The Perks of Being an Outcast, Part I

It amazes me (and somehow I spend much of my life amazed) how many people tell me I have incredible communication skills. I do feel comfortable in most any situation, but I don't usually feel like I belong. In fact, I've spent much of my life feeling like an outcast.

When I was little, I had an prevailing desire to soak up facts from the encyclopedia and wring them out over everyone's head. This garnered me the title "know it all." I don't have an issue with that label, per se, but I have distinct memories of how those around me would confuse my knowing thousands of trivial geographical and statistical facts with me being a smart ass when I would legitimately not understand something they were talking about. This still happens, actually. I find many people expect you to just understand what they're saying even when they do not have the skills to explain. "Well, you knew what I meant!" they say. Oddly enough, this ties in with the "know it all" label--I'll say, "I really don't know what you mean here," but I usually get annoyance in response. This happened when I was younger, especially with my step-mom. I think she thought I was making fun of her for trying to nail down the actual meaning of what she was describing. This reoccurring circumstance led to me "play dumb", which I did for about fifteen years, and still exhibit for the briefest of moments.

It started when my brother killed himself. I was in 8th grade. I went from all A's, to a low-B's, high-C's student. I was finally able to mask my intelligence with real world failures. I vividly remember the relief that overcame me when I missed being bumped into 8th grade Advanced Math by two points. My teacher suggested I retake the placement exam and she'd help me study. I was so nervous that she was talking to me, I just muttered a "No, that's okay," and she went away. When my grades, and performance obviously, dipped in 8th grade, I was so glad no one noticed. My mother was numb, my dad was far away, and my siblings were in their own little worlds covered by storm clouds.

I skated through the last five years of my public education without reward and without intervention. The only thing I excelled at was foreign language.

When I was in my senior year, college seemed so far away--in distance and time. My dad and step-mom had a friend who worked as a translator for the city court. He brought me to Mexican restaurants and grocery stores where I could utilize my years of Spanish language training. I was good. The employees understood me, and even revered me. But it was too much for me. I began to resent that the only thing I was good at was speaking a foreign language--a language that very few of my friends and family gave a shit about. I was even more of an outcast at near fluency in Spanish than I was when I could list the capital city of every state in alphabetical order.

In my final year of my public school education, I no longer gave a shit about my grades. I didn't even care much about my future. I was working at the GAP and it was fun. I could just do that for the rest of my life. What I did care about was who I was, or rather, what I was. I spent much of my time stressing about my sexuality. I had already come out of the closet, by default--which I'll explain another time, but I was still attracted to girls in a way that is still difficult to explain. It took a few years (and thousands of hours of feeling like a guilty schmuck), but I finally decided that I could no longer have sex with girls. If I was gay, I had to be gay. Otherwise...what the fuck was I? Just an outcast.

I embraced my gayness by...I didn't really do anything. I just broke up with Kim, the girl I'd gone out with for a few months. She already knew I was attracted to guys. She was actually excited by that which freaked me out a little bit. If I knew then what I know now, I would have gladly accepted her acceptance of me.

So, I embraced my gayness by shutting out some of the people who had borne witness to the most vulnerable versions of me that ever existed. To this day, I feel like I betrayed Kim and our friends. And by doing so, I felt even more like an outcast.

To be continued...