janehell

[janehell]

My intelligence has always been a sore subject for me. I was told that I did not speak real words, only gibberish, until I was 4. I don’t know how much of that is exaggerated but growing up I didn’t know the difference. I felt stupid all the same.

I remember taking special ed classes because I had trouble reading and spelling. I tried to tell my parents that my eyes would get “tired” and jump all over the page. I was taken for glasses but I only had them for a few years. Not really sure why. I assume because we couldn’t afford to get me new ones every year so I went without. Either way it didn’t really help with my reading. I struggled to spell for years. But it wasn’t until I was an older child that my learning difficulties were used against me.

I started to get grounded because I didn’t have good grades. I was once grounded for 3 months until my next report card. No playing with friends. Just solitaire on the family PC. It was humiliating. When I was in middle school I my parents came up with a crule nick name for me to shame me. They used it casually at times but especially when I would make mistakes. I won’t share the exact name here but I will say it had the word “dumb” in it combined with a variation of my first name.

Another time I did not do well on an assignment I was sat down at the dinner table, given a very large book and told to turn the pages one at a time. Slow at first. Then mother started to yell to turn the pages faster. If I ripped a page when turning I was hit upside my head. Being told repeatedly to turn faster and faster but not rip the paged. Through tears I begged for it to stop. That I couldn’t do it without ripping the pages. Sobbing I looked at my mother for her to tell me that I would never amount to anything if I didn’t get better grades and the only way I would make money would be on my back. I was in grade school and told this. My. Daughter is in grade school now and I can’t imagine ever saying something like that to her. Sickening.

When I suggested to my mother that I might have ADHD in high school she was hesitant but still took me to get tested. When the results came back positive for ADHD I was immediately put on medication stimulants. I couldn’t tell you if they worked for me. I wasn’t on them longer than a month. When my next report card came out and I didn’t have any A’s I was pulled off cold turkey and accused of being a drug addict who faked the test. Shamed once again.

Eventually I struggled enough that I dropped out of high school after my 10th grade year. I did end up with my GED but my mother was horrified by it. I was told if I didn’t have a job or brought the cops to the house I would be kicked out. She said that I ruined my life and that I should have been able to do it anyways and I was just lazy. I took the easy way out. However the GED was not easy. I had to take around 5 tests that I studied so hard for. To suggest it was easy is bullshit.

Years later when I brought my now husband to meet my family and they started in almost immediately insulting me in front of him. I was a little embarrassed at the time. I was used to the hurtful words but thought it was normal and I was just “sensitive” like they always said I was. My mother leaned in to speak with my now husband asking him why he was with someone like me, that I was too stupid. He was appalled. He made an excuse to leave together early.

We walked out and when we were out of ear shot of them he told me he never wanted to see them again. I was embarrassed at first. Thinking I did something wrong. He continued and told me he could not believe how mean they were to me. Every single person used me as a punching bag while he was there, he said. He said when I would walk away it was worse. The things my parents and other family would say to him about me. Trying to embarrass me. Insulting my intelligence. I was dumbfounded. I had known I was easy to make fun of but I never noticed it was only me that was being bullied by them.

No one had ever pointed it out to me before. I knew it felt bad but I didn’t know how abusive it really was. It still took me another 8 years to cut off my family. I realize that the scars are still there. I’m very sensitive to my cognitive abilities. I realize now I am not stupid or any of the other insults they hurled at me. In fact the dark path I was on was because they got me to believe I was the things they called me. Once I was able to accept that while I do I have learning disabilities that make me a little slower than others, my understanding and abilities to problem solve are actually strong. I can retain information very well and when teaching others have learned how to break things down into easy to digest instructions.

I will always have little twinges of doubt. There’s no way to turn that off. It’s built into my consciousness deep down. But when I walk into a room I at least feel like I am equal now. I don’t normally walk into a space and feel unwelcome in regard to my intellect…spelling is still hard though.

THANK GOD FOR SPELL CHECK!

[janehell]

Concerts became the closest thing I had to religious experiences.

When I am at a concert I feel the sound waves surround me, making my skin vibrate. I can feel the music fill my chest, wrapping around my heart and lungs. Almost stealing my breath but never making me hungry for air. I love it.

I feel like a cliche saying this but back in my teenage years I could get a concert ticket for $25-$30. It was easy to just walk into the venue or an F.Y.E. and buy one.

I went to local shows, stadiums, arenas, and baseball fields. From festivals in Kansas City to parking lot shows in Minneapolis. I stood outside in line to wait in below freezing temps, huddling with strangers for warmth and was also in crowded concert halls dripping in sweat and pop that was sprayed at the crowd.

I saw so many bands in their early days. I saw bands that never went further than the tour they were on. I saw bands doing their first and third farewell tour and bands doing reunion tours.

My relationship with singing was stunted, and I’m slowly getting it back, but my love of music and getting lost in it never left. In fact, it may have been strengthened by my troubles.

