Teenage Pain
Thirteen to Fifteen were the absolutely worst years of my life. There have been days or months since then that blew chunks, but those years were the worst YEARS. If someone offered me something that would only benefit me (money, fame, what have you) they could never manage to even get me to consider reliving these years. If some deity offered to bring about world peace in exchange I would THINK about it. I never want to feel like that ever again. Out of control, powerless, confused, out of place, nowhere to belong, ungrounded...
My best friend since preschool completely distanced herself from me for reasons I sure as hell don't understand and I doubt she has much of a clue about. It simply was. I think it was a survival technique more than anything. At that time in that climate we amplified each others' low social rank. In some sort of hormone addled desperation I attached myself to the first group that would take me... and I picked wrong. Oh my. I picked so very very wrong. I picked a group of girls who brought bottles of evian water in their lunches, went shopping at the mall by themselves, read Seventeen religiously and were well, I don't know if popular is quite the right term but on a higher echelon of some kind. I attached myself to the group because two of the girls were ones I'd grown up with and knew pretty well (I thought). I tried so very very hard to keep up with them but I was hopelessly out of my depth and trying to be someone I wasn't.
To anyone who knows my day to day life these next few items will prove how terribly wrong I had chosen my social group. I got up at 5:30 in the morning to curl my hair and bangs. (My hair wasn't curly at the time... that was a puberty thing. I was a very late bloomer.) I used hairspray (I had to use a pump bottle because my mother forbade aerosol. Sheesh you light one little thing on fire...) in copious amounts but it never held even until lunch. I coordinated my outfits and begged my mother for certain items of clothing (most of them probably involved puffy paint *cringe*) to try and keep up with my "peer" group. For those that don't know me, I rarely roll out of bed more than 20 minutes before I need to be out the door, the last time my hair was styled was my wedding and my fashion sense involves trying not to clash noticeably while spending the least amount of time possible selecting my outfits.
Classes weren't too bad. I got seated next to the troublemakers in most of my classes in an attempt to even out the seating arrangement. These were as far as I remember-- all boys. I understand boys. Boys say what's on their minds and if you listen they'll tell you exactly what that is. I knew the boy who sat next to me in homeroom was being beaten at home and his father was a drunk. He also designed the "You'll find it at Freddy's" Fred Meyer bag for a contest. He won a little bit of money that really made a huge difference in his life. I really hope he's OK. I suspect he's not. I knew the boy next to me in history was thinking about sex constantly but knew almost nothing about it (he was not harassing me about it, I was vaguely asexual to these boys-- a girl in name only). They talked to me. I listened. I wouldn't rat them out and I would help them with school work. We had an agreement and we knew where we stood. I would pencil fight with them and listen to their jokes and things made as much sense as anything did at that age. There was a slight hiccup in this arrangement when I agreed by note to "go with" a boy and the balance was upset. He was suspended the same day for dumping a tray of magnets into the iron fillings and after a few phone calls with said suspended boy... I told him this wasn't going to work. It was one bumpy week in an otherwise smooth agreement between myself and the trouble maker's contingent.
Lunch time was like walking into a circle of hell. Yet I did it willingly every day. I walked under my own power to the same table and sat with the same girls and took the same abuse, derision, systematic undermining of my self esteem and identity. It was like every 'mean girls' story ever... except the tables were never turned. They dished, I took it. What drives me crazy is I know that at any point I could have walked away and I didn't. I felt like I couldn't. I felt like these girls controlled my life and my status. I felt that if they shunned me, my life would be essentially over.
During this time I of course had the impossible sekrit crush. The shining Adonis of 13 year old masculinity, (sorry, I devolved into laughter there for a few minutes) a golden god of uh... goldenness? He was very blond and very tan. He was also my line leader (we had to form groups and sit in lines) in gym class. This made gym my favorite yet most hated class of the entire day. In gym I got to stare at his perfect back and *GASP* I might get to hold the rope while he started his rope climb. (Shuttupshuttupshuttup) Of course I never TALKED to him... that would defeat the purpose of having a sekrit crush. Plus that risks rejection or shattering a perfect illusion. [I actually did talk to him eventually... four years later in High School when we had a ceramics class together. Turns out the boy is about as bright as a box of rocks. It also turns out that I am incapable of being attracted to someone who can not hold a conversation with me. #themoreyouknow]
Gym class was also the most dangerous class. When we weren't lined up in lines (and I was mooning at the back of golden boy's head) I was literally dodging physical abuse. I was very small and as I mentioned above, a late bloomer. I was shall we say, underdeveloped. (Zomg guys stop laughing... seriously these "assets" are a recent addition to *gestures* this package) When it was discovered that during a particularly nasty batch of "snap the bra strap" that I did not in fact have one... things got a little ugly. Combine that with the jump ropes that happened to "slip" out of peoples hands and every other horrible thing that happens during free gym... gym class hurt. It hurt a lot.
