved, and no questionable material for them to read. I did break some of these rules a bit as I don’t tend to censor much. It was more like I bent them as I found ways to do what I wanted when I wanted.

I’m sure there were more rules that I blocked from memory. And to be fair to the boys, they were brought up to be the golden children of their families. I won’t say the girls weren’t valued because many of them were, but they were in a different league and the two were not competing. For instance, the boys had a uniform, but their uniforms had variety. They were able to wear slacks or shorts to school. The girls had one uniform. They had skirts down to the floor and button-up shirts with the hijab.

The girls wore jeans or other pants under this long skirt and I always felt sorry for them to have so many layers on. When it was just us girls, I allowed them to take off their skirts. I got caught for this a few times, and MS was not thrilled with me letting them cut loose for a little while, even if it was only us girls. I had a covering for the window on my door, but MS forbid me to cover the door. She wanted to peek in on me when she felt like it.

One day she angrily came up to me and demanded to know if a girl had shown her stomach in my class.

I shrugged nonchalantly. Yes, one girl did lift up her shirt and showed off her belly ring. It was only us girls, but this was apparently still considered obscene. Looking into MS’s tight, angry face (that emotion she showed well), I lied, “Well, maybe a bit of a stomach showed as she adjusted her skirt, but that was it.” The girls learned they could trust me and my room become the hangout for the girls who couldn’t take the pressure anymore of having to be perfect.

They were not allowed to pull up their skirt for any reason, including going upstairs. The trailer had stairs that girls tripped up many times thanks to the heavy plaid skirts they had that for some hit the ground. I was not allowed to change this rule even if it meant that some girls were injured. One girl stands out in my memory because I couldn’t help her thanks to the cultural prejudice that existed in that community. I had her and her sister in the same class (I believe the older girl was held back for reasons never disclosed or not remembered). The older sister had a body tremor, a pronounced one, that caught my eye quickly. Her head would move involuntarily for large stretches of time. She would have trouble walking, some days more than others. It would kill me to see her try to navigate with that long skirt and the stairs. More than once she tripped up into my trailer, once really hurting herself. I quietly told her to pick up her skirt if she needed, just don’t go past her ankles, but it was easy to get caught doing this.

I went to MS with my concerns about the girl’s body tremors (they were more than tics) and expressed that there had to be something serious, something neurologically wrong to interfere with walking and causing her head to shake constantly. There were times it was hard for her to speak. I was told to mind my own business as the family is a good Muslim family and don’t want the doctors to label their child with any type of disease. She was not allowed to lift her skirt and they didn’t check into her medical issues. I felt helpless. But not always.

The high school gathered for morning announcements in the biggest space they had–the basement. We would sit together and hear any news we needed and then pray. I loved to watch the prayer and participated sometimes with open hands pointed towards the clouds. The humbleness of the lowered chin and the exposed, vulnerable palms of one’s hands always made me feel warm and happy. All of these souls with one, single mission and show of absolute love and faith. I didn’t always go to the meetings as sometimes I stayed in my classroom and used the extra, quiet time for preparation or just my sanity. What started to happen was some of the girls would stay with me in the room, telling MS that they were sick or whatever to be allowed to stay there. One day, one of the girls came limping into the room and told me that when she stood up after the meeting, something snapped in her knee. I tried to look at her knee, but she had all of those layers on! When I felt her knee, it was seriously deformed. The plate that sits on top was off to the side.

This girl’s mother used to work at IFS, but she was fired because she spoke up too much against the administration. She worked in the computer lab and was a really close friend of mine. Her daughter also was close to me. It was this woman’s husband and the daughter’s father who greeted me the first day when I sat in the mosque lobby waiting for my interview. On the last day of the mother’s teaching career at IFS, she asked me to take care of her baby. And so I would. I would have anyway, but I always remembered this promise.

I sent her to the office with someone to help her walk. She came back a short time later with nothing. She said they wouldn’t let her take the ice pack with her out of the office and the “nurse” just sent her back. I figured the nurse was really someone’s grandparent volunteer with no training whatsoever. I could see the amount of pain she was in and the deformity could not be ignored.

I asked her to call her mother and have her mother take her to the emergency room immediately. She didn’t have a phone and now she was shy about going to the office since they didn’t treat her very well the first time, so I pulled out my cell phone and told her to call her mother and have her come get her now. Later, I found out the girl’s knee cap had become displaced and if she had continued to walk on it, she would have crippled herself. I couldn’t help but think that I had helped her despite the school. It was a strange victory over MS and the powers that be at IFS. I wished I didn’t feel like an adversary, but that’s what it turned into.

It was me versus MS. That first year, she demanded that I move inside the school, close to her office. I didn’t mind leaving the trailer, but I definitely felt it was for the wrong reasons. I moved inside like she asked. Whenever the students needed something, they came to me for help. There were things I could help them with and some things I couldn’t. For example, I had this sweet girl in my class whose younger brother also went to this school. She and her friends were in the hall by her locker when her little brother came up to say hi to her. The girl was suspended for this contact with a boy (her brother wasn’t, though). Remember the rule? Girls can’t talk to the boys, even if they’re siblings. Her brother was in elementary school and it was her BROTHER so I didn’t think it was harmful in any way. I begged MS not to suspend the girl, but she wouldn’t listen to me.

The seniors were going on a field trip and they were so excited. That is until the girls found out that they weren’t invited. The school felt it was too tricky to take the girls off-campus. That was it for me. I demanded that MS take the girls or cancel the trip altogether. We compromised and the boys went on their trip and the girls had their own separate trip. Fine. I thought for sure I would end up on the girl’s trip, but she sent me with the boys. I still had a great time. I remember that one of the games at the pizza place we went to had an actress from Star Trek on it wearing one of the form-fitting outfits that the future seemed to hold for us mere mortals. All of her curves showed and I was so embarrassed for these boys who normally get no interaction with girls. Or at least they’re not supposed to.

Some other crazy stories:

When one goes into the women’s bathroom, there are what look like watering cans with super long necks beside the toilets. I remember being very confused. There were also low troughs by the sinks. I later learned that during a woman’s period, the blood is considered unclean and shouldn’t be touched, so they have to use the watering can to clean themselves. Also, for prayer, your hands and feet have to be clean. So, the trough is used to clean one’s feet easily.
If a girl was on her period, she was not allowed in the mosque. They had to put the students somewhere during prayer, so I ended up keeping them in my room and we would talk, eat, watch movies, etc. MS grew angry again as the girls would gather in my room during prayers. That’s when I realized that girls would be on their periods for weeks, skipping prayers to stay in my room. I felt bad about that, but that was not something I was going to police. Once, we were watching a movie happily, the math teacher with me, too, and MS came storming in and demanded to know what was going on. I didn’t even look away from the movie when I said, “We’re watching a movie.” I guess she wasn’t expecting this type of reply because she just stood there stewing for a minute and then stayed for a while. I don’t know what she thought we were doing, but it was free time and the movie was okay to show. We just wanted to socialize for a while.
The school banned Harry Potter books because of witchcraft. I believe they did finally allow students to read it as long as parents were okay with it. I tried to find a movie for all of us to watch together and Finding Nemo was banned because the fish didn’t wear clothes. (Sigh) You can’t make this stuff up.
Please discipline small children to help them understand they shouldn’t be rude to adults. I was sitting on the steps to my trailer one day, doing nothing, really, when a mother and her small child (maybe 3 years old) came walking by. As adults, we greeted each other nicely, but the little girl started shouting at me to get out of here. The child was screaming at me to leave! I remember looking horrified and I looked to the parent to explain to the little girl that I was where I was supposed to be and that she shouldn’t command an adult, but the mother only laughed and stated how cute her daughter was. She watched as her daughter demanded I get out of there and leave them alone. I just sat there, stunned. It wasn’t cute; it was just plain rude. Every other time she saw me on campus, she yelled at me the same way and the mother always laughed. I never did.
Relationships were common though they were punished greatly if found out (at least the girls were). The boys were not blamed; the wayward girls threatened their innocence, I suppose. I had a blind spot right behind my room (my room had a back door that lead outside for some odd reason) and every once and a while a couple would go back there to be alone. They weren’t doing anything terrible, I know for sure, but they weren’t supposed to be alone together period at the school. This blind spot was the only place where prying eyes couldn’t catch them. Otherwise, my room was watched from the windows outback and the hallway windows. The computer teacher’s sweet daughter was in a relationship with one of the most prized sons. She looked like a human doll with fine, porcelain features and he was very handsome from a rich family. I tried to help them keep the secret, but it was found out whether I could help it or not. The harassment started immediately as this boy’s family did NOT want her near their precious lad. The school accused her of having an older boyfriend that would pick her up. That was her brother and her parents’ confirmed it. Of course, there was a problem with her knee. Her mother was let go in the middle of the year. The boy faced no issues.
Be careful what you wish for…sometimes it doesn’t end the way you think it would. The girls were not allowed near the boys or to have romantic relationships. What transpired then that blew us all away? The girls started being touchy-feely with each other. They weren’t breaking any rules since it was the same sex, but it was obvious that they were experimenting and seeking some type of physical solace. They would lay on each other, hold each other, and be on each other’s laps. It could get steamy and weird, really. Even I was taken aback and not much shocks me. It would be different if the activity was gay, but it wasn’t. They were just finding comfort in each other and it would turn intimate quickly. Maybe it was some strange byproduct of the girls not being able to express themselves with boys? I don’t know.

The science fair was rigged. Who rigs a middle and high school science fair? They did. The science teacher came to me almost crying as MS was beginning to harass her by sitting in her class all of the time and yelling at her openly in front of students. The science teacher had put together a fair for middle and high school students and the school insisted on certain students winning. She didn’t want to cheat for them, but they awarded the prizes that they wanted to anyway and then harrassed the poor woman for the rest of the year. I give her props for hanging in there.
A group of girls was accused of cheating on the standardized test and were forced to retest though there was no proof they cheated. They searched the girls before they took the test, but still said they must have cheated because the results were so similar. They came crying to me for help, and I tried to explain that they had studied the same materials together and that’s probably why the results were so similar. I had helped them find the resources to study so I knew what happened. It didn’t matter, they were branded as cheaters and had to take the test again after being searched and sitting far apart. Of course, the outcome was the same.
The Principal. Let me just say this: he started off the year speaking to the entire school, from pre-K to seniors. How did he do this? Powerpoint. I love a good Powerpoint, but the 3-year-olds didn’t. I never understood why he would insist on speaking for so long with a Powerpoint the little ones couldn’t even read! He did my evaluation and came into the speech class. The class and I discussed the next speech they were going to do and I thought it was a great conversation with good feedback. I ended up with low scores and I was shocked. Apparently, he didn’t like that I didn’t lecture. He preached lectures and simple memorization. I was not that kind of teacher. That’s why the math teachers scored so high, and the teachers like myself were left to the wind and told to shape up and stop the frivolity.

The things I still think about the most are the students and MS. I worked at IFS after 9-11 and it would’ve been easy to look at the students, teachers, parents, etc. as something that is foreign. But they weren’t. I loved the girls and boys and I would fiercely protect them if someone tried to say anything about them. I didn’t have the same political views all of the time, but that didn’t bother me. It bothered some of them that I wouldn’t say anything against Israel. These were the adults, though. With their children, it was much simpler.

MS once took me aside after a lesson she observed on poetry and asked me not to talk about Islam. I admit that I was hurt by this; all I said was that the Koran was poetry and some of the most beautiful in the world. How could this be bad in any way? I must admit that the kids were sheltered, though. I had taken the girls to see a performance on stage and they were terrified of the differently-abled people that also attended. I didn’t blame them because they should be more exposed to how the world really is as we are all different.

And MS. The principal job became vacant for the following year and I thought for sure she would take it. When she didn’t, I heard it was because she wanted it too much and that was a sin. That always bothered me. Not that I necessarily thought she’d be a great principal, but I thought she would deserve it if she worked hard enough for the school. They did get a woman in the job so it wasn’t so much sex discrimination, but I always felt she should have gotten a chance. Maybe this is strange to say since I ended up leaving because of her. When the principal said he would renew my contract for the following year, I said only if MS isn’t an administrator. He said she would be (of course), so I left the school after only a year. It wasn’t that I hated MS, quite the opposite. I just didn’t agree with how she ran things. It’s not for me to say it’s wrong, but I will say there were things that went against my own code of ethics. In the end, I was true to myself.

The Burst Bubble: First-Year Teaching

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch on Pexels.com

Getting your first job right after college is scary. Who will hire someone who has no experience outside of internship or student-teaching? One just spent 4 years (or more) preparing for a job and now it’s up to that person to get the job. And it isn’t always easy.

So, when I had a chance to interview at Walther Lutheran High School for an English teaching position, I was thrilled. I loved working with the English teacher whom I had observed earlier, and it was a good job to start with. The school was small, close to my house in Bellwood, and I was used to the Lutherans. I liked going to chapel and having the prayer. Right across from my first classroom right upstairs was the small chapel with its cozy feel and stained-glass windows.

I don’t remember the interview, which is strange since most of the time interviews are very hard for teachers. Often they are multiple people peppering you with many questions as the interviewers look over your resume. I was assigned the room at the end of the hall by the stairs at the front of the school (across from the Chapel and overlooking the parking lot). I walked into a sour-looking room with chairs hooked to the desks and chalkboards. However, I still had that clean bubble of a first-year teacher wrapped tightly around me and I immediately asked if I could get the room painted. They said I could paint it, so my husband and I spent a day whitewashing the walls. It did look better and I kept my bubble intact.

I found out that I was allegric to chalk pretty quickly. Who thought this was a good idea for classrooms, anyway? Yes, it erases, but the dust is a mess, no one wants to clean the erasers, and you get chalk all over your clothes. My fingers would tingle and then go numb as I handled the stuff. Dry erase boards have their issues, too, but I’ll take them any day.
BTW

I spent several hours covering dingy billboards with bright-colored, expensive paper and making colorful scenes for students to enjoy. I put up posters, decorations, and learning tools, and stocked the room with good books. There was no doubt that I was excited about being a teacher.

I was to be the Sophomore English teacher, including those Freshmen bright enough to move up a level. I would also teach American Mosaic (a diversity in literature elective) and a Folklore/Mythology class that was actually a pretty awesome topic to study. Well, it was for me.

My department chair was a wizened, veteran school teacher; you know the kind, with 30 years of teaching under her belt and the tough looks of a stereotypical coach. I remember going to her seeking guidance for the folklore and mythology class since I didn’t have much of a background in this. She told me to “google” it in so many terms. I was dumbfounded.

The truth is, they don’t teach you how to teach literature. How do you structure lessons? I did it for student-teaching, I suppose, but those kids actually did the homework. What if they don’t have a clue what you’re talking about because they didn’t bother to do any homework? What then?

