As I mentioned earlier, part of this blog's purpose is to help me come to terms with some of my own issues. Sort of like a public therapy session, only without a licensed therapist and really just me talking and okay, so it's really not like a therapy session at all. Erm. Still, I have Things To Say and memories to rehash and work through and this is where I'm gonna do it. This is me checking some of my emotional baggage, so that I can deal with it and move on.
It's not going to be easy, but I'm going to do my best to be open and honest. I encourage you to do the same: if you have a story you want to share, leave a comment. (Or, if I can ever overcome my technology fail and figure out how to add a link to the sidebar, you can email me.)
Today I'm going to talk about elementary school.
I hated it. I mean, absolutely loathed it. Why? You know how most everyone remembers middle school as this two-(or three-)year stretch of unending torture and humiliation? That was elementary school for me. (By contrast, I actually rather enjoyed middle school. What, puberty, you think you can damage my self-esteem any further? You got NOTHIN'. BRING IT.) I theorize that this isn't because people become less cruel as they grow older, but because at that age most children have yet to develop their internal censors that keep them from actually saying what they're thinking out loud.
As a fat child ("Fat"? "Heavy"? Whatever the technically accurate term may have been, I was bigger than my peers and that was what mattered.) I'd always been teased. I hated my school uniform because . . . well, okay, mostly because it was hideous, but partially because the default uniform for girls involved some sort of skirt, and I was ashamed of exposing my legs. To put this in perspective for you: I attended that school through third grade. At younger than nine years old, I was ashamed of letting people see my fat legs.
One more time: I was ashamed of my body before I was nine years old. What the everloving fuck?
And the thing is, because I was ashamed of myself, I moved as little as possible. If you get called Thunder Thighs and hear earthquake and elephant and hippo jokes and people tell you the sight of you makes them sick; if you hear this every time you run, guess what? You stop running. You try to keep yourself still so you don't jiggle, don't draw attention to yourself. I was like some poor defenseless woodland creature, trying to become invisible* in the hopes that those predatory eyes would skate right over me. Of course, in the process, I'd stopped moving. And the longer that went on, the less easily I could move, which made me more inclined to hide, and the cycle continued. When I was little, I would move for the sheer pleasure of it, for the amazement of Look what my body can do! Isn't that cool? It's so cool! Then came shame, and then habit, until now I don't really move any more than absolutely necessary. (Though I do want to go roller skating. How does a college town not have a roller rink? I call shenanigans!)
In any case, things already pretty much sucked but weren't horrible until fourth grade, when we moved. I don't know why; maybe it was the shift from living mid-city to living in a much higher-income suburb. Maybe it was the combination of being fat and the new girl all at once. But for whatever reason, for that entire first year every day felt like running a gauntlet of insults and cruelty and sneering contempt. I had friends, yes, but they were the other childhood outcasts: girls who were smarter than average, or socially awkward, or not as well-off financially. Against the pretty and popular and rich we had no defense. And I was, if you'll pardon the pun, the biggest target of all. After all, I was all of those things and new, and fat. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.
The entirety of elementary school was more or less like that, but things started to improve a bit in fifth and sixth grade. Not because my fat became more acceptable--there were still insults, and jokes, and pranks. Mostly, I think, the novelty simply wore off. But one thing that did happen was a shift in my own behavior and attitude. I remember discovering, at some point in the fifth grade, that acting as though I was less made me more socially accepted. I was smart, but if I downplayed that by keeping my hand down more often than not and occasionally playing up not understanding things, my intelligence wasn't threatening. If I made it clear that I didn't expect anyone to find me attractive, my appearance was more likely to get a pass. If I sat down and shut up and did all the work in group projects with a smile and protested that I didn't understand, I didn't expect, I didn't want, then people would allow me to simply exist. And the worst thing about that wasn't that it worked. No, the really, truly horrible thing? I felt like I was getting a good deal. I was grateful.
I shouldn't have been grateful. I should have been furious. It was like I thought I had to compensate for my big body by making the rest of me as small as possible. How much of that was due to things that actually happened, and how much was due to what I thought would happen, what I thought people would think . . . honestly, I have no idea. But I look back now and I'm incensed for the little girl that I was, the one who was never so happy as when she was completely invisible because nothing good could possibly come of being noticed. How much more could I have accomplished if my weight had simply passed without comment? How much more would I have moved? How much healthier would I have been?
I don't know. I'll never know. And maybe it's useless to rehash and wonder about things that you can't change, even if you had a TARDIS because we all saw how that went, right? There's one thing I do know, though: what I went through isn't unique. And sometimes it helps just to know you're not alone. If you want to, tell me your story.
*Looking back on it, I'm surprised at how deep this fantasy went. When I'd daydream about the cute boy in class asking me out (We all did, right? Unless you were into girls, but I imagine there was a correlating fantasy there.) I'd slipped away from a party to be by myself and he'd found me out there. I distinctly remember having one of these daydreams leading up to our sixth grade graduation party. Would I have been allowed to slip off by myself? Hell no. But in my mind I could do it, because no one would notice I was gone. This was an integral part of the fantasy, allowing my crush to see me while remaining invisible and unnoticed by everyone else.
No comments:
Post a Comment