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Everybody Hurts (REM Cover)

from One by Holly Figueroa O'Reilly

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    It Gets Better, Because it Can't Get Worse.
    Holly Figueroa O'Reilly

    My story is like everyone's story. Bullied kid, got knocked around, "It Gets Better".

    But maybe it is different enough so that someone else can see themselves in it. Whatever. I needed to tell it, and I haven't told it before, so I have to believe that someone needs to hear it if I feel the call to tell it now.

    I grew up in rural Ohio in Reagan's 80's. You remember Reagan? The man who couldn't bring himself to say the word "AIDS" for 6 years (between 1981, when the media first started reporting on it, and 1987, when he finally publicly said the words in reference to his position against sex ed in schools?) The man who said that "ketchup" was a vegetable in the school lunch program? The man who...okay, I'll stop. This isn't about Reagan. Well, kinda...but mostly not.

    I weighed around 200 lbs in 4th grade. I only went up from there. I developed an eating disorder late in elementary school when I was 9 or 10. It became so bad in my last year of high school, teachers I didn't know would pull me aside and ask me if I was sick.

    I was sick, of course, but I said no. I was afraid if I let that secret out, (the secret of my eating disorder, which was so obvious), all of my secrets would come out. I knew I would die if that happened. God would punish me by letting the kids who beat me up kill me. Or I would die in my sleep, because God hated me for the way I was. I was brought up Lutheran, which is like being brought up Catholic, without all the kneeling. There is no room for anything but "normal". And everyone knows what "normal" means. Right?

    I didn't.

    I was still "different", and that's all these kids needed. Someone who was different (fat and poor) to bully, beat up, hurt in any way possible to deflect the attention off of them: ignorant, sometimes closeted, often beaten by their parents...whatever their reasons, I was the school whipping post.

    And they got creative, let me tell you. If they had used half of that creativity for learning instead of coming after me, they wouldn't still be in that shitty little town. * (remaining residents of said shitty little town, please see below.)

    I was poor. Very poor. I wore the same clothes to school for weeks at a time, because we didn't have money for new ones, and didn't have a washing machine that I recall for a good part of my adolescence.

    I had known I was queer since I was 12, when I developed a crush on a girl who didn't go to my school. I told no one.

    Now...everyone and their mother, (what can I say, I like older women. And younger women. And...okay, women.), knows that I am bi now that I am an adult, and am away from those knuckle draggers. I have written multiple songs about being gay...the cat is waaaay out of the closet.

    But none of the people I grew up with knew I was queer then, and if they are reading now, they know it now for the first time.

    When people are beating you up, and sometimes worse, calling you every awful, hateful name in the book, for being fat and poor, from the time you are 10 years old until you are 17...well, it is fucking sad that you take in, swallow it down, don't complain much, and are just glad they don't know the horrible secret that you are sure you are going to hell for.

    I hoped that God could not see inside my heart. I hoped that my grandmother never saw it inside me, or that is wasn't somehow visible outside in a way that only grandmothers could see. I hoped that my church didn't have the divine wisdom of God, and couldn't see into my soul. I hoped there was no real God. But I prayed to him all the time, just in case. He never told me that how I felt was wrong. He never sent me any signs. I used to beg for a sign, right or wrong. Anything, God. Anything. Just tell me if I'm an abomination, or if I'm okay. Any fucking sign would be GREAT, God. You seem to talk to everyone else, because they seem to know EXACTLY what you want me to do. Why won't you talk to me?

    It finally got to the point that I couldn't stand the bullying and teasing anymore. Not about being gay. But about being fat, poor, dirty, stupid, (kids were teased for being smart, too, but not as harshly, because they were the ones who helped the idiots who teased them with their homework.)

    I wasn't stupid. I just avoided the classes where I was teased the most by the students AND the teachers, (yes...it is not at all uncommon for the teachers to get in on the act, especially if they are young and impressionable, and they are trying to identify with the kids they are teaching.) so I failed these classes. None of the teachers or administrators came after me to ask where I was. They just let me fail, and fail, and fail. They didn't ask where I went when I wasn't where I was supposed to be. I walked around that school like a ghost most of the time. The invisible girl...until someone needed to take some frustration out on someone else. It seemed to be my only purpose in life.

