To begin with, I must of course tell you how I came to arrive in this little mountain town. During the last few years of my life in elementary school--grades 3-5, my father began to have a lot of job-related stress and issues at a local university with which we are all too familiar. He was a maintenance man there and after some authoritial personnel changes, things weren't going well. I'm sketchy on all the details. I know that friends of his were encouranged to resign and one by one most of the people he worked with seemed to quit or be fired or what not. (Please keep in mind that this is what I'm remembering from eleven years ago). It was either in fourth or fifth grade that he finally quit and pursued alternative employment. Life with regards to money was fairly rough for my family...two parents with two high-schoolers and two in elementary school. My mom had been laid off from her job as well although she was to pick up a job thankfully within a few weeks. We'll get to that later. My father had planned in college many years before to go into Christian camping. He was on the board of directors as it was at Frontier Camp (where my older brother is currently working) but my father had always wanted to move to Colorado. There is a newspaper article from the 70's that relates this fact. My father decided to pursue this option once again. Thus began the next few years.
My father looked at many different places--Horn Creek, Deer Park, and a place in North Carolina being three I remember. He also even looked at Western State College in Gunnison, CO. We turned vacations into job hunts where we traveled as family to these places and investigated the possibilities. It got to be stressful at times. One of my cousins was married in Lubbock one summer around this time and we went to the wedding and than made a friendly visiting trip to some friends who directed a camp in Colorado. This was Redcloud. We had visited a year or two earlier in the winter but now we were to see the place in the summer-time. Call it chance or call it God (latter definitely!) but a maintenance position had opened up the week before that we were informed of upon arrival. So, those three days were spent touring and camp and thinking about this. We stayed in this horrible little small trailer called the Santa Maria of which many camp staff also hated in later years but it wasn't terrible. We had quite a bit of fun hiking around and moseying around the town. My father applied for the job. One month later he was accepted. This was the summer before my eighth grade.
The next year was spent raising support. This was fairly hard because we had to raise at least 80% before we could move. I kept praying it wouldn't happen. By this time, I had at least settled into a small group of friends and dreamed of what could be in high school. I did not want to leave. My mother admitted praying that God would put an end to it if it wasn't meant to be because things just didn't seem to be coming together over the next year and than another year. My father had been doing construction work for folk to earn money and was working very hard at that. He also made trips to the camp during convention and conference times. Support raising for a family of six--in which you now have two college students and two middle-schoolers isn't easy; especially when people are kind of baffled by the idea of supporting someone who isn't leaving the U.S. However, it slowly was coming together from family and friends. My dad quit the construction after finishing a few projects and than was hired at the high school to work on the A/C. I was wishing he would keep that job but things were still moving towards the moving direction. My parents finally made the decision to have my dad move up a little after I started ninth grade. So he did with the first few loads of our stuff. They had arranged a trailer for us at the camp. Now, my younger brother had been struggling at just about everything associated with school for quite some time and things were getting worse. When my dad came back at Thanksgiving, we found that Lake City had opened up a middle school. My parents withdrew my brother from his seventh-grade trials here and he moved up with my dad. He never looked back. He hated life here by that point.
Now I am a freshman in high school and every so often someone will ask what my parents do and I would tell them a brief description of our complicated life. Most people assumed my parents were separated...but it wasn't this way. It was just the way things were until they had enough money to finish moving my mom and I up and figured out what to do with our house. So I continued on through a great year of school overall and along came summer. Mom and I traveled up with the parents of some camp summer staff in mid-June to spend the summer with my dad and brother. The trailer gratefully was three bedrooms but had a small living area and kitchen. I spent the next seven or so weeks helping out in the kitchen because I really didn't have a whole lot else to do. I also was enable to acquaint myself with some of the touristy things of the area such as a 4WD trip and hiking and stuff. There were various quirk moments--a couple of incidents of spite towards a troublesome teenage camper/staff person; going on said 4WD trip with aunt and cousin but going unbeknownst to my parents who were very displeased with the lack of knowledge I gave them. It was mostly good times in the kitchen. I probably wasn't always appreciated and I'm betting they put up a lot with me. I began to really miss Longview and my friends though. The summer finally came to an end and we journey back to Longview...dad would being picking up yet more stuff. We traveled--in August--in a suburban--six people (two being my sister and another summer staff person) without air conditioning. There were many cranky people by the end.
