LIFE AFTER SHORECREST

by Raven Jennifer Demers

    I missed the prom, I missed graduation, and I missed the point of High School altogether.  To me it seemed a social nightmare; everyday was an attempt to avoid as much ridicule as possible.  Adolescence is difficult enough with the hormone surges, identity confusion, and the constant desire to run out into the night and let loose all of the anger and turmoil—to be free of the restrictions of childhood.  Then, you add the increased demand of homework, waking up early when the teenage body tends toward nocturnal living (yay hormones!), and always feeling out of place in a social structure which has strict rules of what constitutes normal.  How is a child to grow into an adult?  It’s a matter of survival.
    As a child who attended private schools and lived a wealthy lifestyle through elementary school and middle school—I was unprepared for the shock of public school and (almost) poverty.  I had been considered strange in almost every school I had attended in my years of travel, but in or out of uniforms, I found every school has its unique definition for “normal kid.”  Quickly, I gathered a few friends to me, bound myself to them as I had learned to do in the past, and made sure I at least had my core of best friends.  Almost as quickly I was labeled outcast, something I had grown to expect.
    By the end of Freshman year, I wasn’t just an outcast; wild rumors spread—one of them stated that my boyfriend and I had done it in every room in the school, including the portables—and I added another term to my list of growing labels: slut.  Sophomore year—I can still hear the teasing—other kids whispered as I walked by, and some students braved speaking directly to me about my full physical development.  A fast learner, I discovered I was more accepted in the South parking lot; I found out who belonged where.  I mapped the High School caste system, in search of my place among the rest of the confused souls.  
    By Junior year, I’d found ways to identify myself, outside the labels.  I understood the rules, and had to choose—be myself or become what the other students wanted me to be—it wasn’t an easy choice, but I had lived so long considered an outcast, I had come to accept the position.  I was an outcast among outcasts.  Surprisingly, I was elected class representative in my Junior year, but I affected no change.
Through peer counseling and dance I made my mark.  Students who normally would not have given me a second glance, came to me, even requested me by name, to speak in private about their deepest fears and problems.  I gave them acceptance and aid in a land of intolerance.  My dancing allowed me to release my own pain, to express myself wordlessly, and in return I garnished applause from those same people who taunted me daily.
    Senior year, I felt as many do, soaring above the other classes, feeling close to freedom, and completely burnt-out by endless studies.  Who wants to study when the moon is full or the sun shines in bright blue skies?  To escape the social circles of High School, I ran off to college—Running Start is aptly named—and spent most of my time there.  I missed prom, due in part to my own ambivalence, and I missed graduation for much the same reason, though I had reasonable excuses for both.
    This ambivalence to my studies continued on through college, and I found myself floundering.  I wanted to dance, but Cornish wouldn’t take me.  I wanted to go to Evergreen, but it was too far from my social life.  The burnout of High School reflected in my college grades, and my teachers wondered why I didn’t try harder.  Slowly, I pulled away from my studies, I even left a class after midterms (a class I really enjoyed), simply because I didn’t want to do the work.  I felt lost in the world, I had spent much of my time in High School trying to find my niche in the school, when I was supposed to find myself and my niche in the world.
    I stopped attending college, got a part-time job soothing irate customers, and did some nude modeling from time to time.  What did I do the rest of the time?  Most of it was spent online, chatting, socializing, being popular on the internet in a way I never was in school.  In the process, I learned HTML and JavaScript coding, started my own web site, and received compliments for my designs.
    Within eighteen months, I had a professional web site, and learned how to run a small business on the fly.  I checked out books from the library, talked to friends who either had been entrepreneurs or were still running their original businesses, they gave me their advice.  I continued my part-time job, and on off days worked on the business.  I didn’t make much money, but I was learning.  I knew the scare stories of the dot-commers, and I wanted to do things right, but what training did I have for running a business?
    It turned out, I had learned much about leadership, business, and pleasing customers throughout the previous six years, but I failed in advertising effectively.  To advertise, to sell a product or service, one must have faith in that product or service.  In this case, the service I sold was web design and hosting, and ultimately what I needed most was faith in myself.  After years of being an outcast, I heard the teasing of the past clamoring in my head.  I didn’t have the self-esteem necessary to continue my business project.
    I eventually quit my job, moved, and soon after my twenty-first birthday, got pregnant.  Once again, I needed to work; the new apartment was expensive for my friends and I to maintain.  After a month of work, this time as a data entry specialist, I was too ill to continue.  My doctor instructed me to stop working, and in the last trimester, I was restricted to the bed.  
    After the healthy delivery of my beautiful daughter, followed soon after by a grueling surgery, I found myself questioning my identity once again.  Now I had a new label—mother, and in my arms I held the motivation I had lacked for four years to finally move forward and find my place in the world.  I knew my writing had always been important to me, and it had been my solace when Cornish dashed my dreams of dance and choreography. I had published poetry over the years, and had started many a novel and short story.  I decided to set myself to the task of real writing.
