A tale of grooming and depravity.
20 years ago, while I was 13, I was nearing the end of my time in The Middle of Nowhere. This was a ‘central’ area of my state’s hat, and a tiny town so small that the exact population could be put on the sign leading into it. Of course this was approximate — adjusted at the time of the census and not updated immediately upon townsfolk entering or leaving. The understanding is that not all states do this either, and whether an approximate number or an exact number is given may not actually be down to a smaller population, but it is my belief that after a certain number you get a lot less specific with it.
The town itself was awful, carrying every bit of baggage you find in a small town. Scandal was both unspoken and well-known, and people who were in any way different were heavily ostracized, while protections for the Normal Folk were exaggerated. Regressive in its viewpoint, it contains as many culty churches as it does bars (the church-to-bar number is actually not equal, with more churches, just some of them are not culty). It is also a hub for the JW (inarguably a cult), the folks who gather en masse to ride bikes while dressed with ties and business outfits (Mennonites I think, or perhaps it was a JW biker gang at midnight), and Amish folks. Somewhere there is a group of progressive folks just living out in this tiny town, but it is overwhelmingly red. Inexplicably, as it is exactly the kind of dying town the red does not give a singular fuck about.
I lived in this tiny town, hereafter written as Dewycopse, from about the age of 1.5 to 15, whereupon I was to be given no choice in moving in with my other parent if I disagreed with his asking if I wanted to move. It is with great pleasure I acknowledge that I have lived here longer than I did in Dewycopse, the tiny town of my isolation and suicidal ideation. Although far from perfect, living in a city where my high school class size was equivalent to Dewycopse’s population has been extremely illuminating and enlightening. I found my people and was able to develop into a more well-rounded individual (although I am, at 33, still trying to catch up socially).
As established, and hinted at, Dewycopse is very much its own cult, and I am ‘different’. So too was I heavily ostracized.
This ostracization has myriad reasons and it is hard to choose where to start. Perhaps the unaddressed mental illnesses that plague me and set me apart from the other students — an overwhelming unspecified anxiety disorder that also encompasses social anxiety would be an excellent start to this. Finding it difficult to relate to and socialize with my peers would have set me apart from them. Then there was the testing...did not get into that this time.
But I was also often paired with the ‘special’ kids — although in the 90s a different term was a bit more casual in use, it fortunately mostly just stuck with “special” or “special ed.” Asking a counselor directly about this, she told me I ‘handled them better’ than other students, but I wonder what the unspoken words may have been there: was I ‘independent’? were the paras keeping an eye on me as well? I certainly do not know, although to toot my own horn for a minute, I do handle these sorts of things better (exemplified with my patience when talking to someone dealing with some degree of senility, or more exactly, dealing with Grandma’s dementia). As a result of this pairing for group projects, other students made assumptions and began to treat me as they did the IEP kids. Poorly. Atrociously. Unforgivably, when it comes to it. Like be nice to folks, it’s not hard.
The final big piece in this ostracization has to do with the particular brand of religiosity that was drilled into me and my brother. It got rather culty, brainwash-y at times. TV was a no-go, with limited abilities to watch certain movies. A specific memory of destroying a number of VHS that had “inappropriate” content in them sticks with me: a pile of pulled-out tape in the often cold living room of our mobile home. I think sometimes of the quote I read once “God wants spiritual fruits, not religious nuts,” and know that that parent and us by extension fell into the religious nut category (although that parent is more spiritual fruit nowadays, and I am an atheist). Regardless, I was not making friends in the third grade when Pokemon was evil and people who played it were going to hell. Squirtle watches me from the corner of my bed now.
I had no peers from the church we went to (a missionary sort), so friends were nonexistent there too.
Which is not to say I had zero friends, there was one who, up until he made a move on me a few years ago, had been my Bestest Friend for an exceptionally long time. There were a couple others as well, with the occasional rotating list, like Whitney in the fifth grade… we had gotten into an argument while we as a grade were down at the pond and our teacher made us sit next to each other on the bench, and from that point we were friends. Her loud complaining had him say “Whitney! Shut up!” and it is a sound I can still hear. Otherwise I ended up being friendly with a number of the IEP kids. Shocking!
School was miserable in Dewycopse.
