Show Off!

I came across this meme on Facebook, this morning.  My first reaction was to joke about how no one ignored me in high school because I was a complete showoff.
Then I remembered that I became a showoff to get the attention of my overwhelmed mother.
She was 18 when she had me, and the sperm donor didn’t stick around. As Forrest Gump would say, she and I were “like peas and carrots.” We slept in the same bed, ate from the same plate, and she would have conversations with me, even at three years old. She sang to me and read to me, too. I remember her reading me the story of Moses in the bullrushes. I cried my eyes out because a mommy had to give her baby away. She held me and assured me that it was ok because she still got to be his mama, it would just be a different relationship.
When I was three and a half, my mom came home with a baby brother, for me. There was no dad in the picture for him, either.
My brother was a demanding baby, very fussy, and between him and my mother’s lifelong battle with depression, she had no time for me, anymore. At not-quite-4-years-old, I thought that meant she didn’t love me anymore. So I asked her why she didn’t. She pulled me in and held me and explained that my brother was a tiny, helpless baby and that we had to take care of him or he’d die. After that, she made me her special helper. If I brought her a warm washcloth, she’d praise me for being such a big girl. If I could get my own bowl of cereal, she’d rave about it. I came to equate my mother’s praise with love. Love I had to earn.
She married when I was about four-and-a-half and two more babies came. She began to truly depend on me to be her helper, and I craved that praise, so I grew more and more independent and worked hard to do everything well.
As I got older, I became a complete goody-two-shoes. Everything I ever did was to hear someone tell me they were proud.
The down-side to all of this was that it became harder and harder to “earn love.” People expected me to do well, so when I showed them my achievements, it was not news, so the praise didn’t really come. I interpreted that as failure and became increasingly hard on myself.
By high school, my mom and her second husband became involved in drug and alcohol abuse. The quality of people in our home decreased dramatically. I began to feel like my mother hated me.
School and church became refuges for me, and in those places, I could always earn attention in the way I’d learned: in school, by being excellent, and in church by being holier-than-thou.
By senior year, I was completely burnt out on life. My grades were falling. Church wasn’t working for me anymore, because they insisted that sex was reserved for after marriage, and I had a boyfriend who wouldn’t wait. After all, I had to earn his love, too! I felt like a complete failure, and to fix it, we got married. I was 18. He was 21.
I took a year off after high school. Then it took me six years to get a four-year degree. My husband was a local celebrity, and I was “Dave’s wife.”
College was the launch pad for my writing. I realized right away that I had talent. My instructors often chose my work as a sample of how it should be done. In one class, our teacher would have the class vote on assignments and the one with the most votes got extra credit. I almost always won.
When I transferred to a university, I was asked to write for the paper and various departments. I began writing poetry to cope with my frustrations regarding my marriage, and a few of my pieces were published in the News & Review, Women’s Center Poetry Journal, and the University Poetry publication called, “The Watershed.”
So, I wrote because I craved attention, but not from anyone in high school. I still enjoy the attention my writing gets for me, but I no longer feel that love has to be earned.  For that story, you’ll have to go back to this entry, and then read the next several dozen entries.  And aside from the last line, I wrote all of this in response to that meme.  You can say it:  Show off!

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