Of all the things in the word to be scared of, why is it that the one thing that scares us the most is to be ourselves? While we all say that at home or with friends we are at our purest form but I don’t believe so. No matter where we are or whatever thing we do, no matter how significant or little, we have barriers around us shielding the world from our true selves. Is it because we want it for ourselves? Could be, but doubtful. Could it be we are afraid? Afraid of the rejection of the outside world that with every twist and turn our lives take is there to jump on us, to criticize and ridicule our every decision with an air of righteousness and arrogance.
That kept me scared for so long. Scared to tell anyone the inner most secrets, thoughts, and desires running throughout my pudgy 13 year old body. They say that the teens years are hell, well try being 13 fat and gay.
Growing up wasn’t a big deal for me. My mother, Catherine Elaine De-Croix worked a 12 hour shift 4 or 5 days a week while my father, Douglas Purnell went in and out of jobs finally to settle in a life goal of being a police officer. In the somewhat small town of Springfield, the capital of Illinois I grew up faster then a lot of kids my age yet managed to be completely un-self aware. Ignored by my outside family most of my childhood kind of put in the mind frame of “If you don’t have to love me, you wont”. And it has been like that for most of my life so far. If you weren’t my parents or sister, you didn’t like nor love me. And that was ok, I had never known any different.
Attending school was rough for the most part when I was younger. McClernand Elementary wasn’t exactly a heavenly place for kids like myself: white, stupid, fat, and lacking in major social skills. Everyday walking into the building I had the feeling of being a mouse in a house full of cats. Walking the long brown-carpeted hallways was like the mile to the electric chair, surrounded by faceless voices screaming taunts and lashing at my heels. Ok so maybe that was a bit vicious sounding but I can’t help being bitter. And rightfully so in my mind after years and years of endless emotional and physical abuse.
After a while it got to be basically the norm of my day. It came to be that when there was substantially less mocking, while a welcomed relief, still left me feeling rather incomplete for the day. But it wasn’t as though I hated it, as odd as it may sound. In all honesty I agreed with them. Walking along the slightly padded floor, dragging my feet clad in my 12$ sneakers I would be bombarded by flying words like “Bitch, whore, freak, weirdo,” and on occasion, “lesbo”. I didn’t know what it meant then because my parents had made a somewhat effort to keep me away from anything sexual. With my head hung low, never making eye contact and my backpack slung over my shoulder I trudged onto class where I would sink in to my seat so low that only my sternum up was visible over the tabletop.
While most kids dreaded the moment when the first or recess bell would ring beckoning us back inside for more studies, I welcomed it. It signaled my release from the only hiding place I had located behind a huge ventilation pipe. There I would just sit and watch all my fellow classmates walk by in groups talking and laughing like normal kids my age did with friends. I would watch the girls swooning for the guys playing football or basketball and talking about “How hot Leo is!” or how Jessica wanted to date Troy. All the while I just sat there wishing I could be like them. How I wished with all my heart I could be popular and pretty and boys would like me, it never occurred to me that I wasn’t exactly that crazy about the boys but what do you expect, I was dumb.
Every time the bell rang that signaled the beginning of recess would a feeling of dread would over take me. I hated, not that I liked classes but recess was the time when I would get mocked the most. While I did hide during the break, the walk there and back was always horrid. As I scooted my chair back from the desk and hesitantly rose from my seat I was already in the mind frame for what I was about to go through. As soon as my feet hit the large circle area leading to the hallway and outside, I would be mocked, pushed, shoved, cussed at and anything else they felt was good at the moment. Sometimes I would run along side the other kids, just to make the trip faster, others I would just leisurely walk, taking what they gave me. Whichever one I chose that time I always remember not to say a word and always keep my head down. With my head down I could see the feet that they reached out to trip me.
I had a bad problem with people tripping me in grade school. Pretty unsettling when one minute you’re walking do get a red crayon and the next you nose is 2 inches from the ground. A person’s basic instinct is to adapt to ones surroundings. Buuuuuut stupid me, it took me two years to realize if I looked down while I was walking I would see it before I tripped. One time, in 1st grade, we were assigned a project where we all had to draw a picture of our house and our family outside. Apparently they thought we were all brain damaged, anyways I had broken my green crayon while coloring the grass. I got up from my chair and turned to walk up to the teacher to tell her I had accidentally broken her things. I got about 6 steps away from starting point when I felt my right leg catch on something. My left foot flared in front of me in a natural reaction to try and correct myself but al that happened was that was also kicked out form underneath myself. I felt myself fall forward slowly, saw the ground getting closer as funny as it may sound. Finally my chest the ground first knocking the wind out of me and creating a mark that would later swell and bruise. My head flew forward and impacted with ground so hard that my skull felt like it would shatter from the intensity of the pressure from the blow.
Lying there on the floor, face down on thin brown carpet, I held back the torrent of tears I felt welding up inside of me. Inside there were tidal waves of emotions all coursing and crashing into each other, building with intensity. The embarrassment and hurt all felt like a bulldozer ramming into the soft flesh of stomach and kept pushing far longer then just that moment. Everything inside of me at that moment, everything that I felt good or confident about drained away from me never to be found again. From that moment of lying on the floor, holding in all of my pain, I saw me for who I was: a loser. The loser to be exact. The one all the other kids would never like, the one who didn’t deserve to be liked. The teacher came over to my side to help me up, even though I shook her away. What could I do? I know what I had tripped over. A leg, a boy I’ll call Johnny’s leg. I asked the teacher if I could go to the bathroom, so I could wash my hands to get the dirt from the floor off of them.