It really did start very early on, an inherent distrust in all of the kids around me and especially of the teachers. Pervasive thoughts of…becoming? something else if engaging in the same activities as those people. Do not eat the clementines or you will change. Touching people was uncomfortable, and I felt one exercise with the teacher holding us up above her by our hands and feet to her hands and feet would alter me. This was in pre-k so I don’t really remember what my thoughts were, just that I felt paranoid. Was at least friendly with a tiny group of trusted people. Rachel was one, she stayed a friend quite a long time too.
Kindergarten, playing with others was a bit difficult. Didn’t really want to share the toys that much. Still paranoid. Typing on a MacII was fun.
I admit I had a fear of becoming overweight then, so my view of heavier people was…less. Entirely uncertain if this came from Mom’s self-deprecating talk or something else. Also I am definitely overweight now, and you can come fight my fat (and muscular) ass if you have a problem with heavy folks in any capacity. Thank you. Anyway, first grade, not my teacher but the other one, that played into my paranoia about her.
Second grade… changed a bit. While not my first little kid crush, I definitely had a pretty significant kid crush on my teacher. Apparently she has retired recently, but I still have fond memories of her reading Junie B Jones to us. I latched onto her though, which did not help my standing with other students.
Third…teacher seemed to hate me, everything I did was wrong, think I started wanting to cease to exist at this point. Fourth, teacher was a good guy who got me a bit. Fifth, teacher was a good guy but we didn’t get along. Sixth, ended up having a crush on my teacher then. There is a lot of little details and tiny memories in these years, but much else has disappeared into the void of a swiss-cheese-brain, wrecked by depression. And this is going to be a long piece and if I write a paragraph about each grade, it’s going to be even longer. Some kinda trooper getting through this gets a cookie. Third through sixth grade did also exaggerate the isolation that was building over time, and the classmate treatment of me worsened steadily over this time, becoming unbearable in seventh thru ninth.
Seventh grade is really where I want to start with this, though.
There was a trend in my personality starting early on, where I switched from paranoia about these adults in my life to hanging on them. A repose from vile classmates, teachers would acknowledge that I was not a ‘special’ kid and talk to me as you would typically talk to a younger person — guidance, but in a semi-grown-up manner. I am friends with one teacher from the sixth grade still, and she is an amazing person, and who I am thinking of when I think of someone treating me exceptionally well. Very few of these sorts of relationships lasted at all, although I did try creating a pseudo-friendship with many teachers.
Enter David.
Despite hiding other names in this post, I will use his name, as it is David, and whether he deserves anonymity or not, I don’t particularly care.
David is a general ‘science’ teacher. In Dewycopse, the class sizes were around 25–30 students (our class being one of the largest), and many of the courses were far more generalized. Some classes did not transfer over to a high school with a more dedicated system, which was fun to discover when my maths classes meant nothing. They were a ‘core’ system, which meant something a little different than ‘common core’ (and I lament not learning all these methods to the math-madness). Am uncertain if they have changed their standards in Dewycopse, but given that they ditched their racist mascot at some point, I would hope so! David taught a number of ‘core’ science classes from seventh through twelfth grade, and so I had him the first time in seventh.
I keep saying I met him when I was 13, but perhaps I was actually 12.
David was, if we assume I was 12, a 31-year-old married man with two young girls. He is currently 52, which was a recent shock to learn as I assumed he was in his 40s when I was in his class. Apparently, so did a ton of other people. This does explain, to some degree, why he doesn’t look like he’s aged much since then. Apparently if you look 45 in your early 30s, you look the same for the next 20 years.
Quick-witted and softly spoken, David’s humor was largely lost on the class at large. The wordplay and puns were unappreciated. I appreciated them, and with my penchant to pursuing ‘friendships’ with teachers, we quickly developed…well, something. During some general class with him, he would offer us very silly quizzes to complete, and I would write extra on the sides of them, little notes explaining my thoughts.
That’s right! My overly self-indulgent personality has been with me a very long time! These nonsensical posts with nonsensical, mediocre writings have been a THING, for at least 21 years! Help me! I am suffering!
Anyway.
David was also a respite from the loneliness that surrounded me then. Our relationship was fairly normal, he would indulge my need for attention in a perfectly professional manner. Taught me some awful puns and wordplay and discussed some sciency things with me when I would express interest. He is also the first person to call me on some of the brainwashing I had then, in particular FUCK KENT HOVIND the belief that certain seeds had magical powers by way of this “vitamin B17” that could lengthen life and cure cancer! and prevent cancer! “Vitamin B17" isn’t really a thing, just a renaming of, uh, let’s see…amygdalin, which our body breaks down into…is this right? cyanide! that’s right! Literal fucking poison. I reiterate, fuck kent hovind. But when David, this obviously much smarter, more sciency person than me, called me on this, I took note and it created the schism in me that led to my atheism. I owe him thanks for that.