    After one particularly bad incident with a boy whose name I cannot even recall, I 'd had it. It wasn't even the worst thing that had happened. It was just the last that I could tolerate.

    The incident: the young, plain looking female math teacher who flirted incessantly with all of the teenage boys, asked this particularly cruel boy to pass out the math tests that had been graded around to the class. He stopped to find mine, wrote "Shamu! The Killer Whale", drew a picture of a *gray whale*, typical for the idiot that he was, to draw, poorly, I might add, a gray whale and title it a killer whale. Sigh. Public education at its finest...after he wrote this, he decided to pass it around the room so the other kids to could use my test as a sort of "slam book" against me. By the time my test had reached me, it was covered in horrible things I won't repeat here. I took it up to the teacher, and she laughed nervously, and asked this boy if he had started this. He said yes, and she laughed again, and sent me back to my seat. I instead left the room, went to the music room, and started writing goodbye letters. I was done.

    I wasn't going back to school, and I wasn't waking up the next morning. I wrote letters to the people I cared about at school, and put them in their lockers. I gave away the few things I had to the people I cared about most. I didn't know that was what people who were planning on dying did. I just knew that I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't stand it. Not another day of torture. Not another minute. If I didn't kill myself, I was afraid I was going to kill someone else, and that was something that I KNEW I'd go to hell for. I figured if I killed myself, even though that was a mortal sin, too...well, maybe I could talk myself out of that one once I had to answer for it in heaven or hell. I had no plan except to find a way for the pain to stop. I didn't see any other way than to die.

    The kids who got my goodbye notes got caught passing notes in school, and one of the more astute teachers who didn't even know me realized that there was something amiss. She took one of the letters to the school counselor (who was also the football coach. Need I say more?), and he called me into his office. He asked me what the letters were about. I lied and said I was going on a long trip. He laughed and said, "Yeah. A VERY long trip." and looked me over. He said, "Whatever. Send the next person in."

    I went home and looked everywhere for something...anything to die with. You would think living on an old farm, I would have found something. Rope...a blade sharp enough...something. Tie myself behind the horse and smack it on the ass. Anything. I wanted it to be done before my siblings came home, far enough into the field or better yet, the woods that they wouldn't find me, but that someone not in my family would.

    My dad came home uncharacteristically early that night, and I was so stunned, I actually sat down to dinner with the rest of the family that night, and pushed the food on plate around, thinking about what I was going to have to do tomorrow instead.

    While I sat there, I looked around the table at my brother and sisters. I was 14. My brother was 9. My middle sister was 4. My youngest sister was just a baby...1 or 2, I think. My step mom had just moved in. We didn't get along well all the time, but I loved her. I felt displaced, because when my mom left the family, I was "mom" to my sister and brother for many years. I raised those kids as much my dad did, or maybe more since he was gone so often. I was "it" for those kids for a long time, and when they were both working, I was still "it". I was all they had, a lot of the time.

    What would happen to them? Who was going to take care of them after school? Who was going to keep Lindsay from falling down the stairs? Who was going to help Nick with his homework. Who was going to brush Emily's hair? Who?

    It wasn't even a decision at that point. I was living for them, and that was it. I only had 3 more years of school. It couldn't get worse. There was no way it could get worse. It was so horrible that the only way that it could get worse was if someone killed me, and fuck it...that's what I wanted anyway!

    So, I started fighting back. You hit me? I fucking pound the living shit out of you. I got sent home a lot for starting fights. But fewer people hit me when word got around that I hit back. Hard.

    When people teased me, I pretended like they weren't in the room. I had one, real friend, a goddess named Karen, most of my middle school and high school years. I would say, "Do you hear something vaguely annoying? Something rather stupid, but kind of high pitched, like a dog whistle?" and she'd say, "Yeah, kind of.", and we'd shrug it off and go on with our day. Sometimes I'd get knocked around for that, but I'd fight back...and get sent home for fighting. I never hit anyone first, but I always got in trouble for defending myself. Always.