Someone who wasn’t a teacher must have designed the desks in my room and put me through a living hell that first year. The chairs swung back and forth and I can’t tell you how many times I would turn to the class only to be looking at the backs of students’ heads. I put the chairs in rows, and the students would move them to where they wanted. I asked them not to, they did it anyway. Some boys in the back rows thought it was funny to take the staples out of my bulletin boards one at a time. I finally grew so tired of it that I sadly stood in front of the class and quietly explained to them how much I had worked to make the class a nice place to be, including 3 hours per bulletin board, only to have people destroy them in minutes. That was the one time that they did show some remorse. But only once…

At first, I would use the book to help with questions and try to get a discussion going. However, the students would come into class and completely ignore me and talk as loud as they could with each other. Mind you, there were upwards of 35 students in a room at a time, so the noise was deafening. I would have to scream at the top of my lungs, waving my arms like a crazy person, to get their attention and have them be quiet for the lessons. There were always a few that wouldn’t shut up no matter what I did or said. Students would tell me to my face that I’m a horrible teacher and they wish they had the teacher from last year. They would tell me they don’t want to be in my class and one student blatantly said, “I don’t care about what you say,” when I asked him to sit down so we could start class. When I asked for respect in a respectful way, they told me I didn’t deserve it. And I wasn’t supposed to take it personally.

When they snapped at me, I would tell them to get a degree in teaching first, and then they can critique me. Maybe grow up some? I didn’t say that though. I would try new tactics to get the students to do their work, which is what I ultimately cared about. I wanted them to learn something whether they liked it or not. They wanted to strip me down to the lowest possible stance and then do whatever they wanted to do. Then, when they are caught doing the wrong thing, blame it on me because I’m the teacher and should be controlling them. It’s quite the rollercoaster ride.

I especially had issues with a senior boy who disrespected me every chance he got. He wouldn’t sit in his seat and would talk whenever he wanted to. He never did the homework or participated in class. He was the one who said he didn’t care about what I had to say when I asked him to sit down. When I wrote him up for that, he told the Dean that I was the problem and that I should leave him alone. Really?

The Dean arranged a meeting between the boy and myself with the Dean there to help figure out how we could get along better. The boy outright told the Dean he didn’t respect me and he didn’t feel that he had to. I was always asking him to do things like sit in his seat and answer questions, and I would mark him late if he showed up late. The Dean reiterated that these were things I was supposed to do. This Dean was clever and experienced. He reminded the young man that his mother is a police officer and if some random man talked back to her and disrespected her, then he wouldn’t like it. I was no different; I had a job to do and he was standing in my way. He was slightly more respectful after this talk. He isn’t the only student that felt it was okay to speak to me any way that he/she felt like, not understanding the idea of respecting one’s elders or authority.

I had a senior girl take my elective course and when I insisted that she pay attention and get some work done, she told me she hated the class and didn’t want to be there. I just remember staring at her, thinking she has a lot of nerve considering it was an elective course. You ELECTED to be here. If it’s not what you want, then why are you in the class? That made no sense to me. But then, the saying goes that the one thing people are willing to pay for and not get is an education.

I would write and grade these elaborate quizzes to get the students to at least listen to me in class, if not read on their own at home. I would spend all day at school fighting for them to pay attention and learn something, then I would go home and pass out for about 2 hours, eat something for dinner with my husband, and then work on preparing for the next day until almost midnight when I would just go to bed. I’d do that every day. I would be so exhausted that I would cry all the time, my anxiety so terrible that one day on the street to school I pulled over and called a friend of mine sobbing, telling her that I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t go into that building again with little to no passion left to fight the students who thought it was funny when I got chalk on my butt or to write that I lick assholes on the wall in pen, and even more horrible things on the desks–that I would have to clean behind them. I learned to concentrate and work through any distractions, which actually got me into trouble.

I was sitting at my desk while they were working on a quiz. I’m sure I was grading desperately or working on the next super hard quiz. I started to notice that there were giggles every now and then, but they were silly all the time so I didn’t think much of it. That is until the Superintendent came flying into my room and went to the seats by the windows and asked, “Who threw the books out the window?”

I’m horrified, of course, because it’s my class and I’m responsible, and my students were taking the books I had on the built-in shelves underneath the windows and throwing the heavy dictionaries out the window. The giggles were when I didn’t notice and they thought they’d gotten away with it.

A visitor to the school had been walking from the parking lot to the back of the school, underneath my classroom, when a heavy dictionary had come flying from the 2nd floor, just missing her. She could have been seriously hurt and the Superintendent was furious with the students and with me. I wasn’t trying to ignore them; I was trying to get some work done, but they weren’t the kind that could work quietly without a monitor who was closely watching their childish behavior. They did apologize to the shaken woman and they were really sorry. I just remember feeling like a failure at what I was trying to accomplish, but I wasn’t going to avoid the responsibility for what could have happened to the woman walking beneath the windows, and what did happen to my books. The Principal rattled off email after email telling me how incompetent I was, and I took it all, promising that it wouldn’t happen again and it didn’t.

I went through it all. An angry parent blamed me for her child not doing well in my class. I tried to explain that he wasn’t completing the work, but it was my fault that he wasn’t doing his homework or passing any of the tests because he didn’t bother to study. She came flying into my classroom, screaming at me and telling me how horrible I was and that her child wasn’t learning anything. I tried to explain to her what I expected of him and what he can do to do better in the class. She continued to blame me for everything going wrong as he sat there silently. The Dean rushed into the room at this point and sat with us. I guess someone had gone to the office and reported that a parent was yelling at me and he had come to help out. He did get her to be calmer and we were able to talk things through, but I was even more mortified when tears started streaming down my face in the middle of all of this. I didn’t want to cry and I tried very hard not to, but the tears came anyway and I was so embarrassed. I didn’t want her to think she had hurt me because she shouldn’t have that power. Anger and frustration cause pain for someone like me and I cry to express these emotions. If I’m hurt, I don’t tend to cry but go quiet and contemplative. So, I try to hide the tears but they came anyway.

She ended up leaving feeling okay about things, but I remember just feeling attacked. The student felt self-righteous because his mom had come and tore me a new one in front of him and the class I had in there at the time. His haughty attitude would affect things for the rest of the year. Later, I saw him in the neighborhood and he came running up to me so excited, “Mrs. Brown! I can’t believe it. It’s really you.” I stared at him, feeling the frustration bubbling up inside me. He was acting like he was seeing a celebrity he admired in real life, his smile a mile wide. I didn’t understand how he could be so positive when things were so negative with his mother and me. I was completely confused and it was hard for me to act happy to see him, but I hope I did.

I spent two years trying to get used to fighting students to do work, cafeteria duty, grading furiously, etc. I also learned to love teaching literature in my own way and sharing great lessons about things like Urban legends, folklore from many different cultures, diverse cultures, and how they view stories. I was supposed to coach girls basketball, but I was too weary to do so and they understood.

When we signed students up for classes for the next year, students flocked to my table to try to get my classes. I guess I turned out to be okay and I would go on to teach at different schools. I’m not sure why I had to traipse the course of Hell to get to what would be Heaven, but I guess it’s more important where you end up…Right?

Anxiety Disorder: Talk to Yourself!

So far, there has been no computer built that is faster than the brain and the nervous system. It may seem like they process faster than humans do, but they don’t. Yes, they can calculate a math problem faster than most, but they can’t send signals like our brain and nervous system does with such speed. There is a world–a whole ecosystem–that operates within and behind one’s eyes and in one’s flesh and as one’s flesh. Bodies are built “cunningly” and with forethought. They are designed for more self-care than one realizes. Or, at least they try as hard as they can.

What humans need is to tap into the ecosystem that controls much of what one does anyway and learn to live with it, as much as it must learn to live with free will and thought. In the end, the mind is powerful and an organ to use more than one would think.

The Soul unto itself (683) by Emily Dickinson (1830 to 1886)

The Soul unto itself
Is an imperial friend –
Or the most agonizing Spy –
An Enemy – could send –

Secure against its own –
No treason it can fear –
Itself – its Sovereign – of itself
The Soul should stand in Awe –

The “Soul”, according to Dickinson, is so powerful that it should stand in awe of itself. The soul, I see, is one’s own perspective on the world, the part that thinks, wonders, evaluates, remembers and forgets, etc. The brain, chemistry, nerves, and so on may be a system that makes it happen, but it can’t entirely explain the mystery that is the human experience and perspective. Its only limitation is itself. It is wholly a miracle that people experience the world in 3-dimensional splendor and develop a personality. However, no one can truly know a person because the soul has depths that even the one experiencing the world has trouble accessing (the unconscious). If I can’t fully articulate the depths of my being, how could another person possibly know it? Simply put, they can’t know it all. Thus, taking the effort to be at least a part of one’s soul or trying to understand someone’s personal perspective is an ultimate act of love. Empathy is required.

All of this is to say that people are trapped in their own perspective of the world, or one’s mind. This isn’t to reiterate that no one truly knows a person and that as individuals, a person is really alone in their own world and perspective; it is to say that the experience one encounters is truly one’s own. Of course, people internalize the outside world, but I see it as more like Freud’s superego. While one internalizes outside perspectives and voices, the internalized is just that–reconstituted for one’s own mind. Therefore, it ceases to be external or “the other” and becomes one’s own perspective. You own the world that you experience.

As much as one is a “prisoner” of one’s soul, consciousness, or perspective, the “prison” in this scenario or the Sovereign that Dickinson describes, belongs to oneself. Sure, there are boundaries and restrictions to exploring the external world, and maybe even locks on doors in the deepest of dungeons of the mind, but the “prison” is the self. It is, after all, where one lives and breathes and I can claim it.

I know I make it sound like it is easy to just claim one’s mind and take over what one thinks and feels. It’s not a simple thing because the brain is complex, and feelings can be unpredictable. It is hard to be the warden of the “prison” when you’re also facing the bars. But it’s not impossible.

She happened to be one of many therapists that I would start with and then never see again. Her office was like the others, well-appointed with just a hint of her taste and the rest “American professional” office outfitted. A sweet face stared back at me, a touch of apprehension stretching the edges of her mouth, her leg crossed tightly over the other with a clipboard balancing on a slight thigh, pen ready to record the tears I would shed. I always cried. It’s not something I like about myself. However, I have this aversion to anger; therefore, when I’m angry, I cry. When I’m sad I get quiet and might cry, too, but the real “ugly” crying happens when I’m mad. Anger doesn’t agree with my laid-back nature, so it becomes a physically taxing thing for me. I will have monster headaches after I’ve let out steam or had an argument. I’m sure I look like a big ol’ baby having a tantrum when I get really mad because I will start balling and my voice becomes shrill…it’s not pretty.

This particular therapist leveled a blank if not slightly sympathetic look at me as she asked me the usual questions that start a session when the counselor doesn’t know the client yet. I cry and I state how chaotic things feel, the panic attacks, the anger for no reason, etc., etc…That’s when she leaned toward me, her eyes alive and flashing, and stated emphatically, as if it were solid fact already, “You have to talk to yourself. Tell yourself that the thoughts are not true and that you’re fine.”

I have nothing against therapists, though I had not found one that would keep my attention. I was a social worker and counselor and had gone to graduate school to get my license to be a therapist (before I changed to Education). For someone like myself, I can’t feel that I’m just a number or that there isn’t an agenda. I’m agenda- driven and strongly empathetic. I need to feel it. Therapists have many clients and today’s world with insurance claims, files, computer screens, etc., it’s easy to forget that relationships need to be built. They should be professional relationships, but relationships nonetheless. One of my greatest fears is invisibility and that I don’t count or matter. It’s a sore spot. So, if I sense any type of wall put up, I will retreat. I have had no therapist or psychiatrist that has built any type of relationship with me.
BTW

Talk to myself? This was the solution to the all-consuming fear that Anxiety Disorder can cause, crippling me into panic attacks that can feel like a heart attack or a stroke? I’ve had panic attacks that numbed my arms and made them feel like ridiculous logs that hang from my stooped shoulders. And all I have to do is self-talk my way out of this?

I smirked, and immediately replied, “That won’t work!” In other words, I poo-pooed this simple solution because how could something that seemed so weak overpower the almighty voices and thoughts that made my heart skip beats and then race time, sweat crawling out of my pores, and tears ceaselessly coating my cheeks and neck? That seemed stupid to me, and I believe I shut down on her after that. She tried to explain the power of self-talk, but I didn’t think she was talking to me, someone still desperately trying to come to terms with mental illness and being productive in life. Maybe that applies to the more experienced client, but I wasn’t having it.

Except, I was–in some part. I tried it because when one has tried everything else, why not? The next time I started to think people were talking about me and that I was going to mess up and not be good enough, the voice would start slowly and sweetly:

“Why would they talk about you? The fact is they could be having a perfectly normal conversation about something else as you are not the center of this universe and no one really cares.” I would have to learn to gently coax myself out of startling thoughts and abject fear. It doesn’t work well at first, so it’s easy to be discouraged when your brain goes, “yeah, right” and continues its downward spiral. But it won’t always do that because one would be surprised at how soothing one’s own voice is. One’s brain may even adopt another voice, perhaps a good friend, one’s mother, father, etc., to speak in and it does work to get one to think straight. The thoughts will stop racing and one might get a grip on what the actual problem is.

There is something to be said about the outside influence or the voice that isn’t yours that becomes internalized. Freud called it the superego, and it was part of the human consciousness along with the id (pleasure principle) and the ego (your own internal voice). I am aware that much of Freud’s work has been debunked and not followed anymore, but there’s something to the idea of internalizing others’ voices. Many people are more influential than we would like to admit. It’s a little too easy to accept the negative rather than the positive, especially for those that suffer from anxiety and depression of any kind. That negative voice, whether real or imagined, becomes part of one’s own experience and it takes that self-talk to begin to realize that it’s a superego and not the ego. Like any addiction, it takes understanding one’s mental illness and the strengths and weaknesses that will come with it. It’s always great to understand the strengths:

you may have a longer time of peace between bouts of anxiety and depression;

you may be able to work a regular job and have no one have to know about your mental illness unless you want them to know;

you may be able to sleep more at night, etc., etc…

How do you know what to talk to yourself about if you don’t realize what the voices are, what they are saying, and what you need to hear and know about yourself? Take the time you need to look within and examine what the voices are saying. Then develop the counter-talk. If the voices call you ugly, then you need to understand where it’s coming from and why. Learn to tell yourself that it’s just a voice that isn’t even yours. You don’t have to do affirmations as much as understand that it’s an internalized negative influence and that it has nothing to do with you. It’s not who you are, but what has been captured in a moment of pain and suffering. No one has to be a victim in perpitude. One adopted it and one can kick it to the curb. So get to kickin’!
BTW

However, it’s also knowing the weaknesses or the psychosis of one’s mental illness that will help with the self-talk. It’s about knowing what those voices are saying and why. Once it’s understood that they are internalized for a reason, those reasons can be worked through and the self-talk can take over. Some things I know about Anxiety (capital A for the illness, not just the feeling):

It doesn’t just go away. There’s no cure because it’s who you are and how you are wired.

You will have times in between the flare-ups when you will do very well with the illness, and it will seem that you are “cured” or “normal.” Don’t fool yourself too much, though. Since we’re using the medical language to speak of this condition, I will use the word remission to explain the moments of time when there doesn’t seem to be the racing thoughts (or at least as much) or the bouts of paranoia, depression, etc. Self-talk may still be needed to help get through a particularly anxious moment, but overall you’ll be okay with things. If one is lucky enough, these periods of remission are long and generous.