It was so bad that I begged my parents to let me to go the private school my other best friend since preschool had gone to. For reasons I also don't fully understand (apparently I am very persuasive?) they agreed. I spent the rest of middle school at a private Lutheran school where I knew exactly one person in my class of 24. Twenty of those students had been together since preschool and didn't know any other schools. They weren't cruel, but there wasn't really a place for me in their world either so I was stuck at the edges. Sadly being stuck at the edges seemed pretty good in comparison. Also luckily for me there was another new student that year, a girl who could only hear by means of strong hearing aids and an amplification device the teacher wore. We quickly formed an alliance. I knew how to finger spell (I forgot a letter here or there) and learning how to read lips turned out to be a lot easier than I thought. There's something kind of amazing about having a conversation in the middle of class that no one else hears even if occasionally you really mangle lip reading a few words. You also learn to rephrase what you want to say in the easiest way to lip read as opposed to the easiest combination of words.
Private school sucked less, but it still sucked. For example I thought I'd fit in more because it was a Lutheran school and I was Lutheran. Well, newsflash... apparently there are THREE different kinds of Lutherans and I was dun dun dun, the wrong kind. I also was a lower socio-economic class than most of my classmates and not good at sports. I'm still not good at sports, but now I have the good sense to not play them. I joined every sport except track at that school and became exceptionally good at warming benches. Need a square foot of bench warmed-- I have extensive experience. I also joined the choir. I had much better control over my singing voice pre-puberty (girl's voices change too... and believe it or not my voice lowered. Yes, I know I still sound like a muppet sucking helium when I get excited or nervous.)
I joined everything I could, but I never belonged.
It wasn't until I went back to high school and started rejecting the idea of fitting in that I actually did just that. For as bad as middle school was... High School never got really bad. I expected it to be much worse, but it wasn't. I had a better idea of who I was and I found people who accepted me as I was. Freshman year was a little rough around the edges but it got better. I had something like immunity in High School. You know how I've mentioned people I knew since preschool? Well the vast majority of my preschool class also went to my High School. Most of them were in some of the higher ranking social groups. There was a weird unspoken law. You didn't mention your connection, but you didn't mess with each other either. Occasionally there'd be a weird blurring of the lines for a few minutes... like when the star receiver of the football team freaked out and asked me to see if his breath smelled like alcohol. It didn't, I assured him and spent ten minutes calming him down. We never addressed why it was safe for him to ask me this when we moved in different circles. We didn't talk about how I knew his full name, birthday, address, the names of all his siblings and that the guy holding reign over the auto shop with the black Charger used to be his very best friend. He didn't mention the times we'd played touch football on asphalt, threw throwing knives in his best friend's yard, that one time I broke down crying in second grade or that his sister and my brother were in the same class. You didn't talk about those things. The only thing he did in his drunken state he used a nickname I hadn't used outside a family setting in probably a decade. Nothing changed. We didn't shift social circles or break down walls. There was a moment and then things went back to the same. I don't idolize High School. It wasn't the "best years of my life" it sucked-- hard... but there were moments, sometimes entire days that were something special.
No one felt capable for sticking up for the people being picked on in middle school. In High School they did, at least at mine. The openly gay kids had posses (same sex couples were not a big deal at MY prom, there were plenty. I myself went to prom with a girl, no one said a word). Bad shit happened, sure. But the people bullying were just as likely to get told to fuck off by someone not involved. Maybe that climate had more to do with the fact that we had actual gang shootings at my school-- so we had other things to be scared of than bullies. I don't know. What I do know is that it wasn't the people being openly harassed that I worried about. It was the kids still struggling with their own identities or with some shit at home that no one knew about-- those were the ones we almost lost... or did lose. Those were the kids who just disappeared one day. It wasn't safe for them to be at home anymore and they couldn't go to school, or they couldn't afford to go to school. Those were the friends who gave away their possessions thinking they wouldn't live to see the new year. Those were the ones that got institutionalized against their will. Those were the girls with a haunted look in their eyes who twitched away from touch. It wasn't the problems you could see or hear that killed people... it was the ones you couldn't.
