Man I hate going back into my past.  I hate pulling it apart layer by 
layer to get to the juicy center where motives and mentalities lay.  Where I 
find the long dead logic of a long dead girl and pray to God she doesn't quicken 
at my intrusion.  Even knowing how it will all turn out for my younger self 
doesn't make it any easier to see that girl so broken so often in the world of 
my yester-year.  Let's see if I can get through this without crying, shall we?

	Let me tell you about Tom Carr.

	Tom was a senior when I was a freshmen in high school.  He was a brilliant 
actor.  He was also smart and popular and so pretty.  He was a beautiful man.  
Tom never wasted an opportunity to bring me down.  He'd laugh at me, make jokes 
at my expense to all his friends, then smile at me at just the right time to 
make me drop something or forget my lines.  I can't count the number of times he 
humiliated me in front of the drama club.  But I liked Tom Carr so much that I 
really didn't mind.  After all, he was so smart.  And so very pretty.

	Now, let me tell you about Reggie Brown.

	I was in sixth grade and he was in seventh.  And he was about as smart and 
pretty as they come.  I liked him so much that I wrote him a letter telling him 
so.  A letter that somehow found its way into the hands of the most popular 
seventh graders in school.  It was a disaster.  I was a laughingstock for the 
rest of the school year.  Reggie first stopped talking to me, then decided to 
snub me continuously to stay 'cool' with his friends.  There's nothing like 
being called over to the 'cool kids circle' during recess and being pointed at 
and made fun of before leaving in tears.  The worse part is that after the third 
or fourth time of having it happen, I still went over to them.  Why?  Because 
Reggie was there.

	How low I stooped with those two is nothing to what I went through with 
friends or people I thought were friends, by the way.  I can be pretty dense 
when it comes to friends, but that's another manifesto for another time.  Right 
now I'm stewing over something that is making me feel the need to analyze my 
past patterns publicly, so that maybe others will avoid the doormat trap.

	Why did I let Tom and Reggie treat me like that?  I didn't think much 
about it at the time.  Now?  I think it was the idea that if I took enough shit, 
they would understand that I wasn't just playing around.  They would see that I 
was seriously interested, despite the taunts, jeers, and insults.  Love conquers 
all, right?  Not so much.  But I was willing to settle for anything I could get.  
I felt like shit taking even that though.  It actually better having them do 
these horrible things to me than to have them ignore me.  Each of them and so 
many others that I remember now as I go though this block of unwanted memory.  
They brought me low, made me nothing and I LIKED it!  God, I was such a loser.  
It wasn't Reggie or Tom or Stephen or any of the others, it was me.  And it 
wasn't the things any of them did that made me a loser either.  It was the fact 
that I let them embarrass me, torture me like that and did nothing about it.  
The most painful part of all is that a part of me wanted it - even felt I 
deserved it.   Wanted more, knowing that things would never change with any of 
them.  That's the real definition of a loser right there.  I knew what would 
happen whenever one of them deigned to speak to me, and I still let it happen.  
Same clueless smile, same tears, same script, different cast.  It's enough to 
make me sick.

	I had no friends to smack some sense into me.  And I couldn't talk to my 
family about it.  My family has such pride and strength and here I was with this 
weakness.  This weakness that I didn't want to get rid of, this weakness that I 
craved and held onto no matter what.  If there was a god for me back in those 
days, he was surely rolling on the floor laughing his ass off at me.  The 
repetitive pattern must have been the best part.  I let the behaviors repeat and 
repeat, going through almost the same actions with each one.  I'd cry myself to 
sleep, then wake up actually thinking that I might get my wish today.  If it 
didn't happen then I was just paying my dues.  It took a long, long time to 
realize the truth.

	I'd say 'there is no spoon' here, but that would be a little obvious.  

I can't even say with pride that I never made excuses for them.  Who was there 
to justify my love to.  I was alone and suffering and just as silent as any good 
girl.  I carried on this secret pain that no one knew about or was willing to 
understand.  Or maybe that's me lying to myself.  Maybe my classmates all knew 
and that's what made them laugh the harder.  It wouldn't surprise me.  I may 
have laughed myself if it wasn't my own plight I'd be laughing at.  There's a 
part of me that still slips into that mentality from time to time.  Thank God I 
have people around me that are more than willing and able to kick my ass when 
the need arises.  It's not so for a lot of us.  The doormats of the world.  It's 
hard to think of myself as much else sometimes.  The past has such a strong grip 
on my mind and actions.  Then there are other times when I promise myself a 
full-on ass kicking if I ever let myself sink that low again.  It's a daily 
struggle: everyday I climb a little higher out of the hole until something 
forces me back in.  I keep at it though.  I have to.  I would lose too much of 
myself if I fell back completely.