You are not broken, crazy, damaged, or unlucky.

The body is an amazing macrocosm with several different microcosms operating all at one time. Does this go right all of the time and for everyone? Heck no! It’s easy to think of oneself as the unlucky one to get Anxiety Disorder and have to live with the extra sensitivity, a wild imagination, and the internalized attacks that could be personal or not, really. In essence, it has nothing to do with luck but biology. One might as well make the best of what was given. Yes, I am super sensitive and can get paranoid and jumpy, but I am also highly imaginative and creative and different and on the edge of everything. It can be exhausting but also exhilarating. It is who I am…and I love me, according to my inner voice.

Student-Teaching: Creating the Bubble

Hell and Heaven can be side by side. Be wary of which doorway you enter…They’re both decorated well.

Before you read this blog:

This is my story, and as such, I would not expect you to think this will be your story. For every teacher, that first experience is different. Some things will be the same (see my blog on advice for the first-year teacher), but this is my background with the school I started with, so there will always be fundamental differences.

Reader beware. My intent isn’t to be negative at all but to be accurate.

Most teachers have someone in their childhood or teens that inspired them to take the same walk in life–to the front of the classroom. I honestly didn’t like my teachers at all, except for my 1st-grade teacher, who was also my mother’s friend (see blogs #2 and #3), but even her I wasn’t too keen on. I was a terrible student as a child, forgetful and lazy. I remember cheating because I didn’t like to study and I wasn’t good at math. I didn’t understand the “times tables” and if I didn’t have a calculator, I’m not sure what would have become of me.

What did excite me was passing out papers to my dolls while I had them lined up like a classroom on the couch or bed. I liked discussing things with them and being in charge of the room. My sisters would lay with me on the bed as I read them stories or I told them made-up stories right on the spot. Did one need directions to something or a patient voice to help you do something? I was the one to help. A natural people-person and pleaser, the idea of education seemed to come naturally even if I balked at the school system I was involved in. It took college (and making my own choices, I guess) for me to understand that I was a lifelong student and would go to school if I could (forever, even) and earn many degrees. Not every subject or teacher would work for me as I tended to go my own way and had some control issues. I didn’t mind authority at all; actually, I seemed comfortable with it as I had Elfriede for a mother and she believed in strict adherence to her rules. Having someone tell me what to do wasn’t the problem; it was the fact that I couldn’t wrap my brain around certain things and subjects. It wasn’t that I didn’t try–I just didn’t have the aptitude and it would take triple (or more) the effort to get things right for specific subjects. It would explain why when I reached my college years and took more things in the field I liked, things started to come together for me as a student.

To become a teacher, a person must jump through more hoops than almost any profession (except maybe doctors and the like. However, they get way more respect when they have their title and certifications than teachers do.). A teacher does the 4 years of the degree, observation hours (100 or more), student teaching/internships, at least two tests for the state certificate. Many states now include portfolios requirements with things like filming one instruction, etc. All of this costs money, of course, with time spent going to schools to do observation hours where you are a teacher’s aide and give your time to learn what it’s like to have to do everyday tasks such as make copies, grade papers, sharpen things, prep, etc. You pay hundreds of dollars to get testing done and more for the certificate that has to be renewed. You need professional development to keep your certification and that can cost you money if the school doesn’t want to provide any or doesn’t provide what you need when you can do it. This doesn’t even touch the surface of the supplies, the wardrobe, the books, etc. that you will need to teach that no one will help you provide. Some schools do give budgets and there is a ridiculous tax break that really isn’t worth stating, but I will for the sake of truth.

A 100 hours is a lot of time, so I had to start observation hours quickly and schedule them properly.

I went to a Lutheran college, and one thing I do know is that Lutheran likes Lutheran. Therefore, one of my options for observation hours and to practice teaching lessons was Walther Lutheran High School in Melrose Park, IL (the same city I was born in). It was a two-story, rambling school in the middle of an older, busy suburb of Chicago that was once known for its association with gangsters (the mafia kind). I was paired with this fantastic, younger teacher I immediately bonded with. I would also connect with my cooperating teacher when I was a student-teacher. I was lucky that I had some beautiful people to be my mentors and friends.

I worked for this teacher and we talked, and I felt that I could not love teaching more. I was comfortable and the kids seemed to like me too. I did practice lessons in this teacher’s classroom and it went very well. I graded papers, short answers, quizzes, you name it. I was happy for the time being and she called us “kindred spirits.” It was nice.

When it came time to student teach, I wanted to go back to the school that I attended but they wouldn’t allow it. They felt the teachers would see me as a student only and not a fledgling teacher. I didn’t think my teachers would remember me (and I was right), but a rule is a rule and I settled for the sister school to Proviso West–Proviso East. This was a tough school at the time with an even tougher reputation. When I put in my application to student teach there, I was told Concordia was banned from sending student-teachers there. Huh? Benign, super-religious Concordia was banned? What could possibly have happened? Apparently, the last student-teacher placed there had one heck of a time and they decided to end the relationship between Concordia and East. I broke this barrier because I felt it would be okay and I was allowed to go there as a student-teacher.

I drove up to this imposing, castle-like structure on my first day of student-teaching (picture on left by Cragin Spring on Flickr.com), and there was a young man outside smoking pot next to the busy street outside of the school. As I slowly moved with traffic in front of the school, he took his last puffs and then headed to those huge front doors. Meanwhile, I was dumbfounded.

I found the classroom with a handsome, just-into middle-age blonde man with a craggily face and kind eyes. He was my cooperating teacher and we worked happily side by side for the next couple of months. I immediately liked him the way I had liked the teacher at Walther Lutheran. He was wary of me as he was a proud, gay man, but it was the 90s and there was so much persecution of gay men. When he realized I wouldn’t judge him, he opened up right away and we were good friends. He is an awesome teacher and person. He taught me a lot and I took over his classes after a while and we did alright. It wasn’t as smooth as it could be, but it was very near it.

Some interesting things that happened during student teaching:

The pot smoker finished his “wacky tabaki” outside. However, on my first morning, my cooperating teacher had been called out of the room because a boy had fallen out in the bathroom. It was 8 am, but he was passed out drunk.
Only the front of the school is like a castle. The front offices look like a medieval castle and that was really beautiful to see. The superintendent had a fireplace that was almost as tall as I was. Then you went into the rest of the school and see slime-green brick and low-grade floors that were trying to be speckled but just came across as industrial and old.
No teacher had his/her own room completely. You would have to “float” between classes, which had its ups and downs. I wanted to decorate the room, and another teacher could care less, but it was his room, too. I put up some things and he put up a poster. Fantastic.
I cried at least twice. Teachers are tired and most of the time frustrated with bad circumstances and a lack of care for morale and so they cry a lot, but this time it wasn’t even for any of that. I was 2 months into student teaching when this student I had never seen came bounding into the classroom and took a seat. I stared at him, the kids stared at him, and my cooperating teacher just looked dismayed. This kid had skipped every day of the semseter so far, and showed up that day because he had been caught by turancy officers and forced into class. I asked him why he didn’t seem to care about attending school and he claimed he didn’t want to do anything in life anyway, so what difference did it make? I asked him how he planned to support himself and his plan was simple–he didn’t plan on supporting himself. He figured he would stay on the couch in his mom’s basement until he was killed on the streets, which would happen soon anyway, he surmised. I saw the defeat in this child who saw no future for himself and it depressed me beyond what I can relate here. His true lack of any hope showed the failure of our society. We failed him and he would fail us. How could he not? He disappeared again after that day and I don’t know what happened to him.
My cooperating teacher was dedicated and loved his students. He was paid back with scorn. One morning, he just seemed to jump out of his chair and sprint into the hall for no reason. When he came back, he said someone had whipped a penny at him from the hallway. There were cameras in the hallway, so when he didn’t see who did it, he went to security and they found out it was one of the security personnel’s grandsons. She refused to get him in trouble despite physical proof that her grandson assaulted a teacher. To this day, I believe that if it wasn’t a gay teacher or that woman’s grandson, he would have been in trouble for hurting a teacher. Getting hit by a penny seems harmless, but it hurts–trust me. It was one more reason to think the school wasn’t safe for teachers.
I had students in the hallways call me a “fat bitch” and run away from me. A security guard that was right there and saw the whole thing and wouldn’t do anything but give me the kid’s name and said, “write him up.” The hallways were litered with students who didn’t care to go to class or were thrown out of class, and would roam for trouble. God forbid a teacher, security guard, or whomever would try to discipline them. Students threw stuff at teachers, outright assaulted them and went to juvenile camp, started fights with other students whenever they felt even slightly offended…it was the Wild West without the integrity. The only place I felt safe was in my classroom.
Veteran teachers would tell me to “run for the hills” as they were only waiting for retirement at East. I was still in the happy bubble of what teaching could be and didn’t know the life of running for your car as soon as the last bell rings and waiting for your pension to kick in. They would tell me to NEVER work there as they stared at my happy-go-lucky face with their own dead eyes and affectless faces.
The second time that I cried was in the teacher’s cafeteria. I don’t know whose idea it was to give teachers their own space to eat and their own line with their own lunch workers, but they are a genius! It was a great space for us teachers to sit and talk. Of course, I witnessed a teacher argument there, but that was unusual. We saw the union rep sitting with the Superintendent there, too, but that was politics. Another student-teacher, a very dedicated woman, sat with me one day looking like she was going to cry. I asked her what was wrong and she told me about a basketball player she had in her class. Oh, by the way, she was special education concentrated while I was for English. This player had been accepted an Ivy League school already and had been given a full ride. His life was made as he was most likely going to the NBA, he was that good. There was only one thing–he had NO education whatsoever. He would walk across the stage as a graduating senior of Proviso East and go to an expensive, prestigious school, and most likely be drafted in the NBA to live a rich life (if he didn’t get hurt). Sounds lovely. His teacher sat there in tears and showed me his homework, which he couldn’t really do–he could not read or write. She was teaching him to read and spell things like cat, hat, that, etc. This boy would have a diploma and a full-ride to a college most talented students couldn’t get into and he couldn’t read or write. How would he know what any contract said? Even if he had a lawyer or an accountant, how does he know they have his best interest at heart? How can East let a student graduate with a high school diploma when he can’t read or write? Even if he has a modified designation on his diploma, that doesn’t mean he should have graduated. That means he did the work but needed accomodations. He didn’t learn, period! I cried with that student-teacher that day and for other days.
I was there for Homecoming and it was a spectacle that I would not forget. First of all, they picked the theme Moulin Rouge. I understand that this was a popular movie at the time and had great music, but it was also about a brothel and a burlesque show. Who thought this was a good idea for high schoolers? The Principal, a burly guy with a bald head and Hollywood good-looks, stood by and laughed happily and proudly while the marching band played “Get Your Freak On” and danced provactively (with insturments). The floats were displayed by students in lingerie. They were boys in teddies, by the way. One boy’s genitals were exposed because his panties didn’t fit him correctly. The teachers eyed each other silently, waiting for some type of fall out that didn’t happen.

One girl came into the classroom and her friends were quick to tell me that she had gone to kid boot camp because she had punched a teacher. They waited for my reaction, but I didn’t have one. “Aren’t you scared, Miss?” They asked me with slight smiles and shadowed eyes. “No,” I answered, looking at the girl. “This is a clean slate and I don’t hold anything in your past against you. This is a new start for you with me.”
I never had any issues with her as we started from scratch and learned to trust each other. I tried to approach all students that way. Sometimes knowing a past is helpful as it can teach me how to help students, but it can also be prejudicial. It’s a double-edged sword for sure.
BTW

Blue by Dana Alecu is licensed under CC-BY 4.0

You have to be gung-ho about teaching to develop that bubble of happiness in a world that is made out of pins and needles and full of dead air. I was told to run for it and I stayed instead. I watched a wonderful teacher get used and thrown to the side because of politics and weak-spined administrators. And yet I kept going. I wanted my own classroom and I would get it. Would it get me?

Hell on Earth: Anxiety Disorder

A Private Hell of Your Making

Why would anyone design his or her own prison? Ask the chemistry that filters through one’s brain and the surrounding stink of the world. Question the DNA that is passed down and now another’s responsibility. Ask the form that looks back in the mirror, the eyes dazed and half-closed. And you’ll know some of it.

The therapist glared at me as I cried my usual mincing tears, and he suddenly snapped, “Stop crying! You’re not sad. You’re angry.”

Surprising myself, my simpering stopped immediately and I matched him glare for glare. It’s so much easier to be angry. Was he right? I had been angry all along? At what, exactly?
memory

Hours after my mother had tucked me into my twin bed after ripping the day’s socks off my feet, I woke up in an unexplained panic. I lay for a moment trying to figure out what was bothering me and why my throat was so thick! My breathing was okay, but I couldn’t seem to make myself swallow, and it was only getting worse as I tried harder to make my muscles work. “Okay,” I reasoned with myself as I stared at the wall, “just slow down and take a second.” I now realized my breathing had started to speed up and I was genuinely scared. Why couldn’t I swallow? Why did my throat feel so thick and tight? Was my tongue swelling? My heart was speeding up as I realized that I couldn’t swallow, with my young mind only knowing to keep trying and making it worse. Tears were stinging my eyes and I was now audibly gasping. My parent’s room was on the other side of the house through the living room. I don’t remember stumbling through the house or waking up my mother as I was now panting and whining.

Elfriede tends to be old school–heck, old world–and usually if I and one of my siblings dare approached her with a physical ailment like stomach pain or a headache, she’ll tell us to go walk around the block and it’ll feel better, or to go chop some wood (we had no fireplace or wood). Don’t get me wrong, she was the consummate Mama and when I was sick it was always nice to have her seem to completely understand what I need and nurse me back to health. There were countless times myself or one of my siblings would be coughing in the night and here was Elfriede with the cough syrup and the thermometer, appearing magically out of thin air to solve our woes. Old world, however, doesn’t take kindly to the everyday aches and pains and will dish out physical labor more than Tylenol. That night will always live in my memory as the first true, sheer panic that I’ve felt. So Elfriede knew better, probably because of my heaving and out of control crying, than to just send me back to my bed.

I can see the scene as if I’m not the little girl sitting next to the tired mother who is rubbing the child’s back and trying to comfort and understand something that isn’t rational. The bony child has wild, nappy hair; light skin that is reddish with anguish; large, doe eyes that are wide with terror and leaking tears; and her mouth hanging open gulping air that would come easily if she would just calm down and realize that she’s fine. But she can’t swallow and her throat feels huge and her tongue isn’t doing what she wants it to do. Pure panic has sent adrenalin into her heart and her veins and made her heart rate increase, her lungs press heavily in and out, and her muscles swell with wasted energy. Elfriede doesn’t leave the little girl alone, but I can imagine she also doesn’t know what to do. There’s only one thing she knows can make the child happy: her favorite candy. And, like magic, the panic only subsides as she eats the Twix bar next to her mother and realizes that she can, of course, swallow, her tongue is normal and that her throat seems to be working fine now. She will go back to bed and let her mother sleep, resting for the next child’s problem.

