I went inside, it was a cute little shop with painted murals on the walls which looked 3D and were done very well. I asked the barista what he recommended, which I do frequently just to engage in a little conversation and see what the tastes of the server are. He recommended Sheri's blend, which is mocha and caramel coffee - two of my favorite flavors, so of course I went with his recommendation.
I sat there sipping my coffee, which was absolutely delicious, waiting for Shauna to arrive. As I sat there waiting, a few friendly people were walking in and out of this little coffee shop. When a few sweet mentally handicapped women and their caretaker came in, for some reason they must have thought they knew me because they waved and came and sat with me. Their caretaker was in line ordering their coffee, looked over to me and mouthed the words "Sorry" as large as she could. I didn't mind, I attempted to start a conversation with the ladies who were sitting with me, but they just started at me and smiled as if they didn't quite understand what I was saying.
Around 1:50 I got a text message from Shauna saying she was out in the back and to come meet her outside, so I grabbed a lid for my coffee and headed out the back door where I was blinded by the incredibly bright sun. I was greeted by Shauna and her friend Kenzie, my hand in front of the sun as I said hello.
"Sorry, we took forever to get ready!" Shauna said with a smile; "We just couldn't decide what to wear!"
"No, I didn't take forever, YOU took forever, I was already dressed when I got to your house." Kenzie responded.
We agreed to head over to the reservoir because there would probably be better opportunities for pictures there, got in our cars and headed out.
I decided it would be best to start off taking pictures of the girls since it would help us all to relax a little bit and get comfortable around each other.
The conversation was just typical small talk at first, Kenzie being a big talker and the girls laughing and goofing off like most best friends do. I wanted to take pictures by this tiki hut that I had seen on a previous shoot, but there was a man.. or woman… we couldn't quite tell, sitting there with a bunch of fake ducks surrounding him/her, so we decided it would be best to move on to another spot. As we were walking, I pointed out a trail that was pretty and had good places to take pictures, when we saw a few boys;
'Oh, we can't take pictures there… those are the boys she was waving too in the car.' Kenzie said
'Yeahhh…. if they try to ask me out and they are ugly, I'll just tell them I'm married, this is where my grandmother's ring comes in handy." Shauna said as she looked down at the ring on her left hand.
They started to talk about boys they liked, and boys they hated, and funny things they had told people in the past. We even discussed how Shauna had been "Married" and "Divorced" twice in the past few weeks on Facebook, saying that she was a "bad wife" to her fake husband according to him; which I found amusing.
We continued to walk around and take pictures random places, and the laughing continued for the majority of the time.
"I'm sorry, I just can't be serious, I can't take serious pictures." Kenzie said doing a funny pose for the camera.
"That's alright, you don't need to be serious, being fun is fine!" I told her.
After we had been taking pictures for a while, I saw some swings and decided that taking some pictures there would be fun, who doesn't like swings? As I was snapping a few pictures, I asked "so, if you could make a first impression to the world, what would you say?"
"Hi, I'm Shauna… hahaha."
That question was what led to an hour of conversation between the three of us.
Kenzie had taken a break from a week of spending almost every hour with her dying grandmother in the hospital to come hang out with us for the day. She discussed how she had only left the hospital to go home and shower and then she was back there with her grandmother. She told us how one year in her life she had many people die, attempt suicide and commit suicide and she got a tattoo on her back in memory of her grandfather who had passed away and how that year had been really rough on her family.
When the topic of suicide came up, it was a very passionate subject that brought out a lot of emotion in both girls.
"Suicide.. it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem. You can cop out, take the easy way out, or you can deal with your issues. By committing suicide it's saying that you just don't care about the people around you. That you don't care that what you're doing is going to affect everyone… when Charlie died she took her own life, and what did people do? They held benefits, made T-shirts, held memorials… but when Chris died who didn't want to die, when it was an accident, what did we do for him? Not a damn thing. No one cared, no one held benefits, or memorials, no one made t-shirts.. but we honored someone who decided to take their own life.. it's just not fair, not fair at all." Shauna expressed.
"Well.. . I would think that when you're doing this, you're not ignoring that people care for you, or that they love you, you're probably thinking about how you might disappoint them, or how they are going to look at you differently, or how they aren't going to approve of you and your life and you just think about how everyone's life would be better if you would just remove yourself from the situation completely.. " Kenzie responded as she rocked back and forth on the swing.
Shauna began to tell us how her grandmother raised her, because her mom had her at 16 and couldn't handle the responsibility of having a child at that young age and how her grandmother was what saved her life. At one point her mom decided to fight for custody and get her children back, and her grandmother died a week after her mom regained custody of her and her sisters. Which was very difficult on all of them. Especially her younger sister who had turned to drinking and drugs as a way to escape her reality. As she kept talking she briefly mentioned that her mom had a girlfriend, which seems to be becoming more common so I decided to ask;
"What is it like to live with a mother who has a girlfriend?"
"Well, she's been with her since I was 12 and at first I was really angry, I was like 'how can you do this to me? What are people going to think of me? What are my friends going to think of me?' and it was a huge adjustment. But after seeing them together, you know, things just changed and I'm a firm believer that you can't help who you love, whether you're a man and a man, a woman and a woman, or a man and a woman. And if she wants to be with a woman and that's what makes her happy… then she should."
The conversation went on to a few random topics and then I posed the question "So what do you think is the most common misconception about who you are?"
"That I'm a b****" Shauna said "I'm not meaning to be rude, but my past made me not trust people, don't blame me for what other people have done to me. I have a really hard time separating personal life from friend life and meeting new people. I don't want to say I just don't trust people, because that's not true. I trust people until they give me a reason not to.. but once you lose that trust, you just keep lying and lying to cover up the lies you've already told and once you do that, it's really hard to regain the trust you lost."
"Right, I think that the biggest misconception for me is that I was scary/mean" Kenzie said, "I used to dress goth and when I started to change people kept saying 'oh, I like you so much more now, you're a lot nicer.' but I am just like, I was never mean to begin with, you just assumed I was."
Overall we shared a lot of good conversations, the messages they wanted to share with the world are the following;
#1 Love with everything you have, say I love you all the time. You never know when you're going to lose someone and you always want the last words they hear from you to be "I love you."
#2 Take the time to know people beyond their appearances, because someone can be really hurting and instead of taking the time to talk with them, you can make situations worse by rubbing in past experiences, deaths, or getting into an argument and telling someone to go kill themselves… you never know when they will listen to your words.
#3 Always be honest. It's much better to be hurt by the truth, in saying that you really just don't care right now than it is to pretend that you care when you really don't. Because once they find out that you don't care and never have, it makes people feel stupid, vulnerable, and shut off from new relationships that happen.
#4 There are better ways to deal with problems than suicide. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem and you can work out temporary problems, everyone is here for a reason and cutting yourself short is selfish and a copout.
Hopefully you've enjoyed this first issue of Understanding the Misunderstood, I look forward to reading your comments :)
