Searching for a Truer Sound

Recovering is weird, especially as it reveals how bad things were and for how long. Peter keeps drawing me back to 1982, 1983. Sixth grade, I turned 12 halfway through. When Peter says he wants to go home, that’s what he means. He wants to go back to his house, his home, in 1982, and he gets sad when I tell him we can’t.

I think he wants me to go back to 1982 because some time in that school year, I gave up on him. I turned my back on him. We’d had an uneasy relationship this whole time. I was already denying his existence to my mother before I can remember, branding him as the Other Peter. Blame the Other Peter, not this Peter. Please.

But while I may have tried to convince my mother he wasn’t me, I was him until fourth grade, two years previous, 1980, when I was abruptly bounced from the public school I’d been attending to a private Lutheran school. My parents weren’t Lutheran. My mother would have probably claimed she was Christian despite not going to church, while my father clearly thought religion was for simpletons and idiots, two groups of people he despised. He often seemed to think that Peter fell into one of those groups, which I guess was just more fuel for what I ended up doing.

I remember third grade fondly. I had a good time. I was going to the experimental magnet school for smart kids, and I don’t know what method they were using, but for me school was a fun place to hang out with my friends and goof off. I have a distinct memory from third grade, towards the end of the school year, where I looked at the chalkboard and noticed that in the upper right hand corner, there were three names written down, with three Snoopy refrigerator magnets next to them, Snoopy playing hockey, Snoopy playing baseball, Snoopy playing tennis, and I realized I had no idea what that meant, why those names where there and what the magnets meant, and even to third grade me it seemed like I should know that, especially by spring.

So in the fall of 1980 I found myself at a completely different school, strangely enough only a few blocks from the magnet school, which meant I still had to be bussed or carpooled there. It was never really explained to me, other than “I wasn’t succeeding” at the magnet school, and I needed to be in this smaller, more disciplined school to succeed. I did try to talk to my parents about it a few times over the years, but my mother would just wave it away, saying that teacher didn’t know what she was talking about and then change the subject.

Decades later, I found out what that teacher was talking about. I was cleaning out the attic of our house, getting ready to move. My mother had given me this huge box of my old stuff, and I was going through it to get rid of things before we moved. I found my third grade assessment. It said that I was having trouble paying attention, following instructions. That I needed help to continue. I’m not sure what it meant. By the time I read this, my mother’s memory had already begun to slip. I asked her about it and she looked at me blankly and said she had no idea what I was talking about.

I struggled those first two years at Lutheran. I had no friends, and I was one of two tuition students. Everyone else was here because their families were members of different Lutheran churches in town that sponsored the school. I was not a Christian. My classmates were stunned when I said I’d never been baptized. I didn’t know when they asked. I had to ask my mom. I tried to be a good Christian, but it was a hurdle I couldn’t overcome by myself. My whole family would have needed to have converted and started to attend one of the churches for me to be accepted into the fold.

But through it all, I was still trying to be Peter at home, but Peter wasn’t really welcome at school. I had a really good friend around this time. He lived next door, and we played together all the time. Then his parents got divorced and he abruptly moved away. And suddenly it was just me and Peter, and I am so sorry to say, but I turned my back on him, too.

It’s really simple. You start lying to yourself. That is not me. I am not that person, because everyone hates that person. If that is me, then no one will love me, and I will be alone forever. See? Not hard at all. You lock that little kid away in the basement, pretend you can’t hear him anymore. You’re not that person anymore. You’ve grown, you’ve changed, you’ve matured. You are becoming the person your parents want you to be. You’re quiet, not boisterous. You sit at home, reading, playing with your computer, playing with your brother. You get good grades, you’re in band, you’re in choir. Now that Peter is finally out of the way, I could be the person they wanted me to be.

All I had to do was try, and then when that didn’t work, blame myself for not trying hard enough and try harder. Keep going until you break. Then you dust yourself off and start trying harder again. Don’t be stupid; don’t be an idiot. Don’t be so sensitive. Don’t be Peter. You’re just not trying hard enough; maybe one day you’ll get it together.

One thing I remember from sixth grade is that I was taking antacids daily. I was drinking Maalox in the morning before going to school; I was chewing tablets at night to get my stomach to calm down enough so that I could go to sleep. It took me forever to fall asleep, staring at my room in the dark, or at the trees outside the window. Then in the morning my alarm would go off and I’d groggily hit the snooze and fall back asleep, where I would dream that I got up, got dressed and went to school and proceeded to have the worst possible day imaginable, dreaming about crying and screaming in school because of the pain and trauma, and then the alarm would go off again, and I’d have to get up and face the day. Hand me the Maalox.

Peter keeps dragging me back to 1982 because that’s when I buried him. And now I’m scared to start writing again because I don’t want to lose him. I just got him back. Forty years later I can be Peter again, mostly because everyone is gone. There is no one left to disappoint. There is no one left whose love I can buy with my sacrifice.