I was born to be on Broadway, with a unique look, hardly exotic but different than most, and a loud, clear voice. My mother told me that as a toddler I used to stand on the coffee table in the living room and hold speeches to whomever was listening. There are family pictures of us at the zoo and I’m in loud sunglasses and striking fashion, posing for the camera in my pigtails, for the all the world looking like an editorial for baby Vogue. One has me climbing the fence of an enclosure (not the greatest idea, but my brother was standing next to me), ready to have an adventure on the other side with the animals. I’m impeccably dressed (thanks, Elfriede) with my matching diaper cover showing as I lean over to take a grand look.

My mother told me that I went to Florida with the family as a young child, just out of toddler age, to visit my father’s father, Peter Nelson. In Florida in the 70s, I went into a candy store and waited for my turn. Just as I got to the counter, my mother said that some white people had come in and the clerk stated he had to help them first. Elfriede stated that I loudly demanded that I be served since I was next and made the clerk serve me. And yes, I did a striptease act in 1st grade down to a bikini (see my blog about myself, #3). This is who I was: open, loud, and full of bluster and sass. I know I sound like a conceited jerk, but I wasn’t conceited. I didn’t know that I was all this–I just was it. I didn’t demand to go in front of everyone in the candy store; I only wanted my turn. I was outgoing, but I loved my family and I cared about my friends.

When did this change? Because it did. I blamed it for a long time on Elfriede, who was intimidating and wouldn’t let anyone in our house or too close to us. She had a few people she let near her and her kids, but mostly not. The tiger in her didn’t suffer fools or their foolishness long, and she just wasn’t interested in having friends or a social life. She kept her husband’s family near, but not too close. She visited James’s mother, as I wrote about in previous blog posts, but more as a formality or something you did. She dressed us up like little dolls and we were not to move at my grandmother’s house, despite the fact that our cousins were free to be themselves. Once my sister and I were playing with a toy at my grandmother’s house that a cousin had left lying around, and we were summarily scolded for acting silly. We were only being kids, but that was shut down quick. I said it before: old world, not just old school. Lovely children to be seen and not heard, and certainly not acting like children of all things. We were not at home at our grandmother’s house and had to remain stiff and polite.

My mother let our grandmother babysit us once when we were babies, only to come home and find us in diapers running around. Horrified, Elfriede didn’t let Alice Nelson babysit again–or any family member for that. Her children had to be clean and dressed at all times. We grew up used to being a tightly knit unit that only had a small number of friends–good friends, but not many, and they certainly weren’t allowed in our house. That would tamper down anyone’s free spirit, but I don’t think that was why my wings were clipped. At least, it wasn’t the only reason.

A big chunk of blame goes to the ever present and very mighty racism that prevails in American society. As someone who is light-skinned, I took less battering from the ram called prejudice, but I still had my encounters (see blog #3). Moving to Sunnyside Elementary School in 2nd grade had a huge impact on my life in more ways than one. I was one of 2 black girls in the class (that would change in middle school). I always wondered why I wasn’t invited to people’s parties that I would hear about later, and it was a big issue if I was supposed to go to someone’s house to finish a project. I wasn’t “allowed” in their houses. When I had my first real crush on a boy, I asked one of my classmates if she thought he would like me. She turned to me horrified and almost screamed, “NO!” Was I that ugly or unlikable? I later realized that because the boy was white and I wasn’t, this pairing was unthinkable to her. A good friend of mine in elementary school even told me that if I married him (ha!–we were in 4th grade), my babies would turn out to be zebras. I took this to mean the kids would somehow be deformed. It never occurred to me until later because I saw the girl as a friend that she was talking about biracial children as if they were animals and abnormal; did she even realize that she was speaking to a biracial child? Kids can be really dumb.

I was not expected to be the outgoing, drama queen that I was. Sunnyside helped to shove that sweet but sassy girl down into someone who just wanted to be accepted and appreciated for who she was. There I was overlooked, sometimes deliberately and sometimes just as an after-effect of the system’s problems. This shunning and marginalization would live with me for the rest of my life and only get worse as anxiety reared its ugly head and became a partner in my world.

20 or so years after I left Sunnyside and its bigger brother MacArthur Middle School, the girls of the class wanted to have a reunion. I was wholly shocked when they contacted me to be at the reunion. I didn’t think I was noticed or seen as one of the group. I had gained weight and didn’t want to face anyone, so they sent me pictures and invited me again later. I still didn’t go.
btw

Of course, there is always the genetic material that lends itself to my anxiety and depression issues. My father’s sister, Inez who was nicknamed Sister, had paranoid schizophrenia, a very severe mental illness, that caused her to do all kinds of strange things like lock herself up in her apartment and the kids in a dark closet, refuse to take her kids to the doctor and cost her a lucrative job as a surgical nurse. She died from breast cancer because she went to the doctor too late out of fear of what the doctor would do to her. My father said at the end she was scared to close her eyes because she didn’t want to die. It was a hard way to go and haunted me for a long time. When James passed, I made sure he was peaceful.

I had a cousin who committed suicide when he was quite young, early 20s. He lived on the West side of Chicago with his mother when he started complaining that someone was after him and trying to kill him. He managed to name a gang of some sort and his mother believed him, placing the young man with her sister, his aunt, in a southern suburb, far enough away from the gangs to hopefully help the situation. It didn’t. He still complained of someone being after him.

I was in my father’s makeshift office in the basement of the Bellwood house when he talked to me about my cousin going to live with Peter, my grandfather in Mississippi, for a while. I had visited Peter before, a clean, self-sufficient older man who lived in a retirement community in the middle of Mississippi. I remember pausing for a moment as my father talked about his poor nephew. I’m not sure where it came from as I was so young myself, but I asked my father, “Are you sure there is someone after him? Maybe he just needs help.” It just didn’t make sense to me that “gangs” were after him. That’s not how it worked.

My father blinked back confusion. “What do you mean? Why would he say someone’s after him when they’re not?”

I tried to explain what I meant. Paranoia will make one truly feel that someone is out to kill them. They can be real people like a gang that is real or vague or completely imagined like people in the TV or government officials. I’m sure my cousin felt that he was being chased, but something seemed really fishy about the story, and that he was still facing the same problem in the South suburbs really made me think it was something mentally happening and not real. The fear is very real to the person feeling it though the threat might not be. My father didn’t agree, and they sent him to Peter. Within a couple of weeks, he had locked himself in Peter’s small bathroom and shot himself in the head. I felt so bad for Peter who didn’t know how to help and had to find the young man like that. And my poor cousin who must have felt he didn’t have anywhere else to run to and was still being chased. Sometimes, peace means more than this world and the loved ones left behind, as the grave sure looks peaceful at times. I’ve been there; most people who suffer from mental illness have.

Suicide may seem like a peaceful solution, but it robs the world and oneself of what could be. I honestly believe we are put on this Earth for a reason and no matter the pain and the suffering, there is something one must do before time’s up. Suicide leaves too many to suffer and it’s not the peace one thinks of.
btw

My mother claimed there was no mental illness in her family, but that was “old world” talking because she would tell me of family members who were hidden away because they weren’t “right” or normal. Later in her life, she would have massive panic attacks and exhibit these little mini-phobias that I would have to talk her down from as much as I could. She’s a nester (meaning she likes to clean and decorate her “nest”, her home, and her yard), and she took to burying her most precious objects for a while, afraid they would be stolen or given away when she died. At her old house, whoever gets to digging in that yard will find some treasures–strangely buried, but treasures nonetheless. She had a strong aversion to the tub because she felt she would fall and either hurt herself or die in the tub, naked. She bathed outside for a while because of that until I could finally talk her back into the tub. Elfriede had severe depression as she got older and became sick. I always thought it was part reactionary because who wouldn’t get depressed when you couldn’t do what you love anymore thanks to pain and sickness? However, the depression came in cycles and I thought it was just too perfectly timed to be a mere reaction to circumstances only. There had to be a chemical explanation, too. My belief is that Elfriede suffered from anxieties and depression, but she was just too busy with 5 kids, a husband with his own issues, and a part-time and then a full-time job to openly express it or take the time to care. She would retreat to her room or her bed a lot.

James was an interesting human being to say the least for many reasons. If one reads blog #2, one can learn about his own hang-ups and issues. Still, there’s more than that seems to have lent itself to his peculiar eccentricities. I’ve always wondered if he was undiagnosed Asperger’s or at least on the Autism scale in some way. He’d be high functioning, but there were definite quirks like he didn’t care that food was expired or not cooked right, he would eat it anyway. His complete lack of care of his own body or any illness he suffered from makes me think there was something deeper than just abandonment issues and some neglect as a child. He swore he never had cancer, but he was treated with radiation for prostate cancer while he lived in Illinois. People don’t just get radiation for nothing, but to him that wasn’t enough proof of him having cancer. He would remember things in a completely different way than others, either being the hero or the victim. He believed the false memories, though–it wasn’t just a lie but something he thought really happened. I’ve always wondered if he had some type of narcolepsy because he could fall asleep anytime, anywhere. Heck, he fell asleep on his first date with my mother, someone he was so captivated with that he declared she would be his wife the moment he met her. He was tired all of the time. We would go camping and he was asleep. Once we threw him a surprise birthday party and the pictures show him leaning on his open hand with heavy lids, a touch of a smile playing on his mouth. He looked like he would pass out any second.

These are my genes. What are you gonna do?

My second most memorable anxiety attack happened as a teen. James, graciously, bought tickets for ice skating for himself and his daughters. We went to the United Center one lovely afternoon and headed up to the “nose bleed” seats. We were up so high in that place that I watched the spotlight-guy in a little cage extended over the rink below operating his light. It was no problem getting to the high point in the arena. However, I had to get to the seat that jutted out of the wall and cascaded down in a frightening angle. I’m sure this made it easy to see the skaters below, but I remember the panic was almost instant. I gripped the back railing behind the last seats and begged my father not to make me go to that seat below. He did everything he could to get me to sit down, but I ended up howling and crying in front of all of these strangers who I’m sure thought I was insane. James did the only thing he could do short of taking us all home and missing the show: as I stood weeping, my hand gripping the rail, he told my sisters to go the seats and enjoy the show. They happily romped down the steep steps and bounced into their seats. My spirit was outraged at how easy it was for them and how easy it should have been for me. Instead, my father stood by me, leaning on the rail as I’m sure his back hurt, and let me cry it out until I calmed down. He stayed there until the show was over, not being able to see much or rest. I couldn’t think straight. I just wanted out of that place. I don’t remember the show–I couldn’t see it anyway–or much else that happened that day. I still feel guilty for making my father stand the entire show and having to calm me down in public.

This is what it’s like for someone living with Anxiety Disorder and Depression. I would be diagnosed later as an adult and given medicine to deal with it. It helps, thankfully, for a while. The disorder is cyclical and one doesn’t always see the waves coming. Sometimes it’s just a lack of interest at first in things that once made me happy, and then the Depression starts to mess with the deeper parts of me that would scream and rock and want no part of the world. At times, I would close up and not leave the house for days. Then one day, I wouldn’t feel the urge to shout every time the world tried to get my attention and I would be freed again. I resumed my life like nothing had just happened. Our brains are wily things, indeed.

Ghost Hunt #2: The Jail of Horror

Yes, people go on ghost hunts in real life.

My brother, Richard, who doesn’t believe in ghosts, arranged for me, him and my sister Nicole to go on a ghost hunt just outside of San Antonio, Texas. Why go if you don’t even believe in ghosts, is a good question.

As we prepared to leave Houston (Willowbrook area) to go to Hallettsville, TX, approximately 2 hours away, I turned to my sister with my heart pounding and said, “I have a bad feeling about this.” Usually my bad feelings lead to some disaster and I wasn’t happy. She turned to me with her trademark smirk and said, “It’s going to be fine. You know there’s no ghosts. We’re going to see a historical jail.” My Anxiety Disorder does lend itself to worrying and “making up” scenarios, but this feeling seemed deeply rooted and a little more than simply inspired by scary ghosts. There was something else bothering me and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I don’t like it when this type of feeling overwhelms me. The ghosts might be a welcome distraction in this case.

The “sibs” ambushed me at a nice dinner we were having at a steakhouse. Nicole, my youngest sister, smirked at me and announced, “We have a surprise for you.” I put the fork full of food in my mouth, my wide eyes staring at her, hoping for mercy. Her surprises usually meant work for me and I had no idea the next words out of her mouth would be, “We’re going on a ghost hunt.” I almost chocked on the food as a ridiculous smile spread across my face (while I was chewing my food). Did people do this in real life? I’m assuming they kept it as a “surprise” because I had actually refused to go to a fake haunted house with them. My nerves just couldn’t handle it. Once, as a kid, I agreed to go with my family into a haunted house in Wisconsin Dells of all places (the most sugary place on earth aside from Disneyland/world). However, when I stepped bravely in the door, there was a coffin with a wax dummy laying inside of it. That’s it. That’s all it took for me to run crying back outside to my mother and refuse to step foot into the haunted house, or any haunted house, since then.

Sure, I would regain composure and laugh about it later, but that would be later after my soul absorbed the mental and physical pain of sheer panic. How do you explain this to someone who hasn’t had an anxiety attack? They don’t understand that it is as real as the person who is suffering an asthma attack or even a heart attack, just with no physical or lasting scars other than exhaustion and aches/pains. That’s why so many people with anxiety attacks get rushed to the ER thinking it’s the physical thing only and not something that is attacking your nervous system and causing a physical melt down along with the mental one that is just beating your soul senseless. So, I sat there, shocked, staring at my siblings, trying to figure out what I was going to say to going on a ghost hunt of all things.

I remember stammering and wondering what this was going to be like. I’ve seen the TV shows, but that was staged. Perhaps someone with an Anxiety disorder and on medication for it shouldn’t go asking for trouble. The adventurous side of me kicked in (hey, it was getting away for a couple of days) and I agreed to go.

It was like a dream the first time we went to a haunted place. We drove into darkness in a very rural part of Texas only to have fire suddenly appear out of the dark. It was an underground concert with a graffitied wall behind the hard rock singer and guitarist. For a second, we thought this concert was the ghost hunt, but that didn’t seem to go together. It was just a decoy. Across the street was the actual haunted hospital we were going to visit. We pulled up to the back and they told us to go around to the front and park–we couldn’t miss it. Hell, it was pitch black out there expect for the “rave” and the back of the abandoned building. We missed the entrance three times!