    I had already written a short story and sent it into a contest, and though it didn’t win, I was sent a handwritten letter (along with the form letter) that said the editors had enjoyed my writing and thought I should continue to pursue it.  I began to gather my poetry, to assemble the framework of a manuscript.  I looked online for information on manuscript formatting and what I had to do to publish.  I spoke with friends who were published, and worked slowly toward taking what I began to think of as my first step toward my dreams.
    In the midst of this, I was a mother, and my home life grew tumultuous.  Arguments with my significant other tore our family apart.  We could afford to maintain neither our lifestyles nor my business site.  I had been living for the first nine months of my daughter’s life under the assumption that I was the homemaker, and that our daughter would be home-schooled.
    Instead, my significant other buckled under the burden of responsibility and I found myself shocked once again.  I took myself and my daughter to a friend’s in California, seeking shelter until I could figure out what to do.  With much reticence, I sought assistance from the government.  No matter my pride, I had to see to my needs and to the needs of my daughter.  The first rule in achieving one’s goals is survival, and I made sure I would survive to see my dreams manifest.  
Over the spring and summer, I jumped through governmental hoops, I took care of my daughter, and I began a dedicated course toward becoming a published writer—I read books on writing, bought notebooks and wrote down all of my ideas, and I kept clear notes.  While reading my favorite stories, I learned to analyze them and decipher what elements worked and which ones did not.  I felt I was making progress, and at the same time, I searched for the infamous day job so I could make survival more comfortable.  I sent query letters to publishers I had found in Writer’s Market and Poet’s Market.  My mother, who had acted as my agent, called me on my birthday (soon after the horrors of September 11th), and told me she had found a publisher who wanted to publish my book of poems.
    Then a consecutive string of disasters left me desperate once again, and I was close to making a very difficult choice—to live in a shelter, or move in with my controlling father.  Instead, I was rescued by the generosity of my mother and her new husband.  Back in Seattle, I felt grounded and stabilized, and I was able to start anew.  I achieved the first step toward my goals, and published My Name Was Indigo in January of 2002.
    With book in hand, I made the journey back to Shorecrest, giddy at the thought of returning to the walls and halls through which I once stamped my mark.  I walked through the shortcut in the forest, the same path I’d taken to and from my home every day, and found the path changed in small ways.  The trees had not stopped growing in my absence, and they towered higher than I remembered.  Could I make it across the parking lot and into a building I had once forsaken?
    I came in while classes were in session; the halls were blessedly deserted.  The halls had changed, I expected there to be different posters and pictures from current students on the walls, but the floors were no longer carpeted, and the paint looked different.  I rushed to the bathroom to touch up; the long walk in the chill, winter air had undone my hard work.  Inside, I found paintings on the walls, paintings that covered the bare walls of memory.
    As I smoothed lip-gloss over my lips, a young woman with a severe hairstyle walked in.  At first, her jaw was slack, her brow in careless thought, then she saw me and I watched her mouth pinch with venom.  Her face said, What the hell are you doing in my school?  Silently, she went into a stall, and I left to read in the library.  Some things hadn’t changed; familiar painted faces still hung along the back wall.  It didn’t matter to me that the paintings were not the same as those of my past, but that the art teacher still had students painting them.  There were still twenty-five minutes until classes got out; I read until the bell chimed.
    Wandering the halls in search of the room my former teacher had moved to, I found myself walking in between students, flowing between bodies as I had in the past.  Then I became overwhelmed, walking through these halls echoed the nightmares of being back in the old school, lost and late for the class I had to be in.  I felt myself in the nightmare, my class schedule had been forgotten, would no one help me?  Then I remembered, I was no longer a lost teenager, but a responsible adult with strong intent.
    I found the classroom, walked in, and met with not one, but two of my favorite teachers.  Proudly, I was able to display my new book, my new accomplishment, and I received their praise with a combination of humility and fervor.  My status had changed in the school, even with my former teachers, and I had to adjust my perspective to accommodate my new place.  I felt pure elation upon leaving.  I had made amends with my outcast years.
    Afterward, it occurred to me what four years in purgatory had taught me.  It wasn’t so important, the facts and the dates in the textbooks, or the rules and regulations of science and art.  High School stood as a shining representation and model of the world.  The social caste system, though extreme and obtuse, is the dress rehearsal—the trial run—before adulthood.  It allows each person to make the careless mistakes and to rebel against the dominant paradigm in larval attempts to break free from our cocoons and emerge as butterflies skilled in finding our world niche.
    I still have not found the elusive day job, but I spend my days searching.  My nights, though, are devoted to writing.  While my daughter dreams, I sit at my computer, typing away my ideas, writing stories I cannot suppress.  Constantly, I am tormented by the voices of unwritten characters demanding to be known.  I see the path and its tiny steps toward my golden goals shining brilliantly before me.  I take my steps slowly, and sometimes I stumble.  It took me several years to realize that there is life after Shorecrest, and how to live it, but I continue to survive.  Yes, I missed the five-year reunion, but I finally found the point.



2002-03-04, copyright Raven Jennifer Demers