Prompt (2) – Being chosen. Being ignored.
Home of the Highlanders, MacArthur High School was the clearest definition of an oxymoron I had encountered up to that point in my life. Highlanders in the Great Plains with a motto of “People First, Excellence Always” in a transient town better known for pawn shops and titty bars…Jesus Almighty! The contradiction was not subtle in the least.
When I arrived, I was immediately chosen. I was chosen not for anything I had done or earned, but for the size of my body. I am certain the coach believed he was offering affirmation, maybe even opportunity. He likely told himself a story about coaching me up and bringing discipline that would later open doors. What he actually did was place around my neck a weight that lasted the entire year, and much longer if I am honest. His choice was not about me. It was a projection of how I could be useful to him and his team. Utility masquerading as care has a particular heaviness to it. It presses down slowly on a proud chest and insists on gratitude while doing so.
I would have preferred to be ignored rather than bullied for an entire year for refusing his offer. That refusal marked me. It made me a problem instead of a resource in that space. Being ignored, however, also carries its own kind of damage. It teaches a collective disappearance as a survival strategy. It rewards silence and compliance and requires no accounting.
Being chosen and being ignored feel like opposites on paper, but they share the same origin story. They are siblings of a parental unit with an “idea of parental compassion is just, you know, wacko!” Both being ignored or chosen single a person out. Both carry judgment. Both demand something without ever asking who someone is.
In school, I was chosen in ways I never requested, and I was ignored in ways I did not deserve. From lessons I learned at home, I tried to stay small and as invisible as possible, yet chosen for a task I was not prepared to bear. Staying small felt safer than being evaluated. Invisibility felt preferable to becoming a symbol or a cautionary tale. I wanted neither attention nor erasure. That tension followed me for years. Over time, that same tension gave me eyes to see it later. It taught me how to notice patterns and to recognize when power was pretending to be neutral. It also pushed me to try to name what I was seeing, first quietly, then more openly, even when doing so came at a cost.
The cult classic movie The Breakfast Club offers one of the clearest examples of these siblings with a shared back story that I know. It is a film I used in class for years as an educator, not because it is perfect, but because it is honest about hierarchy and the siblings. John Bender, labeled the “criminal,” delivers a line to the “princess,” Claire, that sounds cheeky but is filled with lived experience. He says, “You could not ignore me if you tried, sweets.” It lands as swagger, but the truth inside it is heavy. John Bender knows exactly where he stands. The popular kids can pretend he does not matter, but they cannot erase him from the room. He takes up space in that place because disappearing has already been assigned to him elsewhere.
Bender is not chosen. He is tolerated by those who are there. He is watched. He is remembered only as a problem. The popular kids do not forget him because he is insignificant. Forgetting him allows them to keep their version of themselves intact. Remembering him would require reckoning. I recognized that math immediately! I learned early how to make myself unignorable without ever being chosen. There is a difference. Being seen is not the same as being held. Being loud is not the same as being safe. Like Bender, I understood that if I did not exert some control over my visibility, someone else would decide whether I vanished or became a spectacle.
Bender’s anger is never random. It is precise. It is armor. It is a refusal to disappear quietly for people who benefit from not having to see him. Later in the movie, he says what has been true all along. “What do you care what I think, anyway? I do not even count. I could disappear forever and it would not make any difference. I may as well not even exist at this school.” That is not defiance. It is once again accounting. He understands the math of the place better than anyone else in the room.
Claire believes she counts so much that her absence would register as a crisis. However, John’s absence would register as relief. He is visible enough to be punished and invisible enough to be disposable. That is the difference he names when he turns on her. It is not cruelty. It is clarity. He is not asking to be liked. He is asking to be recognized as existing and to be seen as worthy.
That scene stayed with me because I could relate to each of the siblings leaving the same residue.
What I learned much later is that choosing myself had to come before anyone else did. Not loudly. Not as performance. Not as rebuttal. Just steadily and quietly. Choosing myself meant staying present without auditioning. It meant letting some rooms misunderstand me, letting some people leave, and sometimes me leaving the room. It meant trusting that I was worthy. There is a particular peace that comes with no longer arguing with the ledger. I no longer need to prove that I count. I do not need to disappear to survive or accept a role that requires self-erasure to belong. That choice does not erase the past, but it does loosen the siblings grip on me. The brothers can continue their work elsewhere. I have already chosen a different inheritance.
Muddled Soma 