Our time together and notes and all sorts of little back and forths really developed over the few years I had him as a teacher, and I would regularly spend time after school bothering him. Perhaps not bothering.
It was the final year in Dewycopse, the one I didn’t know would lead to my freedom. In thinking of this as school years, we would say it was 9th grade, I had David for some inconsequential class, and I was 14–15. There was, bubbling up under the surface, some new feeling I didn’t quite understand.
It wasn’t from me. I had crushes on teachers and joked at some point in my naivety that of all the teachers I had a crush on, it was funny it wasn’t David since he would have reciprocated. No one checked me on that, weirdly. I must have been aware to some degree of this, but it didn’t occur to me until I was literally an adult what was happening, and moreover how wrong it was.
Our conversations had become somewhat more intimate, although nothing outwardly untoward. To me, David still seemed like a friend and a mentor. There were moments that began to crop up that seemed odd, and uncomfortable, and I didn’t quite know why.
The first notable thing, a paper I believe I still have hiding somewhere, was a stupid quiz with clever answers. Questions like “How far can you walk into a forest?” with the answer being “Halfway.” Another I have been thinking about recently was “what do you call the former president?” and at some point he’ll have to change that if he hasn’t, because “Mr” won’t always apply. Fingers crossed, vote blue, coconuts etc.
No, for real, go vote.
This quiz, I wrote a lot extra in each of the answers and as we were wont to do at the time, he responded with little notes of his own. On the side, however, he wrote me a particularly long note not related to any of these questions or answers — therein romanticizing about a future visit with him when he was older, maybe I would have a family of my own at the time and he would have his graveyard of old muscle cars. He stated I was ‘very intelligent,’ with an IQ he estimated of around 136 (are you reading this no I do not). While searching for this paper recently I could not find it, but I hope I do. There was more that, at a glance with my adult brain, makes me wonder what it was he was on about.
I felt that particular paper was valuable enough to keep over a long period of time, its meaning has just changed in the years that have passed. To some degree though, I wonder if that offer is still standing.
There was a time we as a class went to go shoot off rockets in one of the football fields, which is something you can do in a small town in the middle of nowhere pre-school-shootings-every-day. Some discussion was had in that field and after returning to the classroom, and class ending, David took me aside to say that he was upset at some of the things I’d said. Made him feel insulted. I did not know then what he meant and I have no memory now. He just took whatever absolutely silly thing I said and turned it into something. I didn’t really get it.
Another was when David’s men's chorus was coming in after a particular band practice one night. Band practice was silly, I was silly, but he told me next time we interacted that I had embarrassed him during this brief exchange of the room. Didn’t really get that either.
Of course, the most damning incident was when David and I had a conversation and he floated the idea of me going out to the lake with him on his boat over the weekend. Registered as a little odd to me, but I was far more bothered with the idea of being out on the water, in any situation where swimming could be involved, with my massive insecurity about my body, than I was at this grown-ass man asking me as a child to go out to the lake with him. David then expressed the next week that he was extremely upset I didn’t take him up on his offer. Life went on as normal after he got over it, I guess.
I moved at 15, but had a brief visitation with Mom before a therapist recommended we cease those forever when I recorded a fight between Mom and her husband while I was there. The relationship was utterly abysmal and it played heavily into why I so desperately wanted to move. During this visit though, I wanted to see some old friends at my old school, and moreover, I wanted to cross some paths with teachers! So I went to visit David and he was rushing around, refusing to make eye contact with me. Still unaware of the rather unprofessional feelings he had been harboring, I was hurt and confused at this. Why would my friend not talk much to me?
Truthfully, and laid out very plainly by my psychologist to me, we don’t really know what David’s motivation really was. Many folks who were young and in similar situations would likely make the same assumptions I ended up making when it all pieced together in my adulthood. My best friend heard my story and these interactions and is firmly aboard the “this dude was grooming you” bandwagon. There’s just that gut feeling there.
So where do we go from here? off our rockers entirely? Probably.
I briefly talked about David in the post about dreams here, which is where we’re actually going next. Without rereading it myself, I am likely to repeat some of what I’ve written there. David is the pig in the drawing.
