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Boarding school: My new friend at the boarding school and I were perfectly matched even if I did miss my friends back home terribly. Our friendship at this school proved to be an invaluable alliance in a multitude of ways. We were members of the mere micro-handful of kids that didn't drink heavily or take drugs like candy. We were the rare minority that didn't engage in promiscuous affairs and we also didn't indulge in endless litanies of hard core delinquent behaviors. We were goody-two-shoes and we liked being that way. We protected each other and supported each other too. We were both very self-confident and steadfast on our morals and beliefs. She taught me everything a teenager should ever know about make-up, hair and clothes. She was a child author from a wealthy family and I worshipped her journals. She was a straight A student who had never been in trouble and her mother had no idea about the reality of this boarding school. So the life-long straight A student and the bookworm failure student became the best of friends. My friends from back home and I wrote many letters back and forth each week. I adjusted pretty well even if I never did get used to other kids stealing my clothes and everything else out of the school laundry room and right out of my room too! I was one of the prettiest girls in that boarding school and perhaps shamefully I was aware of it. My best friend and roommate was beautiful too. When we strode into town on the weekends we must have looked like two perfect teenage super models, one dark and one light, and the adults around us acted accordingly. However, we didn't ever tease or look down on anyone else and we helped all the less popular kids as much as we could. I spent as much time as possible with two Japanese kids, one the youngest girl in the school and the other a suicidal boy. The girl was teased, hit, and picked on constantly by all of the other girls (except for my roommate and I). They called ugly and stupid and every other slur they could come up with. In truth she was shy with no self-esteem left and I couldn't understand why her parents would send her to a school where she was treated this way. My roommate and I pulled her into our room and did her make-up and hair and told her how pretty, smart and nice she was. And this was all the truth! The trouble remained that she was so withdrawn there wasn't much that we could do, but we tried. The Japanese boy was an outcast by the color of his skin and culture alone. He spoke broken English and he was depressed and severely suicidal. No one else would even talk to him. He became my second best friend at the boarding school and he and I wrote letters back and forth for many years even after I left the school. The year cruised on, I was still making horrible failing grades but I was beginning to notice this and see it as a problem. My roommate never gave me a hard time, I was just seeing it on my own. One day I suddenly got a perfect score on a History test. My roommate told me that the teacher had approached her, because she was my roommate, and he wanted to know how I had cheated. He was trying to figure out how I had done it but was at a loss because my grade was the highest in the class. Therefore, there was no possible way that I could have peeked at a neighbor's desk and paper to achieve that result. My roommate knew that I hadn't cheated and she told me only to warn me so that I could be ready in case the teacher accused me of something. I found this whole situation amusing and I decided right then and there how I was going to change my life around. I was going to become a super star performance machine in school and I knew I could do it! I didn't have a doubt in my mind. It would be pretty easy really. After all, when I did well on tests I barely had to study to succeed. I saw the homework assignments and they looked simple enough. I was an excellent reader, so I could read my way through anything. I had been proven to read at a high college level, in fact. This was not the slightest bit of an unnerving proposition for me. Unfortunately I had begun to develop early symptoms of the disease already. Many other students at the school were being taken to the physician in town and were getting medication, but I never thought much about that at the time. I didn't really know how sick I was. I thought I was just tired and maybe allergic to something, something minor was going on. It was no big deal. I didn't know how to run to adults for help. Besides 15 year olds don't have any serious medical problems. Up to this day, I can't say whether my school mates problems were in any way related to what happened to me. Less than a month later my body was becoming a total wreck. The rest is sour history�. Somewhere in between this alteration, Christmas came and I got into serious trouble. The school had decided to force all the students to participate in a gift exchange. Fellow student's names would be drawn out of a hat and whoever's name we were assigned was the student we had to buy a store bought gift for. I didn't have any money and I didn't have an allowance beyond the money I received to buy and replace toiletries and extra food. Those, toiletries and clothes, even underwear, even boxes of sanitary napkins, were constantly being stolen by other kids, so students who didn't steal had to replace their stuff constantly. The school food budget would always run out shortly after each month began and although the school would provide meals the food became scant and we were all starving. So the school set up a concessions stand and the hungry kids bought extra food and snacks there. I was no exception. The headmaster didn't want to hear about how I had no money. A rule was a rule and the gift exchange was a new rule, end of story. I got caught stealing some earings for my gift exchange partner. My parents removed me from the school shortly after that, but I was already sick. When I first got home I was just so thrilled to see all my old best friends and they were excited about seeing me too! We'd all really missed each other and now I would end up going to school with them after all! My best girlfriend from my hometown took me to her high school, soon to be my high school too! She introduced me to all the other kids she knew and to her teachers. I sat in on her classes an entire and I liked what I saw. Today I know that her classes were being run a lot like college classes! So even though I now missed my friends at boarding school I was happy to be home again. My parents surprised me once more, I was not going to be attending school with my friends. I was transferred into the local private school where I would become the Queen Druggy and drug dealer who never did take drugs. In this stage of my life I would lose everything, including my dignity and I would lose much of myself forever. I am still waiting to be me again. Will I ever find the answers to what happened? Will I ever look in the mirror and see my own face -- as close as possible to the face I was born with, no better and no worse? Will I ever be healthy or respected or truly loved? Will I ever even be diagnosed so that I too can have a neat piece of paper with a name on it to show people who need to know? Will there ever be a treatment plan and medicine for when I get sick and swollen and can't function? Will anyone really care beyond the empty words or the care based in good part on what I can do for them? Am I asking for too much? |
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