Girls, Assassins & Other Bad Ideas
by Mae Wagner
Genre: Memoir
The only daughter of a bipolar woman, Mae’s childhood innocence was bartered for the ease of a “secure” life. At twelve years old and after years of abuse, Mae realizes she must fight for herself. When she is sent away from her family, she’s forced to navigate years of abandonment in a children’s home.
Throughout her turbulent adolescence and well into adulthood, the need to be seen as enough and the ache to become a mother shaped her life. It is this heartbreaking journey that leads to her deepest loss.
Girls, Assassins & Other Bad Ideas is a collection of personal essays shining light where abuse and trauma-induced shame brought darkness. As life often led toward grief, Mae reflects back on her most shattering moments—nearly always tied to the women she loved the deepest. The poignant reflections through Mae’s heartbreak, grief and eventual self-acceptance will serve as an inspiration to those navigating hardship and trauma, reminding us we are not alone.
Girls, Assassins & Other
Bad Ideas
A Memoir
Mae Wagner
Burning Soul Press
Copyright © 2022 by Mae Wagner
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the
publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Contents
IV
1. Introduction 1
2. The Anthill 3
For the goodest girls, and boy, ever … Betsy, Makaila, Paisley, Knightley, Emma, and Elenor … the love of a dog is the truest, most faithful
form of love we’ll ever know. They never let us down, but sometimes
they pee on the carpet.
Introduction
THE MUSIC WOULD CONSUME me, this is what I remember. I would belt
out the lyrics—or more likely, what I believed them to be—while
dancing and twirling.
Freedom.
My feet were everywhere, only landing on scorched asphalt long
enough to push me into the air again.
I felt alive!
My heartbeat aligned itself to the rhythm coming from the local
pop station as I lived out my best life on those Saturday nights in my
grandmother’s driveway. Dinner dishes done, she would ask me to go
out and close the gate. Little antenna radio tucked beneath my arm, I’d
spend the better part of two hours dreaming I was a student in Fame,
or at a raging high school party just like the ones in the John Hughes
movies I loved. My grandmother’s dusty New Mexico driveway set the
stage as I stepped into my own world. The only thing jolting me from
my imaginary paradise of pulsating music was when the local DJ would
interrupt for a song “going out to” someone. In those moments I would
freeze, waiting.
Would he ever say my name?
Those minutes were the lowest because of course he never did.
Despite my sneaking phone calls to dedicate songs to my mom (Nora
was a tried-and-true country and western fan and therefore would
never have heard them), my best friend Melanie (always “Girls Just
Want to Have Fun” or “True Blue.” Always.), or to some other random
person of the moment.
I lived for those Saturday nights all week.
Now in my midforties, I look back and wonder what my grandmother’s neighbors thought of that ridiculous little white girl losing herself in the driveway. There was no landscape coverage. These poor people
had complete access to the Misty Mae Show, terrible vocals and all.
For what it’s worth, they were always so kind to me, even aqer the
magic of the driveway could no longer save me. Even if it was pity that
replaced their neighborly charm, they still smiled in kindness when
they said my name.
I’ll never forget that. Also, I miss that girl. I miss her unabashed love
and the freedom she dove straight into, not caring who was watching.
I miss that girl who, brokenhearted that no one felt songs for her, still
recovered in time to dance her heart out.
These pages are for her.
Dear Friend, these pages are also for you.
I needed to begin this book with a letter to you. At its core, this book
is a collection of letters. Letters to others, letters to myself, letters of
efiual parts vulnerability and gratitude because of a unifiue compilation of moments, people, and experiences. The beating heart of this
work is about connection and humanity, growth, failure, resilience,
and love.
Always, always it is about love.
This is the story of a girl turned woman who lost only to :nd, who
hid in darkness only to one day reach for the courage to chase the light.
This is the story about a girl who ached to be wanted, to be loved.
This is my story—the journey of how I learned to :nally love myself,
and the lights along the path that lit my way.
I am so grateful you are here, walking through this journey with me.
