The Truth About Me

I’m pretty forthcoming with the details of my life.  I share openly.  Some might say I overshare and that’s okay.  I’ve been quite proud of the life Jason and I have shared since we married so what’s to hide?  However there is one grim, little detail that has haunted me for many years.  It’s been my dark, dirty little secret that I’ve done my best to dismiss.  If I never acknowledged it, I was certain I could make it go away.  It’s not something I’m proud of or like to talk about.  As much as this hurts, I’m going to just rip off the band-aid…  So here it is:  I never received my high school diploma.  There, I’ve said it.  Now that you know, I’d like to first tell you how it came to be and why it came to feel like a huge, embarrassing mountain I was sure I would struggle to move.  As of yesterday, I received notice that I’ve finally rectified that situation, but let’s start at the beginning…

My grades from k-9^th weren’t great.  I did not excel in school throughout any of that time and I can honestly say it’s not because I lacked the ability.  I just really, really lacked interest.  It was a total case of pure apathy.  I didn’t care nor did I try but I got decent enough grades to get by.  I only cared enough to pass, as to not be left behind by my class – embarrassing, much?  Teachers, who had my brother prior to me, were not my biggest fans.  Ryan was a G.T. student who exceeded expectations.  I guess they figured I would follow suit.  I did not.  Once they saw my very blasé attitude about school, I could see the disappointment wash over them and then they would pretty much leave me for dead.  I don’t blame them.  I was useless and I wholeheartedly admit that.  I went to Flippin, AR elementary k-6 and then moved to Conway, AR for 2 years for mom to finish up college.  I was very happy in Conway.  We were poor as church mice but I didn’t care.  It was an entirely different experience and I started to participate in school activities.  Pep squad, etc.  My last name meant nothing there.  No one knew who I was so I could be anybody I wanted to be and I came alive.  I formed strong friendships that still exist to this day.  I was happy there.  After those 2 years, mom finished school and graduated with honors.  I guess I should have seen mom going back and striving for her dreams as motivation and used it as an example to apply myself now so that I don’t have to backtrack later in life.  But alas, I cared not. 

After those 2 years, we moved back to Flippin.  No offense to my fellow Flippin Highers, who may read this, but I wanted to die.  I will never forget how I felt on that first day back.  Same familiar people…  Same smells, same HALL, same tug in the pit of my gut.  I was never happy there.  I’ll avoid getting into why, but I’ll just use a few buzz words like, ‘politics’ and ‘favoritism’ and move on.  Yes I was miserable and my grades took an even further nose-dive than even I thought possible.  English was always my strongest subject and I could hold my own in most of the other subjects – all subjects, OTHER than math.  I went straight into Algebra 1.  Dr. Hurst might as well have been speaking Farsi for all the sense it made to me.  It didn’t help that while he was speaking in a monotone I just couldn’t tune into, I was off thinking about other things.  While his markers were squeaking and there was talk of simplifying fractions, I was in my own head.  I was thinking about boys, clothes, music and plotting the confrontation between me and my closest frenemy in 3^rd period.  Man…  What a bitch.  (Sorry had to get that one in there.)  I’m back now…  That year was brutal.  I was adjusting to being back at that school and I had begun dating.  I proceeded to get into the most highly volatile relationship of my life that year.  It was everything.  It was love, it was hate, and it consumed me and everyone around me.  Whoever thinks you can’t have real feelings at 14 is inaccurate.  The relationship became so out-of-control that my family had to step in.  Hell, the local police had to step in.  It was all I thought about.  It was all I cared about.  It became the stereotypical pull for male affection from the broken little girl with daddy issues.  If we were in a good place and he loved me, life was right.  If it felt like he didn’t want me that week, I was destroyed.  It was a constant game of push and pull and I became a willing participant.  There was no room for anything else.  In summation, I was an absolute fool.  The relationship ended by forces intervening; those forces being my mother and most of my family.  The damage however, had been done.  Needless to say, throughout all this, school was my very last concern.  I flunked a semester of Algebra as a result.  I gave no thought to my future whatsoever.  My only concern at that time was the here and now, my friends, my boyfriend, and my wardrobe.  I wish I had woken up and realized the here and now will later affect me then and there.

