I have so many great memories of Texas, and yet those memories presented isolated aren't authentic. It's not that they aren't real. I had great times with my brother and my friends. However, those memories are sharp points of light in an immense night.
Between sixth and seventh grade shyness moved in and stole away enormous chunks of life out of my future. I now realize it made me a better person for I was really quite shallow and self-centered before it happened, but it also removed me, almost over night, from the comfortable ease I had felt living in the world.
As far as I can tell, there were no external causes of this--no traumatic family event, no move, and no change of schools. No, rather one day I was blissfully unaware of myself--bragging, exaggerating, out-right lying, unaware of my relationship to the world around me; assuming, quite naturally, that I was the reason the cosmos was created; priding myself on my sarcasm and wit, unconcerned with how it might impact the recipients. And then all of the sudden, I was acutely aware of the enormous space between myself and others. It was as if some shadow had moved in over night that would never completely leave.
In fifth grade I fell in love with Kelly, a beautiful, blue-eyed girl from southern California. In my hometown, which I'll call Sandstone, a small community in central Utah, kids were in the same cohort of students from kindergarten to twelfth grade. There were very few move-ins and very few move-outs. In Elementary, there were only two classrooms per grade-level, and in sixth grade there was just one large combined class. A new student from the outside world was always a big thing. Unlike most places, being new to the school was a prestige, and instead of being isolated, you were embraced with open arms. I had been the lucky recipient of that phenomenon myself when I moved into town in second grade. So, we always noted the new kid with awe. However, Kelly was different. Awe simply wasn't a strong enough word, at least not for me. The moment I saw her she was absolutely everything.
In sixth grade I had the good fortune of being placed next to her on the seating chart. We got along great. I was incredibly proud of the fact that we were always getting in trouble for talking. I had this Peanuts book I had checked out from the Book Mobile (a library on wheels), and I was an incredibly slow reader; she used to love to harass me about the fact that I was always reading the same book, and a comic book at that! I loved it. For Christmas, I got two pens, a lime green one and a bright yellow one. I took them to school. She saw them and said, "You know yellow is my favorite color." I said, okay. I knew she wanted it, but I really liked those pens. She kept it up for a couple of days, and my treasured yellow pen became hers. I was so damn proud of my loss.
Eventually, our continual talking led to us being separated. She remained where she was, and I was moved to the back of the room. It should not have been a big deal. We were still in the same class. We still had recess. She was immensely popular, so it's not like I was her guy anyway, and I still hung out with her almost daily. But over the summer, something happened. I remember being out in the yard, and for some reason her parents came by, and she was with them. I was in the front yard; I saw their car pull up; this terror came over me; I ran to the side of the house, watching her from a distance, yearning to leap out, run towards her, enfold her in my arms and give her a great big kiss. But I couldn't do it. I was frozen. An enormous trench opened between us. A black cloud formed overhead, and I was isolated forever after, not just from her, but most of the world around me. I was this new creature that I had never experienced before. I was shy.
It wasn't quite that dramatic. I'd slip in and out of it--although I was never comfortable around Kelly again. Sometimes I'd forget I was shy and blissfully slip into ease even with those who were not my friends. However, sometimes I even felt a strange sense of separateness creep in even when I was with my friends--usually when I felt they were doing something wrong. It wasn't that I didn't do things that were wrong. I just became acutely aware of immorality, especially cruelty. Before this strange occurrence, I could vandalize with the best of them and think nothing of it. In sixth grade, I got in trouble for breaking a bunch of cinder blocks behind the school with a bunch of other boys. I prided myself on my sarcasm and sharp tongue, and frequently put people down to entertain others. I was by no means the most popular kid in the school. I didn't like sports, so that hurt me, but I definitely wasn't an outcast either. But after that day of hiding from Kelly, I sort of was an outcast. Not completely, of course. I lived in a small town. We all knew each other. I was still sarcastic and still put others down. But something had definitely happened. By ninth grade, I was ready to get out of town. When my parents announced we were moving to Dallas, they thought I'd be heartbroken; what they didn't know is that I no longer felt that I belonged in Sandstone anyway.
I innocently thought the move would end the terrible feeling of isolation. It didn't. Unlike in Sandstone, my new school in Texas did not welcome move-ins. I was not some strange, new exotic creature. I was just strange. And rather than going away, the shyness climbed right in and basically occupied every corner of my being except the still small part of me that could cry out to God. It was as if isolation had been forced upon me so that I could feel the pains of the world. But it hurt, oh how it hurt.
My first job in Dallas was as a bag boy at a Tom Thumb grocery store. I felt isolated at school, and I felt isolated at work. When it was slow, the other bag boys hung out up front to talk to the checkers, who were generally a couple years older and female. But not me. I'd head as quickly as I could to front the soda aisle, where I'd stay until I heard "I need bagging assistance on aisle nine" over the intercom. I loved that soda aisle. It was a refuge. When I was done, those six packs and two liters would be snug against the front of the shelves, forming this beautiful shiny solid wall of varying colors. Often, as I worked, the manager would walk by, "Looking good, looking good." What he didn't know was that not only was I dreading the call for bag boys over the intercom, but that I was also dreading his walking by and saying, "Looking good, looking good." I dreaded any social interaction whatsoever. What I really wanted to do was disappear; fronting the soda aisle was as close as I could get to nonexistence and keep my job.
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