In case no one has told you latelyY
ou are beautiful!
ou are made up of value.
ou are meant to be a dragon slayer, just like that brave little girl…~
> M
The Anthill
{To the girl who would: “I of the Storm” by Of Monsters and Men}
ONE OF MY EARLIEST memories is sitting at the edge of my front yard, in
a yellow jumper, screaming. I was sitting on an anthill, and the ants
were biting me. The memory of those hot tears on my face and the
sound of my deep, wailing sobs feels like yesterday. My mother stands,
smoking, on the front step of our gold and white single-wide, telling
me to “figure it out” myself. I can still feel the deepest feelings my little
two-year-old self had ever felt. Those powerful truths being stitched
into my tiny soul told me that I was not worth saving; I knew I deserved
the pain. I could not imagine how to move past the pain to get off the
hill; the ants just kept coming and I was done. For the first time ever, I
knew what it meant to give up.
As a woman, now in my forties, I will accept that over time I probably
projected feelings and thoughts into that memory. It isn’t likely that a
toddler could process such big things, and yet …
And yet, they feel so true to the moment when I recall it.
At some point, as I sit there accepting my end, another character
enters the scene. She is a teenage girl who spends a fair amount of time
with my mom and me. Her name is Amy and I love her. She swoops
in, picks me up from the anthill, and this is where the thin veil of a
memory stops.
Over the years I would ask my mother about this memory, and of
course she would deny it ever happened. For a long time, this lez me
feeling like I might be craxy. How could I know so many details, from
every thread of that jumper to the e?act hues in the vast New Me?ico
skyD How could I recall something so vividly overwhelming and painful
if it never happenedD
One day late in my thirties, Amy and I reconnected via Facebook.
There were many things said because there were big things that she’d
sat on the sidelines for, powerless. I did ask her about the anthill,
but only because she’d been there. Cid it really happenD It was so
traumatixing. Bould she solve the mysteryD
Amy did not remember saving me from the anthill.
I was crushed, but I didn’t tell her that. In fact, I had downplayed the
memory, there in that one-dimensional font conversation, as though it
were a funny little moment that may have happened. Warely a minute
passed before she continued, “I’m not saying it didn’t happen, just that
I don’t remember it. I also feel like I should point out that this sounds
like the sort of thing that would have happened. It fits in with a lot of
the types of things I saw.”
This book is my anthill, of sorts. It hurts at times. It is a retelling
of love, which saves me again and again. Love from others, love from
myself. Love. Like the anthill of my toddlerhood, however, it is important to note that there will be opinions that offer different perspectives
than mine. Even so, this is how I remember it.
I also remember hundreds of summer hours at the public pool.
There were endless swimming lessons where I took pride in my ability
to hold the side of the pool while kicking. There was the complacency
that I eventually settled into, where I did not see the point in finishing
the dull swimming lessons when it was much more fun to stay in the
three- to four-foot part of the pool with my friends. Ke could play
mermaids, we could sit cross-legged on the bottom having underwater, imaginary tea parties. Ke could play games and laugh and pass the
best parts of sun-kissed summer days.
Eventually, those same friends began gravitating over to the diving
board and deeper parts. I would look longingly from my side of the blue
bobbing divider. Sure, my side of the pool was still pretty full. There
were little kids everywhere. Little kids and me. Even so, I came to
the pool e?cited. I inhaled the chlorine, grabbed my swim basket, and
optimistically bounded through the entrance before reality crashed in
around me.
Every. Single. Cay.
Cespite ozen feeling alone, I found comfort and solace in that water
before I understood what that even meant. I knew it was sad and
lonely, but also vital somehow.
One summer day in particular, even as my friends moved on to the
deep end and I was stuck with the little kids, I marched into that pool
with so much confidence. For the first time ever, my mom had allowed
me to choose my own swimsuit from the Sears catalog, and it was
definitely the cutest suit I had ever seen. I knew then, at eight years
old, that I would finally be the envy of someone. That some boy would
think I was pretty and smile at me, or some popular girl would see my
suit and decide we should be best friends. Smelling of cocoa butter and
slipping my way from that swim locker, I knew that this was about to
be the best day of my life.
It wasn’t.
I held the side of the shallow end and I kicked, wishing someone
would notice me, wishing some kid there would care that I had come
to the pool in the first place.
One day, my mom said she was no longer willing to pay for lessons.
I was Ofl with her decision because I was unwilling to take swim
lessons with babies and little kids. Instead, I continued holding the
edge of the pool and kicking, showing off the highest level of my swim
achievements to the cute middle school and high school boys who
walked by. I began to notice girls around me who’d developed more,
were prettier, and had boys —irting with them. I started comparingPI
was fatter than this one girl, and that other girl’s hair was way prettier
than mine. I did not like how my poolside observations made me feel,
so I began to daydream about dates with this one boy or slumber
parties with those popular girls, laying out on towels and laughing. I
escaped into a place in my mind where reality was not invited.