My best friend since preschool completely distanced herself from me for reasons I sure as hell don't understand and I doubt she has much of a clue about. It simply was. I think it was a survival technique more than anything. At that time in that climate we amplified each others' low social rank. In some sort of hormone addled desperation I attached myself to the first group that would take me... and I picked wrong. Oh my. I picked so very very wrong. I picked a group of girls who brought bottles of evian water in their lunches, went shopping at the mall by themselves, read Seventeen religiously and were well, I don't know if popular is quite the right term but on a higher echelon of some kind. I attached myself to the group because two of the girls were ones I'd grown up with and knew pretty well (I thought). I tried so very very hard to keep up with them but I was hopelessly out of my depth and trying to be someone I wasn't.
To anyone who knows my day to day life these next few items will prove how terribly wrong I had chosen my social group. I got up at 5:30 in the morning to curl my hair and bangs. (My hair wasn't curly at the time... that was a puberty thing. I was a very late bloomer.) I used hairspray (I had to use a pump bottle because my mother forbade aerosol. Sheesh you light one little thing on fire...) in copious amounts but it never held even until lunch. I coordinated my outfits and begged my mother for certain items of clothing (most of them probably involved puffy paint *cringe*) to try and keep up with my "peer" group. For those that don't know me, I rarely roll out of bed more than 20 minutes before I need to be out the door, the last time my hair was styled was my wedding and my fashion sense involves trying not to clash noticeably while spending the least amount of time possible selecting my outfits.
Classes weren't too bad. I got seated next to the troublemakers in most of my classes in an attempt to even out the seating arrangement. These were as far as I remember-- all boys. I understand boys. Boys say what's on their minds and if you listen they'll tell you exactly what that is. I knew the boy who sat next to me in homeroom was being beaten at home and his father was a drunk. He also designed the "You'll find it at Freddy's" Fred Meyer bag for a contest. He won a little bit of money that really made a huge difference in his life. I really hope he's OK. I suspect he's not. I knew the boy next to me in history was thinking about sex constantly but knew almost nothing about it (he was not harassing me about it, I was vaguely asexual to these boys-- a girl in name only). They talked to me. I listened. I wouldn't rat them out and I would help them with school work. We had an agreement and we knew where we stood. I would pencil fight with them and listen to their jokes and things made as much sense as anything did at that age. There was a slight hiccup in this arrangement when I agreed by note to "go with" a boy and the balance was upset. He was suspended the same day for dumping a tray of magnets into the iron fillings and after a few phone calls with said suspended boy... I told him this wasn't going to work. It was one bumpy week in an otherwise smooth agreement between myself and the trouble maker's contingent.
Lunch time was like walking into a circle of hell. Yet I did it willingly every day. I walked under my own power to the same table and sat with the same girls and took the same abuse, derision, systematic undermining of my self esteem and identity. It was like every 'mean girls' story ever... except the tables were never turned. They dished, I took it. What drives me crazy is I know that at any point I could have walked away and I didn't. I felt like I couldn't. I felt like these girls controlled my life and my status. I felt that if they shunned me, my life would be essentially over.
During this time I of course had the impossible sekrit crush. The shining Adonis of 13 year old masculinity, (sorry, I devolved into laughter there for a few minutes) a golden god of uh... goldenness? He was very blond and very tan. He was also my line leader (we had to form groups and sit in lines) in gym class. This made gym my favorite yet most hated class of the entire day. In gym I got to stare at his perfect back and *GASP* I might get to hold the rope while he started his rope climb. (Shuttupshuttupshuttup) Of course I never TALKED to him... that would defeat the purpose of having a sekrit crush. Plus that risks rejection or shattering a perfect illusion. [I actually did talk to him eventually... four years later in High School when we had a ceramics class together. Turns out the boy is about as bright as a box of rocks. It also turns out that I am incapable of being attracted to someone who can not hold a conversation with me. #themoreyouknow]
Gym class was also the most dangerous class. When we weren't lined up in lines (and I was mooning at the back of golden boy's head) I was literally dodging physical abuse. I was very small and as I mentioned above, a late bloomer. I was shall we say, underdeveloped. (Zomg guys stop laughing... seriously these "assets" are a recent addition to *gestures* this package) When it was discovered that during a particularly nasty batch of "snap the bra strap" that I did not in fact have one... things got a little ugly. Combine that with the jump ropes that happened to "slip" out of peoples hands and every other horrible thing that happens during free gym... gym class hurt. It hurt a lot.