I was late for school and had missed required tests to take pre-AP English so I was placed in regular English. I quickly took measures to get switched over by appealing to my teacher from the year before who took me to the head of the English dept and to which I explained why I was unable to take the tests at the the times offered during the summer (being in CO) and that I was willing and able to take them if I could. I also explained that I would be leaving after the semester to move up to said place of summer abode. They were confused by the fact that I was so assured a spot in pre-AP English until I explained the local school situation for the high school opened that very year. They let me take the test and I was switched to my great relief to a class that would offer more challenge for me.
Those few class periods of Regular English were...interesting. I walked in and surprised many who knew me as being smart. I was also of a minority skin color and mostly bored with what we were learning although it wasn't particularly really easy but just not what I was used to. Pre-AP English was mostly good stuff after transferring over...I still remember reading Rebecca , Cry, My Beloved Country and and listening to a boring tape of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The first two books were really good and I remember writing some interesting papers. Other interesting things of my semester were the horrors of selling yearbook ads, a Bible class, and a Business-Computer support class thing. My wisdom teeth were taken out at Thanksgiving due partly to jaw troubles and partly to "get this out while insurance will pay for the surgery." I was also bearing witness to trials at the church I was attending because I hadn't switched churches with my parents because I didn't want to leave my friends. I bore witness to the slow death of a church mostly due to the trials of looking for a pastor, and than having a pastor who was apparently troublesome. I should mention that I had been dating a guy off and on for the last two years at this point but it was more "serious" for this last year of Longview. That holds interesting stories in and of itself. But I was trying to get to my Lake City life. I may have to pick this up at another time. It's getting near bed time.
Anyways, the semester came to an end all too soon and I withdrew from Longview High School; finished packing up my bedroom; got my driver's license as I had just turned 16 and made myself ready for Christmas and than moving. My friends threw me a "suprise" farewell party at the church's New Year's Eve lock-in. They made a cake and decorated it quite interesting...pale green frosting with plastic wedding figures. They gave me some gifts and I tearfully said my goodbyes. We left Longview on Janurary 3 and arrived in Lake City the next day.
to be continued...
<"Learning Teacher"> 11:59 PM
I realize that I left out a lot about much of my own emotions during those last few Longview years. I guess some would say it was probably a classic example of whirlwind and rollercoaster moments in my life. I am someone who tends to have emotions to an extreme. If someone were to describe my reaction, they would probably capitalize the emotion as a minimum.
I wanted nothing less than to move away from the place I had grown up in all my life and to leave the friends behind that meant so much to me. I had nightmares of losing people to death. I contemplated my options for figuring out some way of not moving with my family, like running away. It wasn't practical though. To top off the struggle and inner rebellion against moving, God was sending some other deep, painful, jar-breaking trials. One stands out above all the rest but it is too complicated, too personal, too emotional even still, and more importantly, not suited to be posted on a public blog. You get the idea though. A relationship with a lifelong friend had been fading into nonexistence through a route of anger, bitterness, and frustration. Friendships made at school tended to be unstable with many as I was faced with the reality of those people who would turn away from friends at the talk of boys, boys, boys and other more popular people. My youth group at church was a divided one--two groups--one more popular and outgoing, the others tending to be of a different mindset and seeking something different, and we went through youth leaders as the church began a slow decline towards closing. (I look at all of these and realize how many separate blog posts I could make on any one of these.) Relationships within family were minimal really I guess--my sister was off at college and we fought whenever she was home, a lot in continuance of the six years before she went home (K-6). My younger brother and I banded together as needed, but mostly by this time I ignored him as an annoyance to my life due to selfishness and embarassment. The older brother was also in college and not around very much. My parents were both busy busy working; I was on my own most of those summers. I clung close to my small group of good friends and