I never stood out in a good way in my high school days. I thought my nerd-like qualities were biological, I didn't realize how wrong I was until I went to college. In high school my mother was always a constant influence on me, what music I listened to, what movies I saw, what kind of clothes I wore (there were ratios put on black to colored clothing), really, even how I thought (I thought guys with earrings were freaks, not to speak of the one guy with nipple rings).
At A Glance Author Kyle Contact [email protected] IAM diogenes When It just happened Location Meadville, Pa. I don't think any of this is a crime; I feel that it is common, or should be. After all, parents want their children to grow up to meet the parent's expectations, not the child's, and that is where the problems lay.
College life was the first time I was ever able to make my own choices, and I found very quickly that my family didn't like what I looked like.
Very soon after I started, a month or so, I had my ear pierced for the first time. I had two studs put through my left ear. My mother had no profound feelings on the matter, nor my father (we never had much of a relationship anyway).
I found that I really liked having them. I didn't want to stop; I added a left cartilage and right lobe piercing, then a second of each, then another pair of lobe holes. After that it was a deep tragus ring. Next was a tattoo on the back of my neck. Each time my mother was a bit more leery, saying something along the line of "That's not so bad," and most commonly telling me that "It's just a college freshman phase" or something of the sort to placate herself.
My mother was temporarily angry after I got my tongue pierced, but I wasn't the first in this family with that mod, not by far. I simply didn't tell her about my nipple rings for fear of how she might re-act. It really wasn't very hard to hide them, even living at home on breaks.
What finally broke her was my septum piercing. I prize this piercing above all the other mods I have. At first I didn't like septum rings, but I warmed up to the idea, and soon I didn't feel complete without one.
My septum ring makes me feel so good about myself, but I knew I could never let my parents see it, they would never accept something so extreme. I hid it for a good three or so months, I had planned on telling her about it only a year or two after having it done, but one time, as I am so apt to do, I just forgot to hide it.
Needless to say, she was not pleased, and from that point on, has refused to actually look at me unless I have the piercing well hidden. This hurts me deeply, because it is something I love about myself.
I don't feel that she has a right to treat me so, in every other way I am an exemplary student, and I would like to think a pretty good son. I rarely if ever drink or smoke. I am a Honors student at my college, I am well known on campus in my field of Computer Science, I hold down two (sometimes three) part-time jobs, I am training as a Goshin-Jutsu martial artist, and I still hang out with my friends very often.
This is why my mother's rejection of me pierces so deeply, because other than what she deems a single flaw, I am nearly perfect. Yet she refuses to accept me as whom I am. This has nagged me for a period of years now,
Since high school, I have been making appointments with a wonderful psychologist who was able to give me some very good insight into this phenomenon.
She had me list all the good qualities that my mother thinks I have, and all the bad qualities that my mother thinks I have. She then told me that these problems she had with me weren't my problems, they were simply products of my mothers life. There wasn't anything wrong with me, and just needed to accept that my mother would never understand what my mods meant to me.
The moral of this story, the reason I've bothered to write this, is that I want to remind everyone out there who knows what its like to be looked down on, to be persecuted just for having mods. Don't let other peoples views control your feelings, you know what you do is right; you can feel it in your heart.
Don't ever let anyone else's view of you lower your view of yourself. I did and it took me along time to realize how foolish it was of me, and I would like to spare as many people from that pain as possible.
-K.