David has appeared in my dreams for at least 18 years, but it’s likely my dreams had him in them when I was still there. We could comfortably say 20 years. The dreams did not begin to bother me that much until after I left however.
Initially, dreams with David in them involved me trying to talk to him again, and it ending up much like that last encounter. He would avoid me, and I could never figure out why, and I would keep trying. This is not an unusual subject in my dreams even now, trying to get somewhere or get to someone, but I can never reach them. Not in the “it’s escaping me” way, but rather there is always something stopping me. Seems anxiety-based, but then my life is anxiety-based.
Later on these dreams shifted so that it was David pursuing me, and he had bad intentions. I would be harmed in someway by him and the weird shadow creature he had with him. It’s been a long time so I do not remember if this shadow creature was just him in the shadows or some other entity, but it was very human. Again, dreams don’t carry a deeper meaning than just unfiltered thoughts and feelings, so I don’t believe this shadow character was the devil or anything silly. You could argue it was the separation of the person I had an image of and his actual intentions, but you’re digging too deep for a meaning, stop it.
Then it was him pursuing me with sexual intention, until one particular dream where we had sex in the back of some shitty little red car. He had a pig tail and a weirdly flat back. It was a shift in perspective though, although I woke up feeling gross, I hadn’t been harmed.
Somewhere amidst all of this I had the realization that, in all likelihood, this fully adult man was grooming me when I was a child.
So the dreams shifted again! I was pursuing him to ask him what the fuck his deal was. I began to crave these answers. I still crave these answers, and it’s been a good handful of years of these dreams where I pursue them.
Later, perhaps as a means to regain my control and reclaim myself, my pursuit of him for answers also included more sexual, and more recently, romantic intentions. I have had many dreams in recent times, like within the last few days, of these sexual and romantic encounters. This is where there’s a silver lining to me not getting what I want in dreams: there has been pursuit but very little follow through.
Depression
I am depressed! The medical records have varied slightly as to how it’s written, but in general, “Major Depressive Disorder” is what is written. I’ve been medicated for it since 2018, it’s great, all the goodies, I do not want to suicide, and my self-harming has reduced. Awesome stuff thank the Old Ones for my doctor and my meds.
With my depression comes increasingly rare periods of what I assumed to be Hypomania. Bringing this up a couple sessions ago with my psychologist, she floated that it may not be that. She is smarter than me, so I’ll take that into account. And, really, it is a bit difficult to determine the difference between feeling Up and feeling Too Up, because my perspective has been utterly broken for the duration of my life.
One of the markers of this theorized hypomania is my tendency to want to Buy All the Things. I have gotten better at this over time so I am not broke, but it still exists as something that I look out for. I have not determined any triggers for these incidents. I also have a lower inhibition in other ways, where I make extremely impulsive decisions that could be considered harmful. As I am Very Boring, I really don’t get myself into any trouble.
And so, in mid-September, I found myself in one of these states. I was aggressively moving some things downstairs so that I could occupy a room to work on slingslonging the dingdongs, as I miss the work and could use an additional source of income, when it sort of came over me. I felt invincible as I’d just moved a significant amount of heavy furniture like a total and complete badass, and it bled into other aspects of my life.
This does all fit together.
One of these dreams happened during this period of potential hypomania. It fell, for the first time, into a comforting and romantic set of feelings. It illuminated to me that my feelings were resolved with the amount of information I had. It also illuminated to me that I want more information for whatever the next leg of this journey may entail. This is about me, and my closure within myself.
Searching for avenues, I reached out to a teacher who still works at that school that I had an okay relationship with. I owe her some degree of thanks, especially since I almost came out to her and she didn’t press or make a big deal of it when I chickened out. Just a safe person. I also let her know I was interested in contacting David, and passed along some information. She is not on social media often so has yet to see my message, and I have no idea if it even filtered into regular messages or message requests, and I certainly don’t ever check that so why would she?
I reached out to an actual friend who still lives in that town too. Not anyone I’ve mentioned yet, because our actual friendship didn’t really develop until adulthood, whereas we’d had some drama when kids. Since her son is going to that school and has David as a teacher, I asked if she could pass along some info to him. Whether or not she remembered I’m not going to press, it’s silly to involve anyone else in my poor decisions anyway.
