Heidi McGuirk, aka Heidi Rain, of Addiction and Codependency Breakthrough, has said, “Your intimate relationships are the playground of your childhood trauma.”
This new feature, “Trauma’s Playground,” a series of personal essays, revisits key events in my life to show the impact of unresolved childhood trauma on my adult relationships and overall joy.
Common characteristics of codependency,1 trauma responses,2 and codependency attachment personality patterns,3 should be easy to find unsupervised on the slide, swing set, and monkey bars.
The Goal
The 1988/89 school year was the year I had been waiting for and working for.
My entire high school career, on and off campus, had a single focus: get the hell out of that town, away from that guy, and as far from my mother’s ability to influence my life in any way. My student counselor and I worked out a four-year plan, then compressed it into a three-year plan that the superintendent’s office approved during my freshman year. Every class I attended in 9th and 10th grade was mandatory for graduation; I had lots of homework and zero blow-off classes.
My sophomore year was a huge academic challenge, heavily weighted with my weakest skillset… Math. Both semesters included Algebra I (slightly above my skill level), Geometry, and Chemistry I (Algebra I is the prerequisite for both). I swear if I ever hear someone say “using this simple algebraic equation,” ever again… How I managed to maintain a GPA worthy of the colleges I was trying to get into is beyond me.
Entering my junior year, I was two full credits short of graduation requirements: 1 credit of Senior English, 1/2 credit for Government (sr. level class) 1/2 credit for Economics (sr. level). Every other class was a non-essential elective. My plan allowed for Government and Economics to be taken 1st semester, and I would only be required to attend English class second semester. You can imagine my confusion and anger when Government and Economics were missing from my class schedule I received during orientation.
The Behavior
Knowing there is more to getting into college than GPA, I maintained a clean disciplinary record and reasonable attendance. I wasn’t known for acting out at school. Off-campus, however, I had been acting out for years. My mother’s second husband, my first step-father, Byron, had appointed me to the position of “Family Scapegoat” when I was very young and I grew into the role. By the time I was 13, I had started smoking, binge drinking, experimenting with drugs, sneaking out of the house, and I became sexually active. All of these habits stayed with me when I moved to my grandparents’ my freshman year. Plus, I had bouts of depression and a few suicide attempts, and I was a chronic runaway.
The Bias
The school administration rejected my application when I wanted to try out for the twirling line going into my junior year. The reason given was that I wasn’t considered reliable because of my off-campus behavior. That’s when I learned, too late, that in a small town and a high school with a student body of around 250 students, teachers and administration know all about students’ non-student lives and judge according to their own standards.
The explanation for the missing credits relayed to me by the new student counselor from the administration office was that it wouldn’t be “fair” to the four-year students to have a three-year student with a “troubled record” graduate with them. I was told it would be an insult to the time and hard work they had invested, as well as their decent reputations.
The Ruling
I would have to attend four semesters in order to earn 2 credits and graduate because someone in administration or on faculty didn’t approve of my personal behavior outside of school. To suggest that I was bitter would be a gross understatement, and my resentment of everything related to the school grew for nine months. I stopped worrying about my disciplinary record, and it showed.
The Distraction
My friend Christina got so sick of my lamentations about being cheated by the system that she arranged a distraction. She set me up to meet a friend of hers from the next town over. According to her, once I saw how cute this George guy was, every thought of school and graduation would disappear. I doubted it.
The First Sighting
The first time I saw George, Christina and I were on our way to meet him at a mutual friend’s house. We were almost there when a Chevy Blazer raced through the intersection in front of us, leaving our destination. The driver was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen… have ever seen to this day. When we got to the house where we were supposed to meet, we were told that he had left because he had just gotten off work; he’d been roofing an apartment complex and didn’t want to meet me sweaty and dirty. He was so good-looking I doubt I would have noticed. I spent the next week or more thinking about him constantly, waiting for another chance to meet him.