My history

September 30th, 2003 @ 7:08 PM in Etcetera

This is the extended version of my “about me” page…

When I came to America on February 2, 1988, I was immediately placed in an elementary school as a first grader even though I was 13, mainly because I didn’t know any English at all. I was then assigned an interpreter for about 2 months. After that, they didn’t think I needed one since I was pretty good communicating through body language, and I could guess what others were saying since I was very intuitive and sensitive to my surroundings. In about 10 months or so, I jumped to the six grade.

There was a guy who was in a wheelchair and in the same class as mine, but he attended the regular classes for most of the time. I rarely spoke to him, because he looked me as if I was an insect. He was very arrogant probably because he was attending “higher” classes and because I was a foreigner. There also was a girl in his situation who acted like the guy. In fact, I caught them a couple of times making out. Mostly him fondling her breasts — she had huge breasts for a 11-year-old girl.

I remember one time a group of them asking me how old I was during recess, and when I told them, they said that I was old enough to have sex. At the time, however, I didn’t know the meaning of that word. So upon returning to my parents, I asked them about it, and they told me it simply means “gender.” I had my suspicion, though, so I looked it up in the dictionary upon returning home, and I was quite “surprised.” I think this is one of the reasons why I get startled sometimes when I hear the word “sex” and anything that relates to that word.

After a year there, I was quite stressed. I was having a cultural shock because of the difference in language, food, and most of all, of course, the culture. For nearly two years thereon, I had a dystonic attack where I couldn’t even breathe well. After about a year of this illness, however, they wanted me to return to school even for a couple of hours and for physical therapy. Until about 1991, I didn’t even have Medicaid, so I was ill without any medication like Valium.

I then gradually got better, and by the time I fully recovered, I was too old for an intermediary school, so they had me transferred me straight to high school. There, I met those two arrogant “fuckers” (pun intended), but we were on the same level this time around. We all were assigned to the special education. Soon after, however, some of my teachers transferred me to regular classes saying that I didn’t belong in special education. In my junior year, I was attending only regular classes, and in my senior year, I was even chosen to be a peer counselor by the KOKUA (Hawaiian meaning “family”) Program. So I guess I showed them, huh!?

In 1993, I attempted suicide partially because of an infatuation I had since my freshman year. I had her in my History class during our freshman year, and she was very nice to me at first. When my personal aide was not there to help me, she volunteered to help me out. Now that I think about it, though, I was very naive and foolish to even consider a suicide because of an infatuation. But then, it was only the main cause of it all.

In 1995, I graduated with an Honors. I was just recovering from another attack which was pretty bad only for about 3 months. Even while I was ill, my assignments were sent to me at home. When I graduated, I was on the 24th place out of about 250 students.

In between and after those years, many hurtful things have happened, of course…