It has been a few weeks now, and I have had a couple dreams since that have led me to seek out information online. While some of this is fairly normal phonebook info, most of these sites also redirect me to their background reports that you pay for… things that are some degree of inaccurate, cost too much, and are just creepy.
Not that I should care that much about creeping on a creeper anyway.
In my snooping, I also checked out the school page on social media and found a picture of him with a ridiculous mustache. Which is not to say mustaches are ridiculous, but whatever he has going on right now is definitely ridiculous. The fact he hasn’t done something to style this monstrously is appalling. There’s a video of him talking as well, during a certain strange point in time a few years ago, and I thought I would be incredibly anxious to hear him. I wasn’t, and found his voice somewhat relaxing, as if I had been brought all the way back to a naive and better time where he wasn’t up to potentially no good.
Last night, I thought to change my approach. A viable option, that perhaps doesn’t look that desperate.
The school’s website has a messaging system that is somewhat open. I could reach out as a past student, talking about the good times, I would like to reconnect, etc. It is all with an ulterior motive, I acknowledge that, but some of my feelings did change upon viewing that video with him. Maybe it would be nice to just share those good times and reminisce, at least a little. And then ultimately I want to open up that dialogue. I am not aiming to get him in any degree of trouble (which is also arguably a stupid approach), I just want to clear up 20 years of my thoughts and feelings.
In a town nearby Dewycopse lives my Mom, her husband, my Grandma, and my brother is now in a nearby city as well. Taking Mom to an event in my neighbor state recently, I had decided I would take her home, spend a couple days, and be back in time to care for my critters. Given my state of mind, I had some concerns that I would be sorely tempted to reach out to David. And, truth be told, I was tempted. We ended up in Dewycopse on two occasions, once to visit Great Grandma’s grave, and once for…some banking thing. Great Grandma is buried in a cemetery right next to the high school, and Mom’s timing had us ending up there about the time the teachers would be leaving. I felt anxious then, and my Garmin alerted me to the High Stress I experienced after the fact. Thanks Garmin.
I did not attempt to contact David, and was so tired from driving that I refused to do more than move my car while I was at Mom’s house. I also did not have the time! and even in evenings where there was slightly more time, I wouldn’t drive out in deer-filled fields when it is deer time. I need new glasses and can’t see a goddamn thing at night. Many physical restrictions, and many time restrictions, kept me from making any poor decisions.
Neither I nor my friend had time for a visit either. That’s okay. Some other time. I’m sure her son is like a foot taller than me at this point too so he can beat me at Nerf games in the backyard this time. I mean, he did when he was younger too but…
Anyway, the visit into a danger zone went well enough.
It is bizarre to want to reach out to someone who maybe had bad intentions. Furthermore, it could be harmful. I ultimately believe that the worst ‘harm’ I will get from this is that he will ignore me and I will continue to carry my questions. Still, this is definitely one of the more stupid decisions I could be making.
And what do I really want?
I cannot open with “hey let’s talk about when you were grooming me,” and feel it’s a discussion better had in person. Can’t hang up a phone in person, just saying. But that’s actually dangerous too, so there needs to be some kind of build-up to get there. Regardless, I do want answers, I want them for myself. I want my closure. I’m part of the way into making stupid decisions to get it, the ball is rolling.
In retrospect, I do genuinely just want to talk too. Despite everything that may or may not have been happening, David was still an important person to me when there weren’t many. Maybe he doesn’t deserve thanks for that. I don’t know.
I also want to be able to stop using such weak language around it, I realize I’ve been doing that for however many hours I’ve been writing.
Some obscene part of me desires something intimate as well. I’ll just revert into my rather asexual nature and ignore this, although it’s highly likely it will dissipate if any discussion is had anyway. Can’t really take dream feelings as real feelings when they are just an indication of my processing.
So I dunno. I’m sitting here, up late, tired as hell, thinking about writing a message. Judging by this lengthy document, there’s no way I’m going to write even passably well. But then I will just be putting it off for another night. The benefit of writing on an early Saturday morning is that I can at least relax over the weekend without getting all up in anxiety-land about whether or not I’ll get a response.
I mean I have his address and his phone number. That was easy to find. I could just write an actual letter (as if my handwriting is not horrendous). Then again, maybe writing stuff on paper will help me sort out some of what I’m feeling too, so let’s engage in that exercise for the sake of doing so. There is always fire waiting for the paper, or my really cool skill of hand shredding things. I do like doing that.
Here’s that cookie.