It was so bad that I begged my parents to let me to go the private school my other best friend since preschool had gone to. For reasons I also don't fully understand (apparently I am very persuasive?) they agreed. I spent the rest of middle school at a private Lutheran school where I knew exactly one person in my class of 24. Twenty of those students had been together since preschool and didn't know any other schools. They weren't cruel, but there wasn't really a place for me in their world either so I was stuck at the edges. Sadly being stuck at the edges seemed pretty good in comparison. Also luckily for me there was another new student that year, a girl who could only hear by means of strong hearing aids and an amplification device the teacher wore. We quickly formed an alliance. I knew how to finger spell (I forgot a letter here or there) and learning how to read lips turned out to be a lot easier than I thought. There's something kind of amazing about having a conversation in the middle of class that no one else hears even if occasionally you really mangle lip reading a few words. You also learn to rephrase what you want to say in the easiest way to lip read as opposed to the easiest combination of words.
Private school sucked less, but it still sucked. For example I thought I'd fit in more because it was a Lutheran school and I was Lutheran. Well, newsflash... apparently there are THREE different kinds of Lutherans and I was dun dun dun, the wrong kind. I also was a lower socio-economic class than most of my classmates and not good at sports. I'm still not good at sports, but now I have the good sense to not play them. I joined every sport except track at that school and became exceptionally good at warming benches. Need a square foot of bench warmed-- I have extensive experience. I also joined the choir. I had much better control over my singing voice pre-puberty (girl's voices change too... and believe it or not my voice lowered. Yes, I know I still sound like a muppet sucking helium when I get excited or nervous.)
I joined everything I could, but I never belonged.
It wasn't until I went back to high school and started rejecting the idea of fitting in that I actually did just that. For as bad as middle school was... High School never got really bad. I expected it to be much worse, but it wasn't. I had a better idea of who I was and I found people who accepted me as I was. Freshman year was a little rough around the edges but it got better. I had something like immunity in High School. You know how I've mentioned people I knew since preschool? Well the vast majority of my preschool class also went to my High School. Most of them were in some of the higher ranking social groups. There was a weird unspoken law. You didn't mention your connection, but you didn't mess with each other either. Occasionally there'd be a weird blurring of the lines for a few minutes... like when the star receiver of the football team freaked out and asked me to see if his breath smelled like alcohol. It didn't, I assured him and spent ten minutes calming him down. We never addressed why it was safe for him to ask me this when we moved in different circles. We didn't talk about how I knew his full name, birthday, address, the names of all his siblings and that the guy holding reign over the auto shop with the black Charger used to be his very best friend. He didn't mention the times we'd played touch football on asphalt, threw throwing knives in his best friend's yard, that one time I broke down crying in second grade or that his sister and my brother were in the same class. You didn't talk about those things. The only thing he did in his drunken state he used a nickname I hadn't used outside a family setting in probably a decade. Nothing changed. We didn't shift social circles or break down walls. There was a moment and then things went back to the same. I don't idolize High School. It wasn't the "best years of my life" it sucked-- hard... but there were moments, sometimes entire days that were something special.
No one felt capable for sticking up for the people being picked on in middle school. In High School they did, at least at mine. The openly gay kids had posses (same sex couples were not a big deal at MY prom, there were plenty. I myself went to prom with a girl, no one said a word). Bad shit happened, sure. But the people bullying were just as likely to get told to fuck off by someone not involved. Maybe that climate had more to do with the fact that we had actual gang shootings at my school-- so we had other things to be scared of than bullies. I don't know. What I do know is that it wasn't the people being openly harassed that I worried about. It was the kids still struggling with their own identities or with some shit at home that no one knew about-- those were the ones we almost lost... or did lose. Those were the kids who just disappeared one day. It wasn't safe for them to be at home anymore and they couldn't go to school, or they couldn't afford to go to school. Those were the friends who gave away their possessions thinking they wouldn't live to see the new year. Those were the ones that got institutionalized against their will. Those were the girls with a haunted look in their eyes who twitched away from touch. It wasn't the problems you could see or hear that killed people... it was the ones you couldn't.