Eventually, I stopped wanting to go. I could easily daydream at home
alone without my mom’s complaints about driving me.
I did not want to try to swim. I was content never to know how to
do more than kick on the side. My mother would not set foot near a
poolPshe was terrified of the water. I had, with my mediocre effort,
surpassed anything she had done, so I grew complacently satisfied. I
spent many summer breaks in :hoeni? with my aunt, and though they
had a sparkling, kidney-shaped pool, they mostly paddled around in
tubes. It seemed I was a girl in a family of nonswimmers, so I accepted
I had no reason to know how to swim.
One summer I was hanging out in my aunt’s :hoeni? back yard, doing my favorite pastime( singing and dancing around, enacting scenes
from my very favorite movie, Grease 2. !Yep, the Michelle :feiffer one.
I longed to one day be Stephanie, in love with my very own Michael,
singing songs about life and love. This would be my future; I just knew
it)Z I was belting out “Bool Rider,” knowing all the words by heart, while
dancing my way around the pool. In my mind, I was a million miles
away in a prop warehouse azer a rehearsal for the winter talent show.
In one careless-yet-confident move, my foot touched the edge of the
pool andP
I realixe, wow, this sounds like I almost drown.
I don’t.
I woke up. I woke up to the reality of the scorching azernoon
summer sun. I woke up to the fact that I wasn’t in a warehouse at all,
but rather a backyard. I woke up to the truth, that I was not Stephanie
8inone, but rather plain, ugly Misty Mae Moore from Lordsburg, New
Me?ico. I was a loser in all meanings of the word I understood at nine
years of age. Standing beneath that sweltering Arixona sun, I looked at
the diamond-like pool, shimmering and calling my name. Suddenly I
craved the comfort and solace I’d once found in my public pool days. I
knew we would probably spend time —oating in the pool that evening,
but this was little consolation for the sweaty, overwhelmed way I felt
in that moment.
For the first time, I was filled with a need to do something.
I thought then about my swimming lessons. How I had just given up.
I called myself stupid and then, then I told myself, If everyone else can
swim … !Ofl, maybe no one in my immediate family, but all the cool
kids at the poolZ … there is no reason that you can’t. Just swim. And
then, in my summer outfit that was likely very retro-0Cs and awesome,
I climbed onto the diving board and jumped in.
And I did not drown.
There was life in the way that water felt, the relief of its coolness
against my sun-pricked skinPthe way being in the water reconnected
me to a piece of myself I had lost somewhere. Everything went silent
as my body was gliding toward the bottom. In my memory, that kidney-shaped pool may as well have been twenty feet deep. I doubt it
was more than five or si? feet. There are so many great elements to
this very childish thing I did. Like how terrifying !and a little funny, in
hindsightZ it must have been for my aunt. I mean, who would jump in
and save meD See, it’s funny now. It’s also over thirty years later.
Somewhere deep inside, I woke up from the coping mechanism I’d
grown accustomed to( retreating to a fantasyland in an effort to avoid
reality. It might be unrealistic to think a nine-year-old grasped all of
that, and maybe I did a little, but I see the milestone of a shiz now.
I can still feel the water that day. Thousands of feelings and sensationsPand a brief moment of complete peace and connection to
something that made me feel whole and relevant. On a whim, I dove
!well, jumpedZ into a knowledge that I could take care of myself, and I
should allow myself to let go and embrace the effort
Mae Wagner is a writer, speaker, mentor, and host of the Rainy Day Collective Podcast.
Mae is a Trauma Mentor with a heart for connecting with women who have been through hard things, and helping them reconnect with themselves. Her passion is advocating for, and supporting women. Women's issues are closest to her heart and daily Mae is working to prove that women’s stories matter. Women’s voices deserve to be heard.
When she isn’t working with clients, or focusing on the podcast, Mae is penning her memoir, which she hopes to publish when the time is right. More of a gypsy soul, currently residing in Pennsylvania with her husband, their golden retriever Elenor and the sassy kitten they rescued in the middle of the pandemic- Mae is grateful for the opportunity to journey alongside women, as an advocate, ally, cheerleader, sometimes counselor and genuine friend.
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