We parked in the turn around in front of the abandoned VA hospital and waited to be let in to the ghost hunt. There were about a dozen other people there with us. Just as the host came out to let us in, I spied a $5 bill folded up and lying on the ground. It had to be someone who was already there because this place was in the middle of nowhere and it wasn’t near the “rave” going on next door. I asked if anyone dropped it, and no one volunteered, the host said, “hey, it’s yours!” I looked at it and shook my head. I was creeped out and I didn’t want to touch the money–like it was a trap. I looked at my siblings and told them they could have it, but they shook their heads. The couple in front of us refused to pick it up too. It stayed there for all I know, or maybe one of the people who came later got it. It takes a ghost hunt for people to freak out over found money!
btw

The thing with the first ghost hunt is that I was more curious than I was creeped out. I wanted to know what we were going to do, what we would see, what the guides would be like, etc. We did some activity with the ghosts talking to us off and on through devices the guides had like a radio that would scan the air waves to try to pick up voices. There was a small machine that measured energy and we would ask the ghost to make the lights on it move for yes/no answers. Something did move the lights. I was standing on the top floor when something out of the blue hit my foot. I looked down and there was a pebble that hadn’t been there before. No one had been in front of me to throw the rock or disturb it enough to hit me with the type of force that it would take to make me feel it hit my shoe. The best part, though, was one of our guides, Andrew. He had this British accent that was “quite nice” and a gregarious personality that I was immediately drawn to. He had no inhibitions, and if he was scared, we all knew it. There was no pretense and I found him refreshing and a bit weird, but all of the guides were in their own ways. It’s a strange group and that’s why I liked them. They were open and honest, just being themselves. It’s refreshing to not have to wear a mask or pretend to be perfectly happy for a while.

The smiling man in the picture was a Sheriff that worked at the Haunted Old Lavaca County jail that we visited on ghost hunt #2. He died in the line of duty at the jail. There were a lot of deaths at this small, county jail.

The guides take amateur ghost hunters, like my siblings and myself, around to “activity” points and help us use the tools of the trade (which you can buy from the company that puts on the hunts for a low, low price). I didn’t realize this was a business let alone a real thing to do outside of Halloween. We went to the hospital just after Halloween 2020 and the jail in the summer of 2021. If one doesn’t mind traveling, ghost hunts are to be done all year round throughout this country, let alone the world. My favorite at the hospital were the dowsing rods (or I call them divining rods for some reason I can’t actually explain). I took them in my hands and spoke to them through my thoughts because we had a big group in the hospital and they were noisy. When I “thought” to them, they did what I asked them to do. I got a “yes” and “no” configuration and I asked them questions. It was better when I was alone. I went into a dilapidated shell that was a patient room and asked it questions. Was my deceased mother okay? Was my now deceased father okay? I got yeses both times. I asked if someone was in the room with me, and it answered yes, though I was physically alone. I asked if the person needed help, and it said yes. What did I do? Leave the room. What else was I supposed to do?

The amateur wanna-be professionals made up most of the other members of our group in the hospital. They had purchased their own equipment and were doing readings and filming on their own much of the time. They weren’t tolerating Andrew or us newbies; I and my siblings were really more interested in the history than the activity. I found the wanna-be hunters pretentious and I’m sure they found me bothersome as I wanted to go a bit slower and listen to the guide. They wanted free time. After a bit, we gave it to them and they went on their own. Bye, Felicia.
btw

I have Psoriatic Arthritis, a condition where my immune system attacks my joints and destroys them. Even with good medication, that night at the hospital with its 3 floors and large, long layout, my hips felt like they would break apart, my kneecaps were numb, and the sciatic crests (those humps of bone at your lower back) felt like I had melted metal sloshing around. It was about 4 hours of a tour and then we could have 2 more hours of free time. My sister, who also suffers from a painful condition with her backs and hips, had her walker that she could use for support and a chair and my brother doesn’t need it. He goes for hours-long bike rides and walks. They wanted to explore the large hospital, and I was ready to die. We had to go back to the hotel, and while I miserably licked my wounds, they lamented not being able to explore more.

So, no more surprise ghost hunts–they told me about #2 up front. The only surprise was that Richard wanted to go. He firmly stated he didn’t believe in the paranormal and thought I was a little looney because I did at least believe in residual energy. Nicole claims not to believe, but she’s cautious when it comes to approaching things that are “haunted.” Superstition, nerves, or belief? Who knows! He seems to like these micro-trips and being in the old buildings. Or maybe he thinks it’s funny that I’m nervous and will jump if I hear a noise. Either way, he and Nicole planned Ghost Hunt #2: Haunted Old Lavaca County Jail in downtown Hallettsville, TX.

From what history I can remember, the Old Lavaca Jail has gone through many transformations. The picture above is only two of them. It looked like a large house ala Norman Bates and *Psycho*, but I believe it flooded and was too small for the county. They built a new building next to it and had to rebuild because of floods and other Texas natural disasters that happen more often than you think.

Ghost hunt #1: In the fall and it was dark when we arrived in Mineral Wells, TX.
Ghost hunt #2: It was summer and light out as we arrived in quaint Hallettsville, TX. I was more interested in the antique stores than the Old Jail.
Ghost hunt #1: The hotel was just as creepy as the old VA hospital. When I would go into the moldy hallway, I kept expecting to see twin girls standing at the end of the long hall, dressed from the 70s, holding hands, and staring silently at me as I figure out whether to run, ask them what the hell they were doing, or just go back into my room.
Ghost hunt #2: The hotel was super cute and supposed to have a bunch of stray cats around. No cats, but it was cute and had cows next door. I approached the herd as they fed and lazed in the hot day and they looked at me like I would have looked at those twin girls.
Ghost hunt #1: We drove into darkness and nothingness and came across an underground punk rock concert with excited, but altogether normal looking adults going to attend. Across the street was the abandoned and crumbling VA hospital.
Ghost hunt #2: We drove into a rural downtown area that was cute but pretty sparse. The old county jail looked pretty much like the rest of the town.

I am ALWAYS the navigator because I’m the only one with any patience to set up the GPS, make sure it’s right, and help with directions. My brother and sister told me to take them to the Lavaca County Jail. I punched it in; it was only a few minutes away, circa downtown, like they said it would be. However, we rode through the mostly dead downtown area and headed west of where we were, just as my sister started giving me side-long glances. “Something’s not right,” she snapped as she was losing patience and we were getting closer to the time we were supposed to be at the Old Jail. “I’m following the GPS,” I sputtered as we turned onto a fairly new road just west of downtown and kept going until we hit a modern brick building that looked like a squashed fortress. It was the Lavaca County Jail.

Nicole glared at me. “This is the current jail! We’re supposed to go to the old one.” I couldn’t help but giggle. They had told me to take them to the jail, and I did. Why was she mad at me? Both Richard and she claimed they said the OLD jail, but I don’t remember it that way. I found the correct directions and we drove the couple of minutes back into town and found the deteriorating building behind the main street. I thought it was funny that we almost went to jail, but they didn’t. We squabbled over where to park Nicole’s beloved Subaru and finally made it to Ghost hunt #2: the Haunted Old Lavaca County Jail in Hallettsville, TX.

We argue all of the time when we’re together, Nicole, Richard and me, especially my older brother and my youngest sister. She’s a force of nature, much like a combination of Elfriede’s tiger heart and James’s narrow perception of the world. If Nicole isn’t getting things the way she imagines them to be, there’s going to be hell to pay. Richard lives in an analytical world with easy measurements and no nonsense. If it doesn’t compute or make sense to him, it shouldn’t exist or be brought to fruition. So, you have a personality that doesn’t like to compromise, and one that believes in logistics and practicality only. Uh-huh. Then there’s me; laid back and tired most of the time from having 3-4 jobs going at once with a mind that can go from 0-100 in 60 seconds flat, and then back down to 0 without warning. There we have the Nelson-Brown clan. I’m the “fixer” that just wants to make everything right without getting in the middle if I can help it. If only Nicole and Richard can see that their goals are the same, and that they just have different viewpoints. It’s the goal that matters. It takes a lot to get to that end point, though, when there are too many cooks in the kitchen.
btw

We entered through the carport to spy stray cats and even strayer looking caregivers for the Old Jail and ghost hunt guides. I liked that they had set out food for the mother cat and her kittens. The first thing I do when I see animals is approach and want to pet them, so I slowly approached mom and got to pet some cats–a win for me. They informed me that we could take one if we wanted since they were strays and needed a place to live. Nicole already has 3 cats and I have a dog that doesn’t like other animals, so I had to settle for petting them. They directed us to the house-like Old Jail for pizza and drinks.

For some reason, Nicole didn’t trust that they would have pizza (they did), so we had eaten at a nice Mexican restaurant before we left for the ghost hunt. So, when we entered the house/jail, it was to the kitchen with a bathroom right off to the side. There were pizza and drinks. To my immediate left was an old couch and someone sitting with a small dog next to her. Of course, I was ready to greet the dog when it showed its teeth and started growling at me. Calmly, I used a soft voice and said I was a friend and the dog miraculously calmed down, and I even got to pet her soon after. Her name is Alice and she belongs to the owner of Haunted Rooms that holds these tours all over the states. Doug, the owner, is a talker and has a Southern twang that I find so downright American and soothing. He had a soothing look, too, something of a seasoned History teacher that might also coach little league. And just like the teacher that loves to tell stories and ramble on, he’s a talker too. There are some who can’t stand silence, so he filled the time we had waiting for the whole group to arrive with his stories and nervous banter about ghost hunts.

The “waiting area” or the house part of the Old Jail had a makeshift memorial to its history. The curator of this “museum” was an older, thin lady that was soft spoken and seemed too nervous to tell us much about the place, at least coherently. Nicole knew more from some documentary she’d watched on the internet. The brutality and death that happened in that jail was what I mostly got out of the introduction talk.

I must admit I was worried seating would be scarce because these places are usually old and abandoned in some way, but we were able to sit in chairs they had set up for us (thank you!). Strangely, there was a blow up bed shoved into one corner that was made up well with blankets and a pillow. Was I in someone’s house? Who lived here? Apparently, the caretakers of the Old Jail, a bona fide haunted site and museum of sorts, lived there. She would talk of activity and things happening to her. Open-mouthed, I stared at her wondering who gets this type of job and why one would agree to LIVE in the haunted rooms?

On the bed was this beautiful young woman who seemed like Cleopatra in those paintings with the asp (minus the venomous snake): so removed from what is happening around her and majestic without trying to be, even with danger, death no less, so imminent. The creative, right brain in me ripped itself away from envy at her beauty and regality and noticed the tattoos, which I love to look at. Was that tattoo a…?–yes, it was. My sister later told me she thought the young woman had a satanic symbol inked onto her chest above her left breast, but I recognized it immediately. “You’re a fan of Supernatural?” I asked her shyly, trying not to look too long at her chest. I earned a smile and a solid, “Yes. I figured it can’t hurt to have it.” Meaning, what she had was a symbol to ward off evil that the Supernatural series brothers Sam and Dean had tattooed on their chests (and in some episodes carved right into their ribcages thanks to the angels). Lots of things that look satanic are not, like gargoyles (protectors), skulls (good luck symbols), and candles (used in spiritual and religious rituals). Like possession and the law, many people think their perception is what gives things meaning, when the object already had meaning(s) before one’s own notice and knowledge.

They had a display case full of artifacts from the jail, including weapons and restraints. The only picture of someone with restraints? This picture tucked into the history of the place. A print of a painting really, this caught me off guard. It was the only of color person in the whole place except my family and Justin, the guide. It looked more like a painting of a slave and floored me for a while. Look at the fists, the metal, the drab clothing…the smooth brown skin. Anguish radiated from the image and only made me more tense and scared, but not for ghosts or activity.

Our guide would turn out to be someone very opposite of Andrew (Ghost Hunt #1); Justin was laid back and by the book. I liked that he respected where he was and what he was doing. However, he wasn’t playful and his sense of humor seemed caged and only for those whom he knew well (and maybe trusted?). He was a good guide and I enjoyed playing Blackjack (hey, I won!) with him.

The first floor was benign though they claimed it was active. “Active” refers to ghost or at least unexplained activity. They don’t say haunted as much as active, though the name of the group is Haunted Rooms. It’s where the Sheriff lived with his sweet-looking wife. They dressed up the room as it would be in the Old West. However, the only thing that bothered me there was that the bed was way too low to the ground. We tried to entice the ghosts to play cards and talk to us in the front room, but they wouldn’t be swayed. The living people played and I won the whole pot, including chips to brothels and naked pictures of women. Hey, it was a jail, not a church. I even won some little bottles of booze that I couldn’t drink, and not just because I don’t drink by nature. Drinking is forbidden on ghost hunts. I’m not sure why; I guessed the companies that run these ghost hunts probably had drunken people trying to do the hunts and it wasn’t pretty. The whole point is being in the dark in dilapidated buildings with crazy staircases and trip hazards everywhere. Drunks would probably just hurt themselves. Also, hunters don’t take kindly to antagonizing the dead. It’s simply not done because nothing good happens afterwards.

Participants on ghost hunts sign a waiver that if one gets hurt there’s no suing the company that put on the ghost hunt. The guide had talked about some activity in the form of punches, scratches, pushes, etc. from supernatural beings. I was more worried about falling down old, steep stairs or tripping and flying over uneven ground. I had a rock thrown at me at the VA hospital, but it literally glanced off my foot and I only felt the pressure of the pebble, like someone had dropped it and not thrown it–or it had just bounced on my foot and landed nearby. This waiver is more business-like than it appears, but it’s a good “scare” at the beginning of tours.
btw

The office and the booking room looked like any typical administrator’s office and more like a nurse’s station than anything else. We saw a board that listed who was in the jail and other information about them like their charges. This seemed staged but it was fun to read the silly charges people had by their names. Everything is just so small and tight. My nerves were really bad because I had the “bad feeling” I told my sister about. But so far, we didn’t have any activity. At the hospital, the ghosts did communicate with us through some of the “toys” of the trade, but we were getting nothing. The energy in that place was thick and nasty, and I didn’t like it not because of the supernatural, but because it was claustrophobic and punitive in nature. It even seemed punitive for the workers. The Sheriff had to live there with his wife and kids? One was even killed there! The living quarters were sparse though nicely appointed. The office for the jail wasn’t very big at all and again seemed closed in and airless. It didn’t help that it was June in Texas. The oppressive heat just made it all worse.

Where were the cells? So far we’d been in someone’s diminutive home, but not a “jail”. It didn’t seem so. We took a break, where I immediately grabbed for some Oreos that Nicole shamed me into putting back because the rest of the group hadn’t had a chance to get to the snack room. After the break, I would get my wish to see actual cells, and little did I know how much it would creep me out. We went out to the rec yard in the dark (thank you, whoever invited Off spray because the mosquitoes were thick that night) where there was supposed to be copious amounts of activity, including the owner’s ghostly picture where he had someone take his picture while he stood alone only to have another face show up with his. The yard was bleak, dark, and dank, but ghost free. The only thing that chilled my soul was the thought that this small patch of earth was the last open space some human beings saw, criminal or no. A tall silver gate kept them in and the land seemed reckless and sad. It was only the punishment that I felt back there, the taste of the world that was bitter and salty.

The prisoners would be able to see, smell, and hear downtown from this small rec yard. Just beyond it is a creek that had rushing water in it long ago. The caretaker of the place explained that some prisoners simply “disappeared” from the jail into the creek, most likely with a bullet to the back of the head if they were lucky. Talk about up the creek without a paddle. There are no records to verify how many county-mandated murders happened on that land.