I’m slowly getting voice back as an adult. I have resolved that I won’t have a career in music. But I can still make people say “nice” when they hear me. I’m not the best but I can please ears and I know it.

I still listen to lyrics like I’m hearing a Sunday mass.

[janehell]

I fell out of love with the youth choir and quit because at one point I had outgrown the scholarship and it cost money for me to be in it. Why waste everyone’s time and money if I wasn’t good anymore.

I stayed in choir in school. It was my only outlet now. As ashamed as I was of my voice by itself, I knew if I could sing with others singing too it would be okay. No one could easily pin point my voice out.

I still did concerts with my school and had the fun I could with that. But I quit singing for others. My love language as a child was to sing songs to people with lyrics that connected me to them. Now I didn’t know how to properly show people I cared. I could just tell them with words, yes, but I wanted to make people feel special.

I was also undiagnosed neurodivergent when I was young and didn’t really know how to communicate well with others either. I did get a diagnosis as a teen but that is another topic for later.

Regardless, I think this might have been the start of me feeling isolated from others. I was told that the one thing I wanted to do great at I was terrible at and was not allowed to do in my own home anymore.

Then I started going to concerts.

[janehell]

I didn’t always want to be a writer. Even when I was in middle school and high school, writing little poems, if you would have asked me I would have said a singer. But that dream was stomped out of me.

As a small child I remember singing all the time. Music was everywhere for me. There was always a song to sing along to and I loved it. I would listen to the radio at night to help me sleep. I can remember falling asleep to the billboards top songs once a week. I would sing to myself when alone. I would sing to my friends. Sing at church. To anyone who would listen.

I loved the spice girls and would sing along to all of their songs. I remember putting on a concert just for my mom to the song “momma” to tell her I loved her. She cried. I do remember her telling me I wouldn’t for long but that is another trauma for another day.

In 5th grade I was pulled aside with a couple other students and told we had talent and we would be given a scholarship to a local youth choir. I was so excited. I didn’t like the church music they had us sing but I liked singing so much I didn’t care. We traveled a couple times for competitions that we won. Things were coming together for me.

I can’t really pinpoint when it started, but sometime in maybe my preteens my passion for singing became sort of problem with those around me. Maybe I did it too much and I might have been annoying. Or maybe I really was just a bad singer as I was aging. But I remember being compared to a dying cat when I sang. That was the insult hurled at me by my step father whenever I would sing around the house.

This killed me. I desperately wanted to be not just a good singer, but a great singer. I believed I already was. I thought maybe I just needed to try harder. But the insults started coming from other members of my family like my mother and sister.

[janehell]

As much as it is validating to hear “you were right”, it also makes my heart sink to hear because I’m never right about something good. It’s never “you were right about that guy, we had a great time” or “you were right to suggest I buy that lottery ticket, I won!” No, it’s more like “you were right, dad was a closeted gay man and because of his sexual abuse and religious trauma he never really came out and that caused him to traumatize everyone else around him”.

I wish that was the worst of it. I wish that was the worst thing that could have happened to me or the people around me. I don’t even think I can nail down the worst thing. That’s just an example. My life was messy and it continues to be.

But in an attempt to clean house I am going to drag everything out. Every bloody piece of dirty laundry. All the skeletons in my closet. The bodies, metaphorically, buried. I’m going to throw it all on the, lawn so I can see all of the pieces of the puzzle at once.

There will be times I don’t come out looking so good and that’s fine. I have made mistakes and I need to own them. Accept that I have done some pretty shitty things to people who may or may not have deserved it, even if it wasn’t my intention.

I don’t know how long this is going to take or how often I’m going to do this. I don’t even know where to start with this. I guess this is technically the start. Stay for the show or move on. I don’t care. But I have to get this out.

To keep myself and others identities intact names will be changed and some facts may be slightly altered. Altering facts won’t change the integrity of the story though. That will still be very real.

If you find this and think it sounds familiar, no you don’t. If you try to reach out to see if I’m someone you know you will be blocked, whether you’re right or not.

[janehell]

Why the hell do I suddenly crave a love where we are both thousands of years old and keep clashing into each other every so many hundred years just to leave for various reasons only to repeat the process? Which one of my traumas is this????

[janehell]

“Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was always just red.”

— Kait Rokowski

[janehell]

[janehell]

I WANT TO SEE MORE MEN IN DRESSES AND SKIRTS…..that is all

[janehell]

I am fucking cackling

[janehell]

Listen, I don’t want to work, but I also don’t want to not work. If that makes sense.

I want to be able to sleep as much as I want, have unlimited time for my hobbies, and occasionally go shopping in person while also having the option to escape my house when I want, have just the right amount of social interaction with coworkers, while also doing work that I actually find fulfilling….

Is this too much to ask?

[janehell]

Listen….Lana helps me work and I truly do t understand how but I am not fucking with the system that works

[janehell]

[janehell]

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people.”

— Carl Jung

[janehell]

[janehell]

Silent & peaceful

[janehell]

It's always spooky season!

My Etsy