Connective Cube

In my youth, I was a crier. A crybaby. Someone who cries frequently at inappropriate times. In class. In the hall. In a teacher’s classroom office. In the family living room. At dinner.

I got deemed as a sensitive, a particular crime in the pull yourself up by your bootstraps loving suburbs of Atlanta in the 90s. And even a deeper crime to my parents, who both started their careers at one of the first Home Depot stores. My dad in particular wore working long hours as a badge of honor; my mom had more of the attitude that people who want to put in the extra time deserve a boost. It was their first major adult job, a temporary commune that fueled the future hyper-capitalistic machine that is now The De-pot.

They had me at the dawn of the Reagan years in their mid-20s, both fresh from conservative upbringings and surroundings. My dad became an emancipated minor at 15 after years of abuse, physical and emotional. My mom’s dad died suddenly and tragically when she was 11 – my grandma had to go back to work. Mom all of the sudden had responsibilities to raise her six year old sister.

Both my parents had incredibly difficult childhoods, and married when they were in their mid-20s. My mom had me at 24. Divorced at 27 with two kids. Kept working until she was 30, then got remarried and had two more kids. By the time she was 35, she had four kids. When I turned 35, I remained committed to remaining childfree.

So yea, my queerness evoked with my mom the ‘what did I do wrong’. She worried about me having a hard life. Dad, well, he knew cause one of the women he dated called it. He’s never cared, and nor has mom once she got used to the idea.

But the crying. Oh, the crying. I didn’t even always know why I was crying in my childhood and teenage years, the salt, the red face, the sticky aftermath. My parents probably did cry – especially my mom – and now that I am older, I wonder if they ran out of tears by the time they had me, and just wanted me, well, not to cry.

The desire to acquire came from a simplicity of wanting more than freezing bedrooms and eviction based moves. And to not live in poverty again.

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One thing I accepted a long time ago is my parents didn’t know what to do with a sensitive child. Anytime I got into a spell of worry and anxiety, I was entitled, over-emotional, selfish, and many other things. ‘Get over it’ was one of my dad’s favorites. My mom, usually not as immediately callous, but not exactly patient,

I had two favorite bathroom stalls in high school.

One by the lunchroom where I could escape and listen to all the other teenage gals chat about boys. If gossip happened, I covered my ears. That bathroom’s dingy grime and narrow gap between the stalls and mirrors didn’t exactly encourage anyone to linger.