It's really who you are inside.

Since I haven't yet fallen asleep, I'm still within my deadline.  2/2. Go me.

What happens when you are totally stoked for the first day of Spring Break with your daughter and then remember you have an audition?  New schedule.  No writing.  That's about it.

My thoughts today are about someone I grew up with for a short time.  Someone I went to school with, who will remain unnamed.  Anyway, the point of this is probably guilt, but also it's realizing and forgiving myself for being too young & inexperienced to articulate at the time why things happened the way they did.

I went to school with a girl who had a disability.  It was fine.  She had difficulties with speech, was in a wheelchair, and struggled to fit in and find real friends.  That stuff didn't bother me one bit.  I was always okay with people however they were made - in fact, that should be present tense.  I am okay with everyone.

Because it was school, and kids are cruel, and I don't like mean people anyway, I made a special point of making this girl feel a part of things.  I would volunteer to be her partner in class.   I would sit with her at lunch.  I would go out of my way to include her in all the groups, stand up for her when kids got nasty, and just do my bit like everyone should.  Not that she deserved special treatment, but she just deserved to not feel left out, like we all deserve regardless.

Anyway, after a few months of this, I started to realize something awful.   She wasn't a nice person.  Disability or not, she was unkind.  Her favourite thing to do was to belittle others and make fun of people behind their backs.  Granted, maybe she was acting out - maybe she was repeating what she had experienced or wanted to beat them to it, but all the same, she was mean.  Not only that, she stole.  She'd take things (remember, this was school) like someone's favourite eraser and then claim it was always hers and argue to keep it - even going so far as to hide it in a vice-like grip - when everyone already knew it wasn't.  She had nothing nice to contribute. She was very intelligent and would laugh at people who gave wrong answers and talk down to them to their faces, telling them they were just "too stupid" to know.

I was a bit shocked and totally flummoxed.  My immature schoolgirl brain didn't know what to do with this one, so I picked avoidance.  I just stopped volunteering to be her partner.  I stopped sitting with her at lunch.  I stopped making contact at all because I didn't know how to deal with a situation like that.  I knew it looked like I was cutting her off.  I was.  Her Teacher Aide even asked me to start hanging out with her again, but I refused, and I was greeted with such hostility by this grown-up, who probably thought now that I was a bully.  But I wasn't.  I didn't say or do anything against her.  I just cut her off.  Which, in retrospect, was pretty mean without explanation, but the whole situation was so awkward for a girl like me at that age.

She moved away within that year (nothing to do with her school treatment) and then it was easier.  I didn't feel the pull of guilt when I avoided her eye contact when the teacher asked us to choose partners or the bell rang for lunch.

Now that I'm grown, I can easily find what I should've said.  But back then, I felt trapped. A victim of my good intentions.  "No good deed goes unpunished", as they say.

A person is a person, no matter what body they've been put into, no matter what hardships, no matter what strife, tortures, good fortune &/or luck they've had along the way.  And it really is what's inside that counts.  If she had been kind, friendly, or even non-committal, I would've carried on for the rest of our school year.  The fact that she was cruel, cutting and even a bold thief did not become suddenly forgiven because of her disabilities.  What a strange little life lesson to learn.  I wonder sometimes what happened to her.  Did she ever become a warm person?  Was it all due to the way she had been treated up until then?  Was there a turning point for her?

How strange to think that sometimes the people who appear to need help and reassurance the most, might actually be the ones we need rescuing from.  It really is what's inside that counts.  I hope she is somewhere, just like me, a little older and wiser and looking back at that time with a much clearer eye, and a loving heart.