After I got to eat a snack without shame in front of a fan for a little cool down, we went to the cells–the new ones they had built later. I was expecting a modern cellblock, but instead I got more of the cramped, stifling feeling as we left the main house to enter a newer building sitting next door that I hadn’t even noticed before. The building is unassuming and more modern-looking, less horror movie like, until you get inside. Right inside are the drunk-tanks, 8″ x 8″, if that, as steel monstrosities that are built with heavy iron doors. There are desks that I’m wider than (as Nicole quips, “I can’t fit at that desk!” I couldn’t either). The beds are steal bolted into the walls with dirty, thin mattresses on top (or more like mattress toppers as the skinny things couldn’t really be called a mattress by any stretch of the imagination). There are ancient toilets and showers in the cells that are steel blocks with dangling plumbing. There are cells built around the corners of each side of the drunk tanks. The drunk tanks are meant to be temporary to let someone cool off or sober up. The cells on the sides are for longer stays: one male and one female side. They look the same, with the thick, cement walls closing in on cells that are at the largest 10″ x 10″ and sleep 4 people with bunk beds screwed into the walls. There’s a rec cell that has a picnic table and a metal rectangle for a shower. The toilet is open for all to watch as it’s used. Justin and another guest went in to try to talk to the ghost and played cards there. I was too freaked out and claustrophobic to attempt much hunting here. We have energy detectors, but they kept going off for other reasons like cellphones. I saw another hunter had downloaded an EVP detector on her phone that could pick up all kinds of frequencies and catch “ghost talk.” I downloaded one and was using it in the cells. Justin had one, also. He kept getting religious things like “form halo”, “priest”, etc. I was getting readings like “church”, “save her”, “teacher”, etc.

That night I hadn’t realized that the camera icon here is to take pictures of my phone screen, not the scene playing out in front of me. I did just download the app. Therefore, I had a lot of screenshots of ghosts speaking. This is the only one I liked as I stood next to my sister in the female side of the tiny jail. I was calling to the ghosts to ask them what they want and what I could do for them. I liked that this word came up. It was soothing for some odd reason.

I freaked out even more when I saw some reddish/brown liquid dripping down the walls by the de-lousing shower at the front of the jail. After I calmed down, I realized it had been raining very hard and it was just rust mixing with rain, and not decomposing human blood. One of the hunters almost sat in it trying to find a place to rest (no one wants to sit for too long in the cells).

“Can you imagine being stuck here waiting for a trial,” Nicole asked as we all were beginning to feel overwhelmed and “dirty.” The air is dirty, the surroundings are dirty–the thoughts you have…terrible. When we got out of that dank place I was grateful. We waited back in the house area to try to get some rest before the last part of the tour, the actual old jail. Alice had been alerting on something in an office behind the area we were sitting in and the owner wanted to experiment with leaving an open phone in there and seeing if we could catch voices or movement. One hunter called another and we left her phone in the office and closed the door. The owner made sure we could hear inside the room and we could. We waited for 10 minutes or so, but it was quiet. The ghosts were not feeling our group that night. After he opened the door and handed her back her phone, the owner continued to talk to us to avoid the silence. In the middle of a sentence, the light came on in the little office behind him. Startled, even he hesitated a brief second and looked over his shoulder to where there was now light. It was only the second thing that seemed paranormal that night.

The first paranormal thing happened in the first part of the tour when we were given energy detectors while still in the Sheriff’s house/office. These contraptions register spikes in output of energy. I noticed that I was getting spikes when my siblings and I were standing together. Justin was so intrigued that he told the owner we were getting hit after hit. Then another hunter behind us said her EVP box came up with the word, “middle.” Intuitively, I stuck my detector between all of us Nelson-Brown clan members, and it went off. Nicole did the same and so did hers. Justin and Doug, the owner, were impressed. Even Richard kind of jumped back as he was in the middle of our sibling semi-circle, right where the box was going off.
btw

The Old Jail Cells

Next to the bland Sheriff’s office was a set of steep, crooked stairs that lead up to a huge iron door. The old jail cells awaited us as we had seen what they considered modern shortly before this and that was dismal to say the least. What was upstairs? The caretaker made sure we knew that there was no climate control in this Texas town’s jail. No. Climate. Control. No heat, no air…how did they survive? The way she put it, it didn’t matter much if they did or didn’t. There was always a creek to throw them into. Carefully, we all trekked up the steep stairs, with a huge steel bar door about 3/4 of the way up. The second floor has a short hallway that leads to crumbling cells along one side of the wall, and tiny cell blocks with benches in the middle on the other side. The opposite wall has a huge open space. The cells were slightly bigger here, but no less confining and gross. They didn’t go up to the ceiling, so they really looked like concrete boxes some giant had set down. The cells on the left reminded me of the VA hospital’s rooms; they were more than abandoned, they seemed purposely destroyed. The movie Silent Hill had scenes like that, when the rather normal looking, deserted town would just start melting and cracking apart when the evil would come. Combine the logic of age and no care, with the ruin of evil and consequences, and you have the old jail in Hallettsville.

I took some pictures and ventured into the big stone cages they call cells with sturdy iron doors crisscrossed with bars (see pics at the beginning). It was downright medieval. No beds or desks here. It was stiflingly hot, muggy and sickening up there. The cells brought no activity, just nerves sizzling as I grew more and more claustrophobic. I have never been sensitive to small spaces before; I actually like confined spaces. One can see what’s coming and going. No surprises and I never liked them. In this space, though, I felt tight, worried and angry. No air moving and a mind that went blank. I’m not used to spacing out so much, as usually my mind is racing.

Backing out of the cells, something furry and small passed in front of me and I almost leapt out of my skin. What was Alice, the owner’s dog, doing up here? I’d heard him say she wasn’t allowed in this area. Rules didn’t seem to make a difference to her or any of these guides and hunters. Doug said she can’t have human food, but I saw someone give her some pizza. Not only was she in the jail part, her small, long body had somehow made it up the steep stairs and managed to scare me but good. She stayed with us while the hunters tried to summon ghosts that didn’t seem to want to cooperate, and Nicole and I took a break in the rec area that was nothing more than a picnic table between tight cells. She never alerted on anything up there. Still, she got a lot of love and attention. She tried to coax my sister into petting her and even went under and through the walker Nicole was using to sit on. Thanks to my dog, Juno, Nicole is afraid of dogs, even those as small and cute as Alice is. Juno had bitten her during a Thanksgiving at my house.

When it came time to take a break before free time to explore, I was surprised to see I wasn’t the only one of our clan that was ready to breakdown. Like I do a multitude of times, I was willing to hide my exhaustion and pain (from the heat and Psoriatic Arthritis) and let my siblings have their free time to use the equipment and explore without the guide or at least with the guide but where we call the shots. Most guests had left and I was waiting for Richard to accept the free time, but instead he wearily declined and I was soon petting stray kittens, with one terrified of me, before heading to Nicole’s car and the GPS to head down the street to our hotel. It was literally down the street and we still got turned around and had to find our way back.

Ghost Hunt #1: I didn’t know what to expect and so having any of the experience was new and delightful. While I wasn’t planning on another hunt, #2 showed me something different and it was more enlightening than it was frightening. Oppression comes in many forms. Is oppression a human instinct as much as noticing differences? It sure seems that humans will find something and someone to hold to judgment and to oppress if not suppress, a lighter but still heavy form of punishment. I’m certainly not into sympathizing with criminals and believing that they shouldn’t be locked up if they did the crime. However, locking people up into small cages designed to deprive one of stimulation and the slightest bit of comfort isn’t something we would do to animals. People have done some heinous crimes where I’m not so sure they deserve to live amongst anyone, but incarceration needs to be viewed as punitive but humane, as designed in the Constitution. It’s punishment enough to be segregated; trust me, I know. It’s something to think about when an old jail is haunted due to the number of murders that the Sheriff and deputies did only to throw the bodies in the creek out back, and the suicides and the murders inmates did, and so on. It’s a place of horror, just not necessarily because of spirits.

About Me Part Three

She did what?

I remember it, which is strange since my memory is like an elusive, wild animal with a will of its own and a teasing nature. The first home I had was in a modest Chicago suburb called Maywood, which has since sunk into something more like despair and poverty. It’s a shame, the houses were built with a sense of style and longevity, but without resources and multiple families dwelling in a space meant for one family, what does one expect?

I remember this big, clunky, wood house and nothing much of the inside of it. I’ve seen pictures, especially of Christmas, but I cannot for the life of me conjure up the inside space. When my brother was going into the 1st grade, my mother took me with them to the school, though I was 4 going on 5, and asked them to sign me up for kindergarten. They told her that usually students are 5 going on 6 and that I was too young. Bring me back next year. I’m not sure why, but my mother insisted on me being in school that year, so they relented and tested me for kindergarten. I was let in that year.

Perhaps it is better that I never knew how “exotic” I was as a light-skinned black girl in a black neighborhood. My skin color was not something that really stood out to me. I was just part of a big family and my mother didn’t seem any different than anyone else’s. Yes, we were stared at as my mother carted around her mixed-race brood, but you get used to that and since she wasn’t bothered by it, neither was I.

Each year the school would hold an end of the year pageant of sorts. Each grade would host the show and put on different skits for the audience. The year I was in first grade, it was the class’s turn. My teacher and my mother were good friends, which is unusual since my mother didn’t make many friends. However, I believe she sewed for the woman (again, unusual for her to do this outside of the family) and they seemed to like each other. Therefore, my mother was tasked to help with the pageant because it was a big undertaking for just the teachers. Between my mother and this teacher, they devised a skit for me. As a 5 year-old, I was put in a bikini and then my oldest brother’s large shirt. Elfriede practiced with me to make sure I could perform on stage; I mean, I was a small girl. I got on stage and the announcer began with how hard it is to deal with the wintery weather. I hugged my body and the enormous shirt pretending to be cold. Then the announcer talked about how wonderful it would be to have the sun out again. My young self threw off the hat I was wearing, pulled open my brother’s shirt, and posed in my bathing suit, smile plastered on my face. Yes, as a 5 year old, I did a striptease for the entire school. The only thing I can say is that my mother actually planned it and taught me how to pose!

For the rest of the time I was at the school, which wasn’t long, I was famous. The middle school kids knew who I was, and people would stop me and ask me if I was the girl on stage that one time. I was. Later, I would think about what could have been had we stayed in the neighborhood, or been zoned for a school that was majority African American and not white. At the school where I ended up, I was just another black student and mostly unwanted. The house we moved to when I was in 2nd grade was in Bellwood, a humble but clean middle class suburb right next door to Maywood. Gentrification is common in Chicago and ever shifting as certain races move to get “away” from other races, only to have those races follow and live where, shockingly, they want to live. We were one of only two families that integrated the small neighborhood, and we moved right on the borderline for schools. I ended up going to Sunnyside instead of Jefferson.

I know my mother wanted what she thought would be a good education for her children; she felt that would be in the predominantly white school. This sounds prejudice, but the reality of systemic racism (and it’s a reality for those of us who hit glass ceilings and walls and speedbumps, etc.) is that certain schools are going to have more and better resources. This shouldn’t be, but it is. Maybe she should have fought for more and better resources for all schools, but that’s not an overnight fight and when the kids are growing up fast, decisions are made as needed and without much guidance. So, I was one of two black children in my class, and then by middle school there were more, and then more, and then it was tipping the scales to be more minorities than not. This happens, but even my family was surprised that the neighborhood did change.

Sunnyside Elementary School, the attached sibling of MacArthur Middle School. I would spend nearly 7 years in these schools that sat back to back in the middle of an innocuous suburb called Berkeley, IL. I went from being a well-known little girl with a big gap in her front teeth (Oh, and someone actually asked when my tooth would grow in. No, that was a gap, not a space for a tooth) and admired for her butterscotch skin and big brown eyes, to being a black girl who was darker than the other black girl that was in my class, who liked to brag about her white grandmother. It never occurred to me to brag that my mother was actually white because I didn’t understand the contest I was in with her. Who is whiter is not a fun game to play, trust me.

I remember one day at the Maywood school I attended, I was carrying two armloads of books in the rain trying to get to the door as fast I could. Still, I was little with a load of books and it was awkward. Suddenly, the book on top went flying to the right of me and landed like 5-6 feet away. I remember looking at it, incredulously, since there was no wind or person there to knock the book out of my hands. It just went flying. I needed to get the book, so I walked to it and bent down to retrieve it and resettle my stack. At the moment I bent down, a brilliant flash rocked my head back. It took me a moment to realize that lightning had just hit the ground where I was standing a moment ago. Because I was now lower to the ground, I was less of a conductor to that powerful electricity. This would only be 1 of several times something unseen interfered with my life.
By the way

I loved the Bellwood house, and apparently I still do as every night, just about, I’m there in my dreams. The house isn’t always the bungalow on a cookie-cutter street that it is in reality. I haven’t been to that house in almost 10 years now. I hear that it underwent a renovation, which is a good thing. It’s a house with good bones that just needed a makeover into the 21st century as much as possible.

Still, as much as the Bellwood house was a home to me and my family of 7, the village tried to spit us out again. I remember times where we were walking in the neighborhood as children and adults would scream at us to get “out of their neighborhood” and how “we don’t want your kind here.” I was young and my sisters were even younger, but I never spoke back or turned around to run home. For reasons I can’t wholly explain, I just ignored them. We used to take a shortcut through a condo building’s parking lot that was clearly marked no trespassing, and, yes, people yelled at us for going on the property. But I knew that was a different anger than the fool who told children to get out of the neighborhood and called us a “kind.” The anger came from the same place, but when I went through the parking lot I knew I was wrong; I just wanted the fastest way and it was a parking lot–what was I going to do there? I was walking to the library, for heaven’s sake. (Yes, we were a family of nerds.) Both had indignation and frustration, but one had a point and the other was just pointless. It wasn’t going to change anything.

As a child, when my parents spent hard-earned money to take us on vacation, I never noticed that the pool at the hotels we stayed out would empty out when we came. It could be there were now 5 kids to share the pool with, but there was room. It never occurred to me why the people would leave until I got older and my brother looked at me like I was crazy when he claimed they left because a black family came to the pool, and I looked awed by this simple explanation. It never crossed my mind, even when some nitwit was sitting with his son in a hot tub with my mother and I came stealthily in to join them. I was always my mother’s sidekick–me, or my brother. I sat down next to her, just like the little boy sat next to his father. Poor child, he probably wanted to swim in the pool and his dad made him go to the only indoor body of water without the black people. Then here I come. Skinny thing in a bathing suit to join my mother. After a minute, the man started to get up and said clearly, “Come on, son. let’s get away from this riff raff.” He and the boy left and I turned to my mother and asked, “What’s riff raff?” Without blinking an eye or hesitation, she said clearly, “Garbage.”

I’ve always thought it was because she was so calm and steady that I didn’t react to being called garbage. She didn’t get mad so why should I? Or maybe I was just a kid with a quickly changing attention span and I really didn’t care. I didn’t associate myself with “garbage” and I don’t see why he did. Elfriede would not be so calm in other circumstances. We were at the mall when I was a young preteen girl with lots of bags, winding down our shopping trip with just the girls. I was sitting on one of the wooden benches by the food court, my sisters and my mother around me when a police officer approached me and said I was being detained on a shoplifting charge and I needed to go with him. I know I didn’t steal, my mother knew this, but what were we going to do? I followed him meekly and sadly (more than angrily–that would come later), with my mother yelling at him that I was no thief, I had been with her the entire time, and we didn’t even go into the store they were taking me to get an ID.