So the relationship ended and I get put in applied math.  I no longer had the distraction and my grades began to rise.  In fact, I went on to get A’s in math for the remainder of high school.  During this time I met Jason, who always did well in school.  He had a bright future ahead of him and I didn’t want to be the flunky girlfriend dragging him down.  I didn’t want to disappoint him and bad grades did.  He cared, would ask about my grades and he did scold me if they weren’t up to par.  I don’t think anyone realizes the profound affect Jason had on me.  When we got together, I went on to make honor roll in everything except gym.  Yes, gym.  (I’m not going to explain myself on that…)

By the end of senior year I knew Jason and I were getting married just weeks after graduation.  I had already mentally checked out of school and Flippin, AR.  But then it was brought to my attention a few weeks before graduation that I still lacked a half a credit from the semester of Algebra 1 I failed.  They ordered a correspondence course for me to try to make it up in time for graduation.  I don’t even know what to tell you about this part.  I tried to take those tests but I failed them – point blank.  My mom was convinced they had ordered a college algebra course but she may have just said that to make me feel better.  I suffer from pretty severe test anxiety and if I can’t solve something right off the bat my pulse races, my face flushes, I panic and things I know I KNOW just leave me.  All rational steps to solve a problem literally just vacate my head and I become a panic stricken mess.  I had made A’s in all my math classes but something happened here…  It was the pressure of this, do or die moment.  I flunked those tests and I received the call days before graduation that I would not walk.

I managed to somehow convince myself this was a minor fork in the road to be taken care of at a later date.  No big deal, right?  After all, I had a wedding to plan!  The wedding came and went and I honestly got pregnant immediately.  Married May 16, 1998 and Drew was born February 15, 1999.  We became a family almost instantly.  I stayed home with Drew and just focused on being a wife and mother for a long time.  No need for a diploma to do that!  After we moved to Dallas and Drew was a little older I decided I wanted to go to work.  I was intimidated by the area at first but I knew if I was ever going to get established here I would have to get out there and meet people.  I wasn’t qualified for much.  Up to that point I had worked at fast food chains and a little retail.  I started as a cocktail waitress at a seedy dive bar and later went on to bartend.  I eventually began waiting tables in fine dining establishments.  I can dish vichyssoise with the best of ‘em.  I made pretty decent money so I had managed to still be unscathed by the lack of a high school diploma.  I was still a server when I got pregnant with Lily.  I worked up until about a month before she was born.  After I had Lily, Jason and I agreed it was actually more cost effective for us if I stayed home.  The cost of childcare is outrageous and since I was never going to make what Jason did, I would almost just be working to afford the daycare.  I believe this is called redundancy.  I stayed home and not long after discovered Reid was on the way; all the more reason to continue staying home.  For the past 8 years I have put my heart and soul into this family.  I have been “Suzie Homemaker” and tried to give them a home-life they’ll always look back and feel good about.  I have been there for everything; every milestone, every school program, every sneeze, every step.  They can never look back and say I wasn’t there.  I have been and I have wanted to be.  I needed that time and I’ve been blessed to be able to have it.  However, I knew there would come a time when all the kids would be in school and I needed to regain some sense of myself.  There would be a time when I would need to go out there and find out who I am outside of this house.  I knew I didn’t want to go back to bartending or waiting tables.  I’ve worked with older people in the past, who have waited tables their entire lives and they weren’t what I would describe as content in life.  That field does something to you and it makes you an expert on human nature and not in a good way.  I have always felt that every person should have to work a stint in the public service industry and they would be forever changed and would eternally treat strangers differently.  So I knew I could veto that but what’s left?  Nothing I want to do, I’m qualified to do.  I’m not even qualified to go to any type of trade school or college yet.  Houston, we have a problem…