The walk from room 28 to the bathroom passed in a matter of seconds due to the fact that I ran at full speed. I burst through the swinging hinged door and skidded into the third stall from the door. The pain in my chest was so over powering I vomited from the sheer intensity of it. After a few moments I pulled myself off the stone cold tiled floor, barely warmed by my body and trudged slowly to the sink fitted with a mirror. The facet turned with a squeak and cold water poured out and into my small chubby hand. I filled my mouth with water a few times to wash away the rancid taste of my pain and spit it down the drain. Every intake of breath elicited a sharp pain from my mid chest shooting down my spine in into both legs. Hesitantly, my shaky hands rose to the hem of the simple red T-shirt I was wearing. Lifting the light fabric up to my chin revealed a large red area that was starting to turn a deep blackish purple down the middle of my chest. Lowering my shirt I felt the bile rise up in my throat again. All that anger and hate and embarrassment came crashing down on my small frame and immature mind. A single tear escaped my eye only to be followed by another and another until I was sobbing uncontrollably, curled up in the corner of the last stall, knees to chest and head tucked inside rocking back and forth.
After what seemed like forever, after the tears had dried and I had stopped shivering I pulled my body up, which now felt like a thousand pounds, and went back over to the sink. After quickly rinsing the salty streaks away and thoroughly drying my face I made my way back to class just in time for the recess bell to ring.
Fighting against the flow of traffic was painful to say the least. What seemed like thousands of other kids pushing and shoving past me, always seeming to just barely hit my chest but just barely enough to send more shoots and arrows of pain to course throughout my body. By then everything made my chest ache and I could feel my heart beat in my ears, beating like drums at an African ceremony. Over a the next few hours it felt that my sternum was slowly closing in on itself and squeezing my lungs shut.
That evening I did not tell my parents, nor would I ever. The embarrassment I felt over ruled all sense I had that told me to tell them, someone who would help me. In the recesses of my own mind the blame was to be placed on me. I was the problem here. In only a short few days my fellow classmates had molded me into a mind frame of self loathing and an allowance to the let all negative things rein free in my mind. After a while I no longer heard the taunts from other children, their voices and cut downs were drowned out by the single one in my own head whose taunts and words cut deeper yet made more sense to me then anything another person could say.
The abuse I endured lasted years and years, never lessening with age but merely growing stronger and more painful. But the pain didn’t just grow over courses of years; a simple second could rack my small frame with endless pain and guilt. A guilt for being such a miss fit, for not trying harder to make those around me happy. I felt like a walking endless abyss of pain and hatred. Not for them, but for me. Why shouldn’t I believe all these things? All along I had felt an insecurity about them, they were just telling me the truth; what I needed to know. Some people may call it craziness; believe these people. But I had no choice.
I had no sanctuary as a child. My domestic life was less the desirable, but it was all I ever knew. Despite the feeling a the loss of a heavy weight every time I left school, my mind was still plagued with fears and doubts. Most are places of warmth and love and caring. Mine was a cold war zone. An endless battle between my mother and father, always burning like an oil lamp. So very hot, yet so very fragile. Like we didn’t know, in front of me and my sibling they pretended to be happy, somewhat. But we knew, we always knew. The few days where they would be around each other something would set them off, off into another bout of fighting and hatred. The muffled sounds of raised voices filled with anger and contempt for each other filtered through the swinging kitchen door and tore at me like jagged pieces of glass all over.
Every time it started I felt like crying. Running away form all the hate and anger. A lot of times I turned to my older sister Liza for comfort. At the first signs of a battle brewing, my instincts kicked in and I went to find her. A few times she would become angry with me for bothering her, but most times she would just let me sit with her until the storm past. Sometimes the fights would last for, well I didn’t know how long. Time is so different as a child, what was 5 minutes felt like 3 hours. It didn’t matter, the fights always lasted to long. I blamed a lot of their fighting and anger on myself. Most times I thought they were fighting about my sister and I. 7 years of my life dribbled away with me thinking my parents would divorce. It was my biggest fear. Surely if they divorced it was because finally I had become such a bad child that they couldn’t stand me anymore.
Every night when I laid my head against my semi soft pillow, I would send a little prayer out to the upward heavens that when I awoke my parents would not have left me, that they would love each other as I did them and we would be a happy family. I would dream of myself both nights. Of me as someone good and nice and worthy of love, someone who didn’t make her parents hate each other and didn’t force the other kids around her to shun her. I dreamed of a different Andi, a better Andi that I knew in my heart I would never be.
But not all times were bad. There were moments in my life where, I was the happiest child ever. I had a dad who was fun would play at the park with me. And a mamma that would make me laugh all the time and held me when I cried. A sister who could at times be my best friend, or my worst enemy. When we laughed we laughed hard, and when we fought, we fought with heated fever. Sometimes life was good and I felt lucky to be me, all of my hatred and anger and self-loathing and pain would fall and it would just be me, happy. Those moments, just the moments where I would feel wonderful to the world. Those where the moments I lived for, and cherished to this day. But my happiness was always temporary, would always eventually be over shadowed by some dark evil lurking around the corner.
That's all so far. Kinda, weird I know. But um, tell me what you think, and please be honest.
Allison