continued to burn through books during spare time. I hadn't stopped reading really once I had learned at the age of 4. I was a nerd even then. :-) But back to the point. I was on my own a lot. I grew depressed. I lived in a haunted fear from the past. The present was a tangled mess. I rebelled against the future I was face with. Suicide entered my mind as an option. I thought of the different ways--pill-popping or slicing my wrists. Pills weren't practical and didn't usually work. Slicing my wrists presented to me the problem of not wanting to leave the mess behind for my family to deal with although I contemplated methods of saving them trouble even there. Something tugged at me away and fought hard. I had a kitchen knife horizontally across left wrist one day--I held that black handle in the kitchen next to the open drawer. "You're too smart for this. I didn't make you smart to die this soon. You have a life to live." I put the knife away and walked away. I think that would have been the summer before 8th grade, but possibly 9th. I kept all my feelings and thoughts to myself, talking to no one. Some time later, our little youth group now very diminished--9th grade I believe--attended a play at a church in Tyler about people who face judgement after a plane crashes. Afterwards when getting dinner, I admitted to this circle of my friends the torment I had gone through. I don't remember why I did that. Maybe I wanted the attention.
It's kind of sad but I find myself being one who needs attention. As a younger gal I had loved getting involved with anything related to drama at church; actually this continued even as a teenager when I started to sing with the church choir. I liked getting awards and being recognized. I loved sharing my work in class up until a point--7th grade. I think after that a lot of my own work related to poetry and stories had gotten more personal. I even was involved as I could with drama in Lake City--with summer theatre and directing/acting in school stuff, singing in a talent show--the talent show is a separate story from this though. Maybe that's also why I was involved in sports and orchestra in junior high, and enjoyed piano recitals when I took lessons when I was in elementary school. I always wanted to relate moments of pride to any who would listen--such as when I was baptized in second grade and wanting to share stories of my daddy's hunting glories.
This was probably part of the reason I grew to be disliked in elementary school so much--to be seen as bragging. I don't think so much that it was even really bragging back then. There was something more innocent to it than there was when I was older. As I began to see that people didn't care (I guess Piaget would say I was moving out of the pre-operational, egocentric stage of development), I started to keep a little more and more to myself--even seeing myself as better than those other snobbish people. It was me, and yet it wasn't. It was either put up a rocky facade of not caring about what they said about me and really becoming the snob they said I was, or be burned by their hurtful words. I buried myself further and further into other worlds of the books I read and was still a fairly pleasant person to most other people it seemed. The preppy types only saw me as smart and as a teacher's pet. I only saw them as people whose families had money and they weren't afraid to show off, even while still yet only wanting to be their friend. Even though it's been covered up and abused, forgotten and neglected, part of me is that little girl who wants to be everybody's friend. I quit trying by the end of sixth grade and decided to keep to those who would be my friend--usually ending up in groups of people who were also neglected and outcasted as different. I used being a teacher's pet to my advantage and sought to be the best in school during middle school. I was blessed with mostly good teachers in school. and God graced me with the friends the undeserving me I did have--those friends who put up with me and stood by me, modeling to me what a true friend was. By the end of eighth grade I had firmly tried to hide away from academic attention such as waiting and double-checking answers until I wasn't the first one to turn in a quiz or test. Sure I was involved enough to have attention--being on the undefeated basketball team (I wasn't very good though) and being in the "student council." Yet somehow...I don't know. I changed a lot during my eighth grade year though. I don't know how much different I am today from the person I was at the end of that year and somewhat through ninth grade--because I changed again in ninth grade and through leaving Longview and than even more upon coming to college.
I don't know if I was so involved with different things because I wanted attention; I wanted to make friends, or because I'm just someone who likes to be involved. Maybe it's a little of all. At any rate, that paints a bit more of the picture of my last years in Longview. Next stop (barring anything unexpected), Lake City.
<"Learning Teacher"> 11:59 PM
