Slugs and snails are after me/ DDT keeps me happy/ Now I guess I'll have to tell 'em/ That I got no cerebellum/ Gonna get my Ph.D. I'm a teenage lobotomy

My freshman year of high school was a free fall beginning  to a life long journey to discover the "me"ness of me. 8th grade had  been, and to this date remains, on of the most damaging and painful years of my life. I still have a hard time contemplating being in a room with people who so enthusiastically pushed my sensitive soul the very boundaries of  emotional security. After surviving 7th and 8th grade, 9th grade offered me an opportunity to expand my social circle and escape from the barbarity and insanity of adolescent kill-or-be killed socializing. Many of the girls my age were petty, dishonest, and driven by jealousy, and often those who weren't  made decisions about their loyalty based on social necessity. The girls at church were no exception. And the boys...well let's just say just because they had figured out how to keep their hands to themselves by high school some of their mouths and minds needed to be washed out with good detergent.

Lies were told by and about me within the drama of freshman year survival of the fittest. As my circle of "friends" began to suffocate me I was blessed that  a group of people were drawn to my independent, bull -headed, argumentative, sarcastic teenage self and they were all seniors. They found it curious that I had no interest in smoking or drinking and messing around was not my aim in hanging out with older guys. I was the "Mormon" girl who probably had eight mommies, who argued politics in the library at lunch and had no problem kneeing someone in the proper place to get them away from her. I was brash and angry and desperate to  figure out how to be me without  drawing so much malevolent or inappropriate and unwanted attention. This was the year that birthed within me a natural attraction for nerdy boys who liked to argue ideas and make the librarians threaten to kick us out of the library for being too rowdy and rowdy meant arguing about the Iran Contra hearings or Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. These were the boys who allowed me to not always think of myself as a girl who was defined by her body but as a person who had a passionate mind and thirst to learn new things and debate ideas and to understand what was going on in the world and why that mattered.  This was the year I joined a club that explored the birth of and philosophy of Marxism and socialism, I sang in the choir and played in the band, I joined Model United Nations, I cut school after my cousin died and became entangled in a mess of my own making. I discovered The Ramones, The Dead Milkmen, Erasure, Depeche Mode, ee cummings, and that hanging out in graveyards after school was something to look forward to. These were the things that made my freshman year worth looking back on and worth remembering. I did have a few girlfriends in my grade that managed to stay out of the drama and with whom I enjoyed a bond of friendship but after my senior friends graduated that year I lost myself until I was able to find true meaningful friends in the grade younger than me....and lost my heart to a boy named....