Rewind on depression and moving from Iowa

For some reason I got ahead of the story. Yesterdays post is correct, it's just not in the correct order. Evidently I copied the wrong page when I pasted it in to the blog. Before we moved to Denison from Sioux City we moved back to Minnesota. Then to Sioux City, then to Denison, then to LeMars Iowa.

Fairmont MN was a pretty cool place. Lots of lakes and I liked it there. Big enough so I wasn't much noticed by anyone but not so big I couldn't get around. Naturally I was behind in school again. No big deal there as I would catch up in a few weeks.

I really got tired of moving and being the new kid all the time tho. I was always the outsider and while I suppose it bothered me at the time and is probably partly accountable for the what I turned into I don't remember it bothering me much at the time.

There was always the same routine. The teachers loved me, the kids didn't like me because I was new, different and smart. Fighting was a common thing with every move and not something I feared at all. I took no shit and gave no quarter. After I had established I couldn't be bullied or beaten into submission things would be fine.

That's just how life worked back then. It was normal. The new kid always got picked on. Lol, the only good thing was sooner or later another new kid would come along. Usually I'd make friends with them but not always. The local kids would forget me and pick on the newer kid.

Because the town was on a chain of lakes I fished a lot. My stepfathers sister owned a lake place that was a bar and marina. We spent a lot of time there because they could drink and I could fish and be left alone. While I got in some minor trouble there it was a place I could still live and I considered it.

At the moment it's to close to all the girls I went out with and I don't want to get anywhere close to them because I don't trust myself. It would be to easy for me to feel lonely and call one of them and start up again. If I go out with one the rest will eventually find out and then it's the same crap all over again. No point in that.

It was a place I liked tho. Out of all the places I've lived MN is still my favorite place. The whole upper Midwest is decent but MN was always the best. I lived on the East Cost and hated it. Was really hard to find a good steak. I lived in LA and hated it. To many people, to many pretentious people and to damn much concrete. I lived down South and hated it. Just to freaking hot for to long.

As long as I have Internet I can live anywhere I want, now. That makes some people jealous. It was one hell of a journey getting to this point tho.

Enough wandering off the track again and back to MN. I had lots of experiences there and learned a lot more about life. I finally got to see my grandmother again too and I hadn't been allowed to see her since my mother moved us from my hometown.

Things are going to get worse.

What happened if I lost a fight

Nothing much of note happened at school for a while. As I said they tested me and discovered I was more intelligent than the rest of my class. However I still got the shaft because there were no classes for gifted people. Come to think of it there were no classes for those with learning disabilities.

Sheesh, that learning disabilities phrase I had to think about. I'm not to politically correct so I had to think of that one for a minute. Argh, I could go off on a political correctness rant but I won't.

Really offends me to this day that there aren't more programs for the gifted or highly intelligent. Being on the right and on the flat side of the bell curve can really suck. I'm old but I hang with a lot of younger people as older people are to damn much living in the past. Besides, I'm lucky as it's part of one of my jobs. I know lots of smart girls and a few boys who quit school because schools were so boring and no challenge. I know one girl of 20 who quit school and is educating herself in what she wants to know and do. Carries around a computer, 5 thick books and two notebooks and studies whenever she has a spare moment.

Anyway, me and school. When I was in first grade I got into a fight with another kid. Wow, imagine that, it took me a year of school to get into a fight. Amazing huh? I even remember why. A bigger kid was picking on a girl from my class and she started crying so I smacked him in the mouth. Lol, he totally kicked my ass and I lost.

When I got home my dad asked me how my shirt got torn and I told him I got in a fight. He asked me if I won or lost and I told him I lost. He asked if the other kid knocked me out or what and I said no, I gave up. Then he got very angry.

He took off his belt and started beating me with it and told me if I ever gave up he was going to beat me, if I ever lost he was going to beat me and if I ever took any crap from anyone and didn't fight he was going to beat me.

Now understand my grandfather was the toughest guy in town and then my father. To them I had let the family honor down by giving up and taking the ass kicking. I was in first grade, what did I know about any of that. I soon learned tho.

In that year I fought more and lost a few and everytime I lost the beatings got worse. I soon learned that it ws better to suffer in the fight, take whatever was dished out and keep fighting until I won because if I lost whatever happened at home was going to be far worse than what happened in the fight.

Believe it or not I considered this normal too. It's just how it was. I wonder how many things I still consider normal today that were really child abuse. I have no clue but every now and then something comes up and I'll mention that happened to me and they'll go wow, that was child abuse. For me it was normal and worse yet expected.

By the time I was in third grade I didn't lose fights anymore. I could kick 5th grade butt and most guys were afraid of me. I wasn't a bully or anything like that I just would not let people intimidate me, put me down or hurt girls. Lol, teachers couldn't even intimidate me because they couldn't do anything near as bad to me as what was happening at home. Detention, who cared, it kept me from having to go home where I didn't want to be anyway. It was quiet in detention and I could read to my hearts content. I was pretty much a loner even back then.

So I'm depressed. Whoopee. Tons of people are for more reasons than I have but there are even tons and tons more who don't have any reason at all. At least not that I can see. I still want to know what comes first, the change in brain chemicals and that causes depression or does depression cause the change in brain chemicals.