Role Playing

     In junior high, a substitute teacher, who was also a friend of my mother’s, told me I was a “catalyst for trouble.” Thanks for that. That’s pretty much what every seventh grade girl needs to hear. In high school, a math teacher confronted me in a first floor common area and accused me of cheating by giving my graded math test to another student who had not yet taken the test. Yeah, because I was the keeper of everyone’s attendance and if someone asked to check how her test was graded against mine, of course I would already know she hadn’t been there on test day. Sure, you go ahead and believe that about me. Another high school teacher asked me which of my siblings I “was,” meaning, which I most acted like. Because, yeah, I couldn’t just be me, not when there were four others ahead of me.

     When I think back to middle school, and the substitute calling me a catalyst, I wonder where she got that idea. To that point, I had been in the principal’s office once in my life, for writing on the bathroom wall in second grade, five years earlier. Was middle school tough? It was the late seventies. What schools now acknowledge and attempt to fight as bullying was dismissed as kids just being kids. We’d build coping skills from dealing with it. Was I trouble maker? One time in the principal’s office? Nope. Not up to then.

     The problem was I believed that substitute. She was an adult; I was a kid. She was wise; I was dumb. I was a catalyst. I wasn’t sure what the word meant. I went to the library during lunch to look it up. I learned that as a catalyst, I was the cause, the agent, the facilitator of trouble. I was the reason, if someone called me “nigger lips” (true story), that someone did. If someone called me fat, or ugly, or bossy, it was my fault, because I was the catalyst. It was my role. When I wasn’t the smartest girl in the room, well, what did you expect?

     We like things to fit where we are comfortable with them. We strive to make our worlds fit into patterns and routines from which there are no deviations. We ascribe roles to people, and we work hard to make people fit into those roles, whether the role is accurate or not. Shrugging off a role is difficult because, for one, other people are reluctant to let us change our roles; and two, we’ve played the role for so long, we’re not sure what else to be.

     I’ve never laid a claim to perfection. I’m more inclined to inferiority than superiority. I’m not good at forgiving myself either. I have a catalog, replete with color illustrations, of the ways I am not good enough, and the mistakes that I’ve made. I’m an easy target to make feel badly. Like cooked pasta, if you throw something at me, it’ll stick. I may appear tough, but I am actually a very vulnerable person. And I am cursed with an indelible memory.

     Many people could not write the things I write. They do not understand the Hemingway quote, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” I understand that. In fact, it’s not difficult for me open a vein and bleed on paper, because what the hell do I have to lose? What the hell do I have to protect? My reputation? I’m a catalyst for trouble, remember? What kind of reputation is that? I’m “thank God you’re the last” on the first day of class. I’m the one who needs to build coping skills by experiencing bullying. I’m the one not good enough to be here even when my scores are high. I’m the bitch with “nigger lips.”

     Maybe I’m over-sensitive. Maybe others are under-sensitive. Maybe I need to let it go; maybe others need to think before they speak. Whose responsibility is it when we hurt? The person who did the hurting or the person who hurts? I’ve heard the responsibility placed on both sides. One thing I know, when I taught seventh grade girls, I never called any one of them a catalyst. No one deserves to be cast in that role.

     As far as my role, I’m tired of it. Like it or not, I’m letting it go. If you want me to be your catalyst, you will be sadly disappointed, because I won’t do it anymore. I won’t take that on. Yes, that requires isolating myself from most people, but I’m okay with that. Because I don’t want to live down to expectations any longer. It will be a relief to have nothing left to bleed about.