The distraught shopkeeper took one look at me and blew up a the police officers. I was wearing a bright yellow shirt with Bugs Bunny on it and shorts. “I said she was wearing a floral, floor length skirt,” the store employee protested as she scanned this preteen girl they’d dragged through the mall. I didn’t match ANY type of description they had of the suspect. Why would someone shoplift and sit in the middle of the mall just waiting to be questioned? Face it, I was simply a black girl in the mall they could harass. My mother asked for an apology in the rudest way she could as I stood there shaking, embarrassed and harassed. They mumbled something and walked away. It was okay to shame me, but not correct their prejudice mistake. I didn’t wear the outfit again, and Elfriede teased me it was because I remembered what happened. No, it was a bright yellow shirt with Bugs Bunny on it!

I had it bad? Not by a long shot! My experiences are minimal. My sister was a young child when our neighbor across the street blocked the sidewalk so she couldn’t walk down it. He made her cross into the street. My father had to come and have a talk with him. He didn’t block any of us again. The same sister’s 2nd grade teacher didn’t feel that black children had the same cognitive ability, and based on this bigoted opinion, without testing or permission or informing my parents, she put my sister back into the kindergarten class. I think Alex attended for a while because she is sweet and trusting and tends to keep her feelings bottled up until she can’t anymore. She came home balling and my mother finally get it out of her that she was being put back two years for no reason. Not a viable one, anyway. The school moved her back and transferred that teacher to a different school. She shouldn’t have been a teacher, and I am one to know the profession, but they just put her in a different school. I don’t think that prejudice teacher learned much that day. Too bad. My brother, Richard, was going to a party of one of his classmates and the police pulled up and asked him what he was doing in the neighborhood.

Richard isn’t flippant, he’s just too smart to suffer fools and their foolishness at all. The officer refused to believe he was there for a birthday party, and thankfully James pulled up and was able to get his son away from someone who didn’t have his best interest at heart.

My oldest brother has had bottles thrown at his car while he was driving. I’ve had store clerks insist I couldn’t be a sibling to my sister and I remember wondering why she was saying that. I’m the lightest one in my family and many assume I’m Hispanic or some other ethnicity. As my father lay dying in hospital beds, nurses have assumed my husband was his son and that I was a daughter-in-law. One nurse just turned to me and asked, “if you’re his daughter, then who is your mother?” I explained my mother was white and I’m biracial, and she relaxed some.

I got used to it. This sounds like such a benign statement and I don’t mean it as literally as that. One can get used to many things, even pain. The stares from people in stores as a white woman walked around with her black children didn’t bother me much that I can remember. I guess I noticed it since I remember dealing with it. Having to explain things to people is something that doesn’t phase one much after you’re asked so much. I grew up on the edge of everything, sliding between worlds when I felt like it, accepted or not. I was no one’s best friend, but everyone’s acquaintance. Well, I did have a best friend but I usually pick someone more marginalized than myself. I didn’t judge lest I be judged. The only people I ever picked on myself were those picking on others or those who picked at me. I’ve had people just hate me from the sight of me. They didn’t know me, it didn’t matter to them that they didn’t know me, I was an enemy on sight. That never drew my attention because it was their hang up, not mine. I took on other people’s battles because there was a core build within me that built Gatrude, Elfriede, my great-great grandmothers, and back. To go deep enough is to hit a wall of granite that is unwavering yet true to self. Love cemented it so tightly and strongly that not even love itself could reverse its work. Gatrude loved her family, even her wayward daughter. I don’t need to hear her say it know it. It’s a part of me. Elfriede loved her family and it’s this sense of loss that kept her from ever trying to go home. Some love is too strong. She loved her children with abandon. I love on for all of them, even when maybe it’s not so healthy to do so. Love doesn’t know boundaries because it is the walls, it is the center, it is the beginning without an end. Infinity.

We were never supposed to have the Bellwood house. Realtors would have two sets of books: one for white people and one for the people of color. Bellwood was not for the “everyone else”, but the realtor that showed us the Bellwood house either didn’t know this or didn’t care. My brother told me later that she got in trouble for selling us the house at the time. Of course this is an illegal practice, even back then. That didn’t seem to matter, either. I’m glad that we lived there because it’s still home to me. I don’t need someone to tell me what home is supposed to be; it’s there when you need it without the world’s interference.
BTW

About Me Part TWO

James L Nelson

The L initial in James L Nelson stands for nothing. James didn’t have a middle name, so he produced a letter because people always ask. It tells you greatly about James that he only chose an initial when he could have had a full name.
By the way

My mother shaped my life whether I liked it or not. I was her look alike, but I was more Gatrude’s than I knew or understood until later. She would try to control my life to have me avoid the mistakes that she made. It was futile and overzealous of her to think that fate could be so moved, but what mother wouldn’t try to save her daughter from the fresh hell that life can be? My father, on the other hand, was simply a soft place to land when the world hurled me to the ground. Sometimes, superheroes come in fleshy costumes that appear dull and ill-fitting. My father kept his legacy close to his chest and only let it shine on occasion–when he had to.

James L Nelson was maybe born November 22, 1941. Maybe. He was, for sure, born to Alice who was barely 15-16 and Peter who was not much older. They were from sharecropping families in rural, middle Mississippi. That part of the Nelson clan did not get caught up (yet) in the diaspora that would lead many black families up North for better jobs and conditions. I believe they live in Lexington right now, but my father was born in Pickens, a town small enough to see one end from the other end. The first, and only time, I visited, I was a teen ager and these boys came riding up on bikes to ask us where we’re from. I remember being horrified; people in Illinois didn’t just walk up to strangers and talk to them like that. I think we answered them, but I’m sure we appeared stand-offish and not a little rude. The South is very different.

My father is not the storyteller that my mother was, so some of what I know is extrapolated from facts or what my mother told me, or the few stories that my dad would tell over and over again with the same gusto. Perspective when it comes to storytelling is paramount, so my father would put his spin on things, and my mother would have her own. I’m sure the truth lay somewhere in there. The truth always does. I’m fairly sure that my father was not a planned pregnancy with such young parents that didn’t stay together too long. Alice would marry Peter and make things “legitimate” for all families involved, including little James. It wouldn’t last long. A daughter came quickly, and for reasons not fully disclosed but people didn’t talk about these kinds of things like they do now, Alice took Inez or “Sister” as she was called, and moved to Chicago. Maybe it was just that Alice was now older and able to go on her own. Perhaps Peter and she just weren’t getting along and she wanted a new start. There were the underground rumor mills (mostly my mother) that figured that Sister wasn’t Peter’s baby, and Alice hightailed it out of Mississippi to avoid a broken marriage. When Sister passed away many years later from cancer, Peter was still informed and treated as her father. I don’t think another father had ever been named or imagined–at least out loud.

Whatever the reason, Alice took Sister to Chicago with her, and James was left behind. Alice’s mother was a tough, pioneer-type woman who was the epitome of what it means to be a good woman and wife, according to my father. He took great pains to tell me how she would get up before dawn while the men slept and make breakfast all from scratch (no Bisquick then) so the men could eat when they got up and be in the fields at the crack of dawn. She would then stay behind and clean up, only to go to the fields after that and pick cotton herself. She would leave the fields early to make lunch and go back to the fields after she cleaned up. This was repeated for dinner.

By chance he just meant to praise his hardworking Grandmother, I don’t recall her name if it was ever said to me, and not necessarily present her as a model of womanhood. However, what I’ve learned is that what you state to young children is what they take to heart no matter their reaction. How confusing to a young girl who has a tiger for a mother and a responsible figure of a great-grandmother. My father didn’t just choose responsible, he picked strength. He saw his grandmother as that, maybe, not just a woman but a tower of strength that handled it all–the men, the cooking, the work, the children, etc. He may have coveted her lack of complaint and her willingness to stand up as needed, some of the same qualities my mother would show. As a child, I heard the woman’s work and the compliance. I didn’t hear the need and the fulfillment. The sacrifice for the role that was needed no matter how unfair it would be. A child sees the unfairness and hears the need, and the sacrifice is such a different world because children don’t have to be martyrs mostly.

This martyr handled not only her business, but the family’s business. When Alice took off without Peter and James, someone had to be responsible for the boy-child. Peter didn’t keep his son, so Alice’s mother stepped in. Not only did she do all of the housework, meals, and pick cotton, she took care of a grandchild. The only memory that my father really shared was being dragged on a burlap stack behind his grandmother while she worked the fields. He was too young to keep up and to walk on his own, so she would drag him along with her.

Great-grandmother only lived to her mid-40s, something else that my father seemed to say with pride. When I was old enough, I remember turning to him and exclaiming, “She worked herself to death? How is that good?” I don’t remember him answering. Perhaps he didn’t see it that way. Again, sacrifice can seem so sweet, especially when a child is involved. I’m not so sure. Something that happened in those formative years, before he went to Chicago and after he would reunite with Alice and have several more sisters, affected my father so tremendously that he would never outrun it. He lived with it, buried himself in it, until the day he was meant to be laid to rest literally. No one understood and to this day it’s hard to understand.

Somewhere along the line, my father was taught not to touch his own private parts. He never learned to clean himself or really wanted to clean himself. If one really thinks about it, children are not inclined to clean themselves. They have to be bathed and usually dragged into the tub. My father never felt he had to bathe or wear any type of deodorant. To him, it was not only frivolous, but almost sacrilege. I bought him some deodorant, not the first one to do this, when I was an adult and he was a senior, and asked him to bathe and put this on. He pretended to bathe and then sprayed the deodorant. Later, I would wonder why this wasn’t working and then I noticed that his shirts were staining white or yellow under the arms. The fabric was becoming ruined. I asked him how he was putting on the deodorant and he confessed that he was spraying it on the clothes and not his skin.

He would be like this his whole life; water was the enemy and soap wasn’t necessary. He didn’t feel the need to wash his clothes at all, change his sheets or bed spread, or wear any kind of deodorant or cologne. I can tell you so many things my father was: dedicated to those he loved, kind to a fault, the least greedy or materialistic person alive, and on and on. Still, he had the one unforgiveable trait that would keep him from being close to others and fully accepted: no hygiene. I can’t even say bad hygiene because he just had none. It wasn’t that he didn’t clean well or often enough; he just didn’t clean. His natural state was as he was without any intervention of any kind. Even when he became incontinent as a very sick person, he would fight those that tried to clean him up or clean the soiled clothes. How does this type of thing happen? The family has always wondered, especially since my mother was the complete and utter opposite of this. She was Mrs. Clean with a spotless home and at least one shower a day if not more. Moreover, Elfriede was European so she didn’t believe in deodorant, but she made sure she showered and she always had clean clothes and shoes.

I do believe that something happened when he was left with his grandmother. Not that she was neglectful or harmed him; I think there just was no time or the same amount of need for cleanliness on the farm. When I visited Mississippi as an adult, my father’s aunt had a person-sized hole in the side of her house. I would have been horrified to have such conditions, but they didn’t seem to mind that their house had an impromptu door on a random side of it. Several windows were missing. The level of acceptance was different than what I thought my mother or I would stand. This was where my father grew up. Wouldn’t he have dealt with the same standards? It just never changed.

Okay, he’s an extreme case and he was. Opposites do attract, but keep in mind that they repel just as hard. We’ll get to that fiasco later. Perhaps as a child he was taught that it was the ultimate sin to touch yourself and he just kept this sentiment. Whatever the case, he was with his family on the farm until he was about 7 years old when his grandmother died and there was no one else to care for the child. Alice had to accept him and now there were other children (and men) for James to deal with.

James always remembered a childhood friend, a cousin, named Nathan and thought fondly of this man till the day he died. Nathan was one of the few men in the family and a good friend to a childhood James. When we went to Mississippi later, I met Nathan, and my sisters and I were tickled pink that he looked like a robust, farmer version of our own father. He was very gracious and let us ride his horses. When my dad said he would go and visit Nathan when my father was sick and elderly, I asked if he had any contact with the man and he hadn’t. How did he even know he was still alive? He didn’t know. It was a great fantasy for James, going to the farm of his childhood and picking up where he left off. Even if it’s in his own mind.
By the way

My mother may have been the more lively storyteller, but my father had the best story ever! James joined his mother on the West side of Chicago in “no man’s land” or the projects. It got this moniker of feeling like a deserted island at the edge of the metropolis and blissful suburbs because no one was ever around when we visited, which was always during the day. Nighttime was even worse. At least some people hung around during the day, but at night, there was no one. The playground was always empty, the building looked dejected and rejected, but hundreds lived there, including my grandmother and her brood that wasn’t James. The young James, illiterate and keeping his southern twang, came “home” to this at the tender age of 7 or so. He would be reunited with Sister and more sisters. Alice enrolled James into school, the first experience he would have with it, and they put him in a “special” class with what they considered the helpless kids. My father wasn’t developmentally delayed, disabled, or handicapped in any way–he just had no education. In fact, James had a sharp analytical mind. He should have been college bound like Elfriede should have been, but they were both pushed aside for different reasons. The outcome was the same: a smart woman and a poor black son were overlooked and objectified.

An about 7 year-old walked into a basement classroom and took his seat behind the biggest kid he could find. There he hid for a while. The teacher didn’t much care anyway. He would prop his feet up and read the newspaper–a glorified babysitter to say the least, until these kids dropped out and became someone else’s problem. James liked his hiding place, but it could have been his demise because that humungous kid in front of him turned on him one day and glared down at the skinny, Southern boy. Horrified, James didn’t move as the monster in front of him, so recently a protective shield, reached for him unceremoniously. The large boy grabbed James’s bony hand and so easily swallowed it up in his bigger paw. Would he squeeze James’s fingers to smithereens? No, the larger boy jammed a pencil into the fist that he’d made with the younger boy and started sketching out letters and numbers. This would go on until James had grasped the concept of letters and numbers. The behemoth taught the Southern boy how to read and write. I always loved this story as a kid. It had the best twist.

Another great childhood story of my father’s was when he and the neighborhood kids were playing with a tattered ball on the West side streets of the projects. To their surprise and delight, a limo travelled down the street and observed them for a minute or two. This was unusual and the boys got a kick out of it, but didn’t think much of it as they continued to play ball when the limo pulled away. A short time later, the same limo rounded the corner and came towards the boys. Curiosity will always embolden children, so they sat and waited for it to roll up to them. The window rolled down in the back and Hugh Hefner, recognizable even to the boys, smiled at them as he threw a new ball their way. They exchanged pleasantries and the boys admired their new ball, until one of the neighborhood women who had seen the exchange punished them. James said he was “smacked upside the head” all the way home until his mother had her own turn. What was the problem? Mr. Playboy himself had dared interacted with their children. These days, Hefner may be considered tame by comparison to some others in the Adult industries, but back then he was a bad influence. It didn’t matter, as James got a chuckle out of it and a good story, if not a sore head.