The knowledge that I would always have to get my GED in order to move on with my life was always there.  It was always looming in the back of my mind.  As the years passed, with them grew the shame of not having it and the self-assurance that I hadn’t retained any knowledge from school for which to pass the test.  I would express my concern to those close to me, who knew my secret, and they would tell me I was being foolish and I was one of the smartest people they know.  But they didn’t know what it felt like inside me when test anxiety set in.  I am my own worst enemy and once that feeling sets in, I shut down and it’s just a downward spiral from there.  The more time passed, the larger I allowed this test to get in my head.  It had become my own personal shit demon.  I had managed to make it 15 years with no one being any the wiser.  I had fooled them all.  No one knew I was an undercover failure.  Jason’s success had been all the mask I needed but my time ran out.  I couldn’t hide forever, but believe me I put it off for as long as possible.

I went to lunch with Jennifer one day feeling incredibly low about myself.  I had a meltdown of sorts and spilled my guts over nachos about the changes I need to make and how I’m mostly just a big chicken shit.  After lunch, we went directly to Barnes and Noble where I bought a GED prep book.  I came home and began studying.  I went through each section with ease and thought, “Wow, this is going to be a piece of cake”.  I intentionally saved the math for last.  Math is my arch nemesis, or so I’ve told myself.  I went through each section of the math portion carefully.  I was impressed with some information that had stuck around and some that hadn’t.  I went through periods of feeling confident and some periods of slinging my book across the room and ranting about isosceles triangles and bullshit knowledge I’ve made it 15 years and never used.  I had a particularly bad episode one day and had a screaming fit.  I realized later our windows were open and our neighbors were outside.  Great, now I was without a diploma AND the trashy neighbor.  Not being trashy was the only thing I had to cancel out the first part and allow me to have some semblance of dignity.  I took practice tests and retested practice tests but could never convince myself I was ready.  Even after I felt like I’d brushed up on each subject enough I became consumed with the humiliation of actually having to go in and take the test.  I pictured sitting at a desk again.  I tried to picture who I would be among.  I wondered what the teacher would think of me.  Would she look down on me?  Would she think I was pathetic?  I had the dates of when the tests were given.  I let two pass me by out of fear.  I’m impulsive so one day I just made the call.  I needed to get some information on testing procedure, etc.  A woman answered the phone and I managed to get out, “I need to register to take the GED test”.  She began giving me details; so far so good.  At the end of the conversation I wanted to go over that I had everything I needed and began listing what was on the website.  She stopped me and began speaking very slowly.  “Yooou wiiiiill neeeed a vaaaaaalid TEXAS I.D. and YOUR sooooocial seeeeecurrritttty caaaaard”.  In that moment it became everything I feared.  She was speaking to me as though I was slow and I it felt just like I thought it would.  I literally hung up and said, “Great.  She thinks I’m uneducated trash.”  Granted, this was via phone so she probably thought I was an 18 year old burnout forced into taking the test as stipulated by my parole.  Usually this is the point when the humiliation takes over and I decide to bailout, but not this time.  I’ve run long enough.  If this is what I have to endure for a short while for a lifetime benefit then so be it. 

I had to go to the school the next day to register and I’m going to be brutally honest when I tell you I looked as nice as possible so the woman would know I wasn’t trash and treat me with any kind of respect.  I filled out my forms, paid my money and by the end she was calling me ‘ma’am’.  I went home to wait.  I was there to take my test at 7:00 A.M. sharp.  I was the 1^st one there and at one point a car pulls up.  It was a parent dropping off a kid and they rolled down their window to ask me if I was the one administering the test.  I wanted the earth and steps I was sitting on to open up and swallow me whole.  I simply said, “I’m not giving the test but this is where he needs to be”.  The first few arrivals where pretty much what I expected  --  juvenile delinquents huddled in a group talking about their probation officers with rampant ‘f’ bombs.  I had the pleasure of smelling their smoke stack aroma every time the wind picked up and wafted it over my direction.  I thought to myself, “God, I’m the only old person here.”  Then I look over at the baseball field and lodged in the wire fence were cups that spelled out “FHS” – (Frisco High School).  Oh, the effing irony….

