Early wounds are the most formative and the toughest to overcome. For a long time I gently chastised or outright mocked myself for the childhood traumas that would bubble up years, decades after the fact. They seemed so minor, so unworthy of eliciting the grief or shame that still accompanied the memory. But these memories remain clearer sometimes than what happened yesterday. And this is beginning to tell me that it might be important--crucial, even--to visit them in earnest and see what they have to teach me.
When I began the 6th grade--my first year in middle school--I began to more clearly observe a hierarchy of coolness. It seemed almost pre-ordained, if the extent to which I was, from the outset, excluded from the upper echelon had anything to do with it. I didn't want to be in the popular crowd to be worshipped or to feel better than anybody. It simply seemed like life was easier, more fun, more effortless if you happened to find yourself in their ranks. The things that unfolded around me seemed like the natural order. Kids (the cool ones) began pairing off into couples at an astounding rate. At the time I assumed that age 12 was when everyone began to have a boyfriend or girlfriend. I remember waiting just inside the heavy school doors at the end of a school day for my mom to pick me up. It was gray and snowy outside. A few other kids waited as well; two of them were dating as of that week and they began to kiss passionately. No adults were in the vicinity to discourage them. As I alternated between watching for my mom's gray Oldsmobile and glancing at the kids making out nearby, I remember thinking several things: How do they know how to kiss? Am I supposed to know who to do that by now? How can I find a boyfriend soon? I'm clearly falling way behind with this stuff. Who would be willing to be my boyfriend?
While these worries are painfully adorable now, at the time they were quite real and all-consuming. I tried to turn my attention to the things I loved--reading and writing and sleepovers with my friends. When I was in the company of my friends, especially my best friend, things felt much less stressful. But many of my classes lacked the comfort and security of my posse. I felt exposed and vulnerable in these places and my only available option in the total absence of any real confidence was feigned self-esteem and quick forays into a bathroom stall to cry when I felt I had said or done something stupid in the presence of cool kids.
I was much like an anthropologist of cool behavior. I observed and recorded everything they said and did to memory. Every style of clothing, catch phrase, attitude and opinion was synthesized into an approximation of who and how I should be. But in trying to replicate the things I observed I not only felt like a wooden actress in a play whose script changed ceaselessly, I felt like it was horribly obvious to everyone else that I was a fraud. And I concluded that the coolness I observed could not be imitated; it was inborn. Which meant that what I lacked was something innate and fundamental. It meant that I could never possess what I needed to be cool and popular and to have a boyfriend.
Having come to this depressing conclusion, I was at a loss as to how to proceed. In time I would completely change my opinion of these kids. I would decide that they were cruel and shallow and boring. I would loathe them and pity them at the same time. I would retreat into a world insulated by sarcasm and cynicism. And I'd almost never acknowledge that I still believed that I was inferior to them in some deep and unchangeable way.
But in 6th grade I wasn't ready to make that leap. So I felt deeply bad about myself almost all of the time, and my only hope was that one small thing might change to make me less abhorrent. I awaited a miracle. When the first school dance came around I cautiously entertained the idea that this was my miracle. I'd never attended a dance before and had only a vague idea of what they entailed from television. I thought that maybe the soft lighting and music might magically inspire a cute boy to really notice me for the first time and to ask me to dance. I supposed I had better show up just in case. So I waited in line in the gymnasium, dollar in hand, for entry into the lunchroom/auditorium where the tables had been folded up to reveal a big empty room much dimmer than when I ate my peanut butter and jelly sandwich in it a few hours earlier. A DJ was on the stage where our choir would perform in a couple of months. He began playing music I didn't like, but pretended to. I stood rigid against a wall with my friends waiting to see what was supposed to happen. It didn't take long before girls and boys began slow dancing together. I never really saw how it happened. But suddenly the kids who enjoyed such popularity for their beauty and athleticism and relentless confidence were taking turns dancing with one another. The rest of us remained along the walls, in the shadows. A few non-popular girls, well-adjusted beyond their years, danced around together to the fast songs and laughed and seemed to have a good time. I just watched and made jokes with my friends while my stomach sank so low I thought maybe the rest of me could join it and just disappear altogether. No such luck.
I subjected myself to one more 6th grade dance a couple of months later. I knew the lay of the land. And I had a plan. I thought if I could just dance with one boy who wasn't a total dork, maybe that would nudge me out of this rut and into the nascent stage of being someone worth being. At the first dance I had observed a boy, who was of average popularity at best, dancing with a number of cool girls. He was kind of a class clown and way more confident than his place on the social ladder warranted. I was also pretty funny, if only my handful of friends knew it. Maybe one dance with him would do something to make me perceived as cool in some way. The boy wasn't cute, to me, at least. And I didn't have even the tiniest crush on him, so I wouldn't feel that nervous about it, I reasoned. It was ideal on a lot of levels, I thought. But I was nervous, of course. I had a lot riding on this--my entire sense of hope and self-worth, as it were. Midway through the dance I asked my friend to ask the boy to dance with me. From my place along the wall I waited with what I hoped was a casual and confident smile on my face. I saw as he looked over and then looked back at my friend, shaking his head and laughing. From a distance I saw his lips form the words, "No, I don't think so. No." As my friend came back to give me the bad news I already knew, something welled up inside me that felt like ice and fire fighting for a stranglehold. I made myself be still and composed by numbness for five full minutes. Then without a word to anyone I slipped outside the dance, then outside the school and waited at the curb for my mom to pick me up.
"How was the dance?" Mom asked with a smile.
The numbness had turned into something brittle that shattered instantly at kindness and love coming from another human being. I sobbed all the way home, unable to utter a word to explain what I was feeling. When we pulled into the garage my mom said I had to tell her what was going on. And I know it came forth like a flood. What had happened that day. How even my attempt to set my sights on someone I thought was closer to my level had failed, that I was even worse--uglier, stupider--worse in every way--than I had already believed. And I know my mom did everything she could to build me back up with the strong, sane wisdom age and experience granted her, and with love. And I know that it helped a little. But something hardened into a flinty certainty of shame in my gut that day, jabbing and raking against my insides with the slightest jostle from that day forward.
And all I can think today, as I wind my way backward to all the experiences that informed this one, with all manner of unkind teacher and classmates who tacitly or outright enforced this hierarchy that promotes shame and self-hatred, is that we have to understand how damaging our words and actions can be. I come from a loving family, one who gave me unconditional love and support, and somehow that wasn't enough to save me from this crushing sense of unworthiness.
And how can I help my little boy from feeling this way? How do I empower myself and him in a world that can still feel so cruel and malicious?
I suppose I can tell my truth. It's a start.
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