James settled in with his sisters, his mother, and her boyfriends. His sisters would later describe him as “stingy” with his belongings. Growing up poor can certainly create this need to hoard what is yours, so this isn’t surprising. I always thought James loved his mother dearly because we visited so often and he talked as if he did. Now I’m not so sure, because my brother shared that the visits were “forced” by my mother. We didn’t go to church, we visited family on Sunday. Elfriede wanted that intimate relationship even if she didn’t like going to the projects to get it, or having her mother-in-law keep her children. James and Elfriede would have settled in sunny California, where they first landed in America, if not for Elfriede wanting to be closer to family, the way she would have been with her mother in Germany. So, they moved to Chicago and then to the suburbs. My father didn’t talk much on our visits to his mother, but he didn’t talk much period. When she passed away, he made me cry when I saw how he was close to the coffin that bore her remains, but he refused to look at her. My mother, on the other hand, looked close enough to realize that her wig was pinned to her flesh with safety clips. This would anger her and be fodder for stories for years, always disturbing me. James didn’t want to remember his mother as a corpse, but as a living woman. I liked that so much that I don’t care for funerals to this day, and both of my parents didn’t have one. That was Elfriede’s wishes and then mine for my father, who probably didn’t really feel that way.

What does a poor, black, 18 year-old from the projects do when he isn’t college material and he has no prospects on the West side of Chicago, and he has to find some place to live that isn’t with his mother? He goes to the armed forces, of course. The army was a good fit for my father’s team spirit nature and analytical mind. However, it did not seem a good fit for his no hygiene lifestyle. The army didn’t dismiss him because he was a good soldier and would become an MP, a good job for this charming Southern boy with all of the manners and kind essence, but they did put him in his own barracks. Even the army couldn’t change this trait, so what was anyone else to do? Nothing.

It was the late 50s and going into the 60s, time for segregation and the Vietnam War. My father, smart and efficient, became an officer, but was also regulated to the Black Officer’s club and station. I enjoyed seeing pictures of him leading other troops through drills. Except for times when he punished us, he seemed too gentle to be barking orders. Through some divine intervention of some kind, he was stationed in Germany instead of being sent to die in Vietnam like many young, black males were.

In Germany, he was an MP and had many gory stories to tell about stopping bar fights and horrible accidents that he had to attend. It was a dangerous job, but he seemed to thrive in it. Being a police officer might have suited him once he got home and landed in California. Things would be so different–or not–for this family. The inevitable was that Elfriede approached him on a bet from her friends and my father took one look at the stunning creature in front of him, exhilarating and terrifying in her power, and said, “I’m going to marry you.” Of course, this is Elfriede, who shot back at him, “Oh no you’re not!” She did, despite her mother’s pleading with her to not do it (or because of it, who knows). The Burgermeister of the town refused on different or less profound grounds than Gatrude. Gatrude knew James was not right for her lively daughter who was proudful and a clean freak. The Burgermeister (or mayor) just didn’t want to marry an interracial couple. James and Elfriede forced the issue and were married.

Erika was either prejudice and mean due to James being an American, according to my mother, or cordial and obliging, according to my father. Perspective does take a spin with reality. Elfriede noted that Gatrude did not like James, but she was nice to him and fed the young couple many times when they didn’t have much. My father loved Gatrude for her simple, loving nature. He also loved Elfriede’s nephew and younger brother, who would still be around. The others in the family didn’t come up much or seemed inclined to notice James.

James didn’t end up being a police officer in America, and started a career as an engineer in the days when training and experience were more important than college careers. When that industry moved to Mexico, he ended up getting a CDL and driving a truck. I’m not sure how suited he was for the job, but it lasted a while, too. When he was too old and most likely sick, he would be a security guard. That was the last job he would hold.

About Me Part ONE

Elfriede J. Nelson

To understand who you are, you must dive into the past and understand where you came from.

What can I tell you about me?

I started to write my memoirs, and found myself writing about my mother, with my father to be the next chapter. It was a long prologue to my story, but I didn’t feel it could be skipped.

My story started well before I was even a thought or a contemplation, but I only have so much knowledge and room, so we’ll start with who matter the most: my mother and father. This part will cover my mother, Elfriede Nelson.

She was a mean girl, something so removed from myself that it took me much of my life to understand and recognize it. My mother was born with a vengeance, a strong personality from the very start that most of us would envy, but I’m sure was quite the work for her mother, who was over 50 years old when she had my mother–a twin! My grandmother would actually have another kid after my mother, too, her last one, but I can’t imagine having to birth and raise kids when menopause should be the thing you’re looking forward to.

Gatrude Bohn, my grandmother, was perhaps much softer and kinder than my mother would recognize. She would tell me later that she regretted doing some of the things she did to her mother, like leaving her in a store as Elfriede snuck out the back when she was supposed to be trying on clothes. Putting dirty pots and pans under the sink because Elfriede didn’t want to clean the dishes she was ordered to do. This was my mother, knowing that she would be punished for these mischievous acts that would definitely be found out, she did them anyway.

She was a beauty, charmed from the start with strength and a powerful nature. I can’t imagine there were two of her, but technically there wasn’t. There was another girl child, but not another Elfriede.

My mother was the consummate storyteller (oh, the juicy things she told me as a wide-eyed child!) and would spend hours, days, weeks–telling her story to me. It wasn’t that I was so special; I was just a good listener and soaked up the stories that she told me. I never got it all, because my brother told me things that I didn’t know after she passed away. But she did tell me that when she and her twin were mere toddlers, they became sick with the mumps. We wouldn’t think much of this nowadays, but it was dangerous then and it proved to be so. The pretty girls, one soft like her mother, the other a wildcat, ended up with the blue mumps. They became infected and deadly. My mother’s sweet sister died, and the wildcat held on to the possibility of life despite the mortality that floated up to her so closely that my mother said they had put the funeral clothes on her already. But she didn’t die.

Elfriede would quip to me later, many times, that her mother stated, “The angel died and the devil lived.” She would laugh genuinely and I remember being confused and then later, angry. My mother thought it was so funny, but how funny is it to tell your daughter that her sister was the good one and she’s the bad one? Even if she is the mean girl! I’m not so sure my mother should have taken some of the things that happened to her, but it was the 40s, 50s, and 60s. It was a different time and feelings were held more to the chest than they are now with things like this blog to bleed out feelings into the world, or whatever else comes.

Elfriede climbed trees and loved the woods. She would take off the knee-length underwear that impeded her progress and climb to her heart’s content. Then she would forget to put them back on and get a whopping from her mother. I can imagine that Gatrude didn’t understand. Elfriede told me she cut off her braided pigtails when she grew tired of them. Another spanking. My mother and her younger brother were the only ones in the large family that took after her mother’s mother–an olive-skinned gypsy from Hungary. Everyone else in the family was blonde or a red head like Otto Bohn and his beloved Gatrude. My dark-complexioned mother would get called the n-word by her own people in Germany and whipped for having “dirty” skin that was just her natural color. She would deal with this her whole life as people mistook her for any race but her own.

There was only one other girl in the Bohn household, a much older sister to Elfriede who couldn’t stand her free-spirited, stunning younger sister. My mother didn’t really “admire” people, so I can’t say that she looked up to her big sister really. It seemed that she saw the older woman as a “grouch”, but someone who knew how to make it in the system. Erika Bohn gave up the love of a good man to go to school and run her own business, hotels. She became successful and a big deal. I’m sure her children and/or their children are right now still in charge of many hotels in Germany. When Elfriede was a beautiful teenager, she stole some of her sister’s coveted clothes (Erika did NOT share) and went to a party that she wasn’t supposed to be at. Her sister found her, of course, and dragged her home and Elfriede took another beating for that.

As she grew up, she grew wilder and would tell me about going to the big city and having wild times with friends, and she would even take her younger, wheelchair-bound brother with her since she didn’t want to leave him alone. She’d talk about drinking, dancing, music, peeing contests against people’s houses (the boys, I’m assuming), and having water dumped on her and her invalid brother by angry homeowners (can’t say I blame them). She got in big trouble for that one.

So Elfriede listened to her wild spirit and indulged her wants and needs, earning a reputation that she didn’t care about, really. Considering the Victorian age had just passed and rules were stricter than ever, Elfriede learned to be herself and the only thing she seemed to regret (at least as far as I know) was that others couldn’t accept her as she was. She always said she wasn’t smart because, after all, the adults judged her and only those deemed worthy went to higher education. My mother went to “finishing school” where she was taught to take care of a family and a future husband. You can concentrate on sewing, cooking, cleaning, etc. Only certain students were allowed to go to college, and Erika was chosen over her sister. Erika did have a strong mind and was successful, but Elfriede was talented too, just in a different way. I would watch my mother solve problems that my educated self would have great trouble with. She was sharp, quick-witted, and very good with hands-on work.

While Erika went to school, Elfriede went to work. Hands-on was always her best and she was a quick learner, so she made shoes and was very successful. In fact, she would grow to be a talented seamstress that made all of our clothes for most of my childhood and into my high school years. Other girls would come up to me and ask me where I got the shirt I had on; I didn’t get it from any store–it was my mother’s creation. She would use cloth paint, patches, etc. to make one of a kind clothes. Of course, that would mean hours upon hours of us children in the fabric store with her with nothing to do but wait for her to make up her mind about patterns, fabric, etc. I was always her little helper, but it was hard to not get bored and get into a whole lot of mischief. My youngest sister would tell horror stories of having to be in the fabric store for hours and being so young. I don’t have very fond memories of the store, but nothing like what she would tell. Her childhood was so different than mine and we shared a home and parents.

As successful as Elfriede was as a shoe maker, her sister was successful at school, with Elfriede helping to make sure the family had what they needed. Erika would get pregnant out of wedlock (she refused to marry the man as previously stated), and Otto wasn’t having any of this. He took the baby from his unmarried daughter and went to register the boy as his own, though he was well into being a senior citizen, with the church. The baby would have the family’s last name, but be considered Otto and Gatrude’s “child”.

In mid-20th century Germany, the fathers were considered the most important parent for the children. They would, by law, be the custodial parent and make all the decisions. This would figure into Elfriede’s life in more ways than one, as most things patriarchal do for women.
by the way

Rumors abounded about the child’s father and his illegitimacy, but they were not focused on the square Erika, but the party-hardy Elfriede. My mother stated that the town just assumed the baby was hers, and her family didn’t correct the rumor. Elfriede didn’t care because she isn’t much concerned about what others think of her, and she loved the little boy. Her nephew became like her son because her elderly parents needed her help with him. Even my father, when he would become her suitor, loved the boy.

World War II broke out when my mother was a young child. Her father, despite his older age, was called to be in the German army and he was deployed. Besides the fact that my mother married an American later and came to this country herself, my mother would not forgive the army that captured her father and tortured him in a POW camp. He came home beaten down with kidneys that failed. There was no dialysis or transplant. Otto would die a horrible death. Meanwhile, Elfriede had been sent to the convent to finish her schooling and try to tame the tiger that roamed in her soul and her heart. It actually worked, religion would be a warm spot for the fiery woman and keep some of her mean girl ways under control. She figured she would be a nun and stay with the church, liking the structure and the no nonsense approach to things. The full acceptance, I’m sure, was a God send (pun intended; sorry, Lord).

Someone had to care for the family once Otto was too sick to do so. The boys were older and had families of their own, with the exception of the youngest brother who was wheelchair-bound and unable to work. Erika had school and a thriving business and her own family, too. Elfriede would step up to the plate, as she did throughout her life, and take care of the Bohn household by making shoes.

The war would cause more damage than can anyone can imagine in more ways than the worst of minds can speculate. Otto was physically destroyed, but his heart beat so strongly that when his kidneys failed and his body was set to bursting with fluid, his eyes yellow and suffering, his heart would not stop. My mother tended to him, and as Otto knew he was dying, he told his daughter not to cry for him. He would be angry and haunt her if she dared cry. She would repeat this to me many times throughout my life and hers, including days before she passed away. It never ceased to make me angry or guilty–because I would cry. I was more Gatrude’s side than Elfriede’s. I wasn’t just soft in the center but soft on the outside. My mother would pass on her dad’s advice like it was the holy grail, but I only heard someone trying to make himself feel better, without really considering the need for the bereaved to cry. And if not to cry, then to express one’s feelings. What was wrong with that? I don’t just cry for the dearly departed, but for the days that I will be without you. Besides, I’m pretty sure that Elfriede cried when her father died; she just didn’t do it in front of anyone. I would learn this too when she passed. I would cry in the car or my own house, my dog crying with me.

Otto’s heart beat on like an insistent storm, and the doctor took pity on him and gave him something that stopped his heart. My mother would never forgive Americans for crimes done during World War II. She never thought about what Germans did, but she was just a child, a girl-child at that, trying to survive with an older father and several brothers in the army. The raid sirens would echo through her life with the force and threat of banshees. When we lived in Joliet, IL, myself and my husband in one house and Elfriede and my brother in their house, we used to hear the tornado sirens all the time. I would call her when the sirens started and talk to her until they were over to keep her calm. Once I didn’t call just to see what she would do. The anger and sheer panic in her voice when I talked to her next lead me to not try any more experiments.

I would be the voice connecting her to the world to the day she passed. When she was very sick, she had some peculiar fears that came out, like not wanting to be in the bathtub–I think she was afraid of falling and not being able to get out. She had great sadness because of the pain and the disability that came with COPD and what was probably undiagnosed cancer. This kept her from the gardening that she loved and took pride in. I would talk to her, not taking away the depression, but at least keeping it at bay.

The war would also bring Americans stationed (permanently) in Germany, and that would bring James L Nelson into Elfriede’s world. Well, James was the second African American that would enter Elfriede’s life. The first one was the one that Elfriede dug so deeply into her heart that I don’t know anything about him. I don’t know his name or where he’s from, or why she loved him. She did–and he loved her. However, he left her with the promise to come back. The problem was, she didn’t think he would or the pain of his leaving was enough to sever ties, at least, if not feelings.

When he showed back up, declaring his love for her and wanting to be her husband, she was already married. At that time, and for the rest of her life, Catholics wouldn’t consider divorce.

The American soldiers at least brought one thing, if not peace, for Elfriede: the Officer’s Clubs. They were clubs, too, with drinking, music, dancing, and fooling around. At the time, the clubs were segregated for white and black soldiers. Elfriede, darker skinned with auburn hair and hazel eyes, was more comfortable at the black officers’ club. She wouldn’t be called names or considered “dirty” because of her darker complexion and Elfriede had a good ol’ time. She proudly told me that Ray Charles once visited the club and sang directly to her. Of course he did; she would be the “it” girl, the feisty one with the tigery heart and the guts to be herself and love it, finally. Her friends dared her to speak to this shy, quiet, handsome soldier that didn’t seem to get along with the others so well. Elfriede fancied him with his deep eyes and square jaw. He had a way of smirking that wasn’t dangerous but playful. It might have been more dangerous if he had a glint behind his eyes, but he didn’t. He was tame and it showed in his muddy eyes. The slight uplift in his mouth was more shyness for smiling than it was an invitation to risky business. This was someone who didn’t know he was handsome and could be smooth. He was too humble.

They made a bet, the mean girls at the bar did, and Elfriede approached James. I’m sure Elfriede did NOT imagine he would be her husband of more than 40 years and they would have 5 crazy children. It was more to make fun of the gentle soldier that didn’t seem to be rambunctious, and a good time for the party girl. It wouldn’t work out for either of them, but it would be my possibility in this world.