As I sat waiting for those doors to open, I began questioning how in the hell I got here when a few adults began showing up.  They looked no different than me.  They didn’t have shirts on that said “failure”.  I wondered about what their stories were and how they came to be here just like me.  Everyone has their story.   Its funny how we all migrated to groups of our likeness; old with the old, kids with the kids.  I noticed the instructor treated us adults differently but through those 2 days, I realized why.  If those kids are our future, we should all be in a state of panic.  Those were the most disrespectful, whiniest, sleepiest kids I’ve ever seen.  They whined about everything from the temperature of the room to needing a cigarette.  They couldn’t or wouldn’t follow basic instructions and almost had to be spoken to like 3^rd graders.  That phone call I had to make came to mind and I immediately decided to dismiss it as her knee jerk reaction to what she typically experiences.  You couldn’t pay me enough money to be a teacher.  I wanted to beat the kid next to me on the teacher’s behalf.  All I could think was, “I’m old enough to be your mother you little twerp, which means I’m just the person to put my foot in your ass”.  The kid who sat behind me I nicknamed “Spicoli”.  He was very reminiscent of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”.  He either had a serious case of narcolepsy or was just legitimately the most tired kid alive, (or kind of alive…)  He would finish his tests impossibly fast and then snore at his desk in an otherwise quiet room to the point I almost flung a #2 pencil at his head on several occasions.

The test began and first up was math.  The very first question stumped me.  The panic began.  I could feel the heat in my face, parts of my body went numb and my lips began to vibrate.  I had to take a few minutes to talk myself off a ledge.  I could feel myself scrambling and second guessing every single answer.  Some of the questions were nothing I reviewed.  I suddenly couldn’t remember how to find the slope of a line or much of anything else.  I did my best to calm down and tried to rationally answer each question.  Before I knew it, time was up.  That was it.  I just knew I had failed day one, test one.  I had English up after that.  English isn’t a problem.  In fact all the following subjects the next day, I knew I passed with flying colors.  That math portion, though...  I really didn’t feel good about it.  I had a feeling, I failed it.  There was nothing to do now but wait.  The results could take up to 6 weeks to come in.  I had never planned for this.  I was hoping to enroll at Paul Mitchell by mid-October but my results wouldn’t be back in time, especially if I had to retest the math portion.  Not a big deal, just a bump in the road.  I’d resigned myself to the fact that I would take it until I passed it.  I would get this done one way or another.  Classes at Paul Mitchell start every six weeks so it will happen soon, just maybe not this month. 

Yesterday I checked the mail expecting nothing other than bills.  I pulled out an envelope from the Texas Education Center.  My heart sank.  I sat it on the counter for a few minutes while I paced and chewed my face.  Finally, I ripped it open.  It was my certificate.  I passed.  I gasped and teared up.  Something that had been 15 years in the making had just been laid to rest.  It felt like a cinder block had been taken off my shoulders.  Drew was standing in the kitchen and wanted to know what all the fuss was about.  My initial reaction was to hide it from him.  I didn’t want him to know I had first, never graduated and second, that I was just doing something about it.  But then I thought better of it.  I decided to use this to show him how the choices he makes now can absolutely affect him later in life.  I told him my story and that I’m 33 and had to backtrack 15 years to move forward.  “Don’t be me and care about your future”.  He hugged me, told me he was proud of me and I believe he is.  To be honest, I’m proud of me.  He and his brother and sister are the biggest reasons I did this.

So that’s the tale…  My tale of failure, my tale of triumph and my tale of the beautiful life that happened in between.  My tale will continue but it’s going to be a whole new world from here on out.  I leaped a hurdle and it feels fantastic.  I feel like I can do anything, even math.  I did this for me, I did this for my kids and I did this for the weak girl who lives inside me who tells me I can’t.  I’m really sick of her and I hope this finally shuts her up.