    In the meantime, all my praying did one, huge thing: nothing.

    I stopped believing in a God that wouldn't answer, and started believing in myself. It has taken a long time, and I'm almost 40 years old and still working on it. I had relapses back into the church in times of incredible hardship, where God helped me just about as much as he did when I was getting the piss beat out of me at school...but I am happy to say that I am over 20 years organized religion free (which I think there should be a button for, like in AA, when you get X days, weeks, months, years of sobriety).

    When I turned 17, and my rampant eating disorder had taken hold to the point that I was of an "acceptable" weight to the ingrates at my school, and my clothes were clean and I had more of them, and I pulled through high school barely by pulling double duty and going to summer school...there was nothing else to bully and hate me for. Except I was that kid who used to be fat. "Oh, man, you used to be so fat."

    But that really wore thin, and even their redneck, asshole friends told them they were morons for teasing me about being "formerly fat". Fact is: I was pretty hot my senior year, but I only liked one boy...the only boy who didn't tease me, no matter how fat or thin or poor or _____ I was. He treated me with kindness and respect...so rare in my life at the time. I spent most of my time with him.

    And I met a girl from a city (an actual CITY...Columbus, OH...nothing like the podunk town I grew up in), who told me that half of her friends were gay (men and women, and ohhhh, was I the picture of the fag hag in my 20s! I could put Margaret Cho to shame.), and they were super fun, accepting people to be around. She said, when I graduated...I should come and hang out. I applied to Ohio State, was accepted into the music department, and never looked the fuck back. (except for that one time.)

    Now, I live in Seattle. I married a man in my 20s who didn't know I was bi (because I thought I'd was "over it"..hahahahah! As if it was a "phase". My 20's were a funny time.), but I wanted to be honest because I was still attracted to women, so I came out to him. He was pretty cool with it, and our marriage lasted 15 years before imploding, mostly for other reasons. We parted as friends, (after the pain and dust settled), and now work closely together to raise our two kids who are smarter than we are. (I wish I was overstating that, but alas...I am not.)

    I am now on the brink of 40 (happily waving goodbye to my tumultuous 30s) with new partner who gets me better than I get myself. He happens to be a dude. A really, really hot dude. And an understanding, accepting, liberal...shall I go on? I don't think I need to in order to prove that...

    It gets better. Even at my very lowest points (my divorce, serious illnesses, friendships and relationships breaking up horribly), it was still better than being a queer, fat, poor 13 year old in rural Ohio in 1984. And I can't imagine things ever being that bad again, but what I *do* know is that if they are...they will get better again. Because that is how life works.

    It gets better.
    Then it gets worse.
    Then it gets better.
    Then it gets worse.
    Then it gets better.

    It fluctuates. That's how it goes.

    But if you are going through hell as a teenager because you are perceived as "different" in some way, and you are tortured because of that? It doesn't get worse than that. It just doesn't.

    Don't let anyone tell you that you aren't going through what you know you are.

    Don't let anyone tell you it isn't that bad. It is one of the most awful things that can happen to you.

    It is death by a thousand, tiny pinpricks. The pinpricks are words, and they bleed your soul of hope and aspiration. They make you wonder what there is to live for. For some kids, those words kill.

    It only gets better from there, because it truly cannot get worse.

    **
    * (No offense to my friends, and others who stayed in Ohio because they like it there. There are many, many redeeming qualities about my home town, and that region in general. I'm talking about those who couldn't get the grades to go to college, never left because they never had the motivation, became alcoholics and addicts, wife and kid beaters, and procreated to make children exactly like them: awful, hateful, spiteful human beings. Of course, these people were invariably the ones who would say, "As soon as I graduate, I'm out of here!" Yeah. Right. Enjoy the rest of your days in rural, northwest Ohio, losers.)
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***all proceeds from the sale of this recording go to PFLAG.***

I played my beloved Luna "Steel Magnolia" on this song. I sang it, and Aaron English sang some gorgeous backups. We thought it sounded great, and didn't need anything else. I hope you like it.

credits

from One, track released October 18, 2010
Holly Figueroa- Luna Steel Magnolia Resonator and voice
Aaron English- background vocals

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