When I was 13, I wanted to die.
I had no voice. I had no way to tell.
I went to an independent alternative school until I was 12. Suddenly I was 13, and I had to go to "real" school. As in the public school system. It was a shock. Apparently, children weren't normally encouraged to express their views. I had been taught to "be myself", to fight for social justice, to stand up for what is right.
That wasn't considered normal. Not by the teachers, although they tolerated me. It was definitely not tolerated by the other students.
I was different. An outsider. I was set up to fail before I even tried. No one wanted to be friends with me. Everyone thought that I was weird. I didn't know how to play the game. I didn't know the social rules of being a grade 7 girl.
At first, it was just lonely. I ate lunch alone. Did my school work. Followed the rules. Felt left out. Excluded. But not particularly ostracized.
Then, as the months went by, for some reason, everything changed. I guess the rest of the kids got used to me. Got used to each other. Got more comfortable.
They began to tease me. The teasing turned to taunting. The taunting to bullying. The bullying to harassment. Then came shame, fear, embarrassment, isolation, and eventually despair.
In the beginning, it was social exclusion. Not wanting to sit beside me. Not talking to me. Leaving me out. Picking me last for groups or teams.
And then the boys began to call me names.
Whale woman
Hippie the hippo
Fatso
Fatty
Gorilla girl
I would dread walking through the hallways. There seemed to be boys at every turn, ready to hurl a name or an insult at me. Anything to find a way to hurt me.
The boys convinced me that I was overweight. That I was enormous. I would have given anything to be thin like the other girls (which I actually was).
I would have given anything to look in the mirror and to like what I saw.
In gym class one day, the boys got the whole class to start chanting "hippie hippie!" as I played soccer. I was humiliated. I balled my hands into fists and pressed all my anger and hurt and fear into my palms.
The girls never joined in the name calling. But they didn't stop it either. They would laugh and mostly ignore me. None of them wanted to be my friend. There was a lot of whispering and laughing. Things said and done behind my back, but the girls never said anything to my face. They left that to the boys.
As time went on, things grew much worse. It reached the point where the boys were throwing condoms at me in the lunchroom.
I didn't want them to see me cry. So I finished my lunch, pretending that I didn't care. Then I walked slowly to the bathroom, locked myself in a stall and let the tears flow. Silent sobs that rocked my body. I cried until I threw up. And throwing up released all the sadness and hurt that had built up over months of being harassed.
Throwing up felt good.
We weren't allowed to come into the school until the bell rang in the morning. I started sneaking in. I would head straight to the bathroom. I would hide in a stall and cry. Make myself vomit. And then sit there and cry until the bell rang.
And I never told anyone what was going on.
I began to spend weekends and holidays with my aunt and uncle. 2 of my cousins lived there and the other lived nearby. I spent a lot of time hanging out with all 3 of them. Often one at a time, alone in the basement. It sounds like a normal pass time for a 13 year old girl. Until I tell you that all 3 cousins were men. All 3 cousins were men in their 30s.
I liked to feel special. I liked their attention. It felt good to be noticed. To be wanted. To be talked to. To be included ...
...
The bullying culminated with me being terrified to go to school. I never knew what was waiting for me. But I was also a "good girl". So I couldn't stay home. I couldn't miss school. I showed up everyday, made myself throw up, hid and cried, and endured the daily harassment and humiliation.
One day, when the bell rang to go home, I went to my locker to find a message scrawled in red marker. It said "You look like a fucking gorilla".
I was stunned. So I ran all the way to my old school. I found my favourite teacher. And I told her what had happened.
She started to laugh.
I stood there staring at her. The one person in the world who I thought would help me was laughing. "Sorry," she said. "I was trying to picture what gorillas would look like fucking." I didn't laugh. But as usual, I smiled. Pretended that it was funny. Pretended that she had cheered me up. All I wanted was for her to hug me. To hold me. To stroke my back and tell me that I would be okay. But she didn't. No one did. Ever. I had no physical comfort. And no one to tell me that I would be okay.
I also decided that I would never tell anyone about the bullying ever again. What would be the point? No adult was going to help me. No adult was going to keep me safe.
That day, I decided that I wanted to die. I began writing about it over and over again in my diary. I was convinced that no one would notice or care if I died. I was convinced that I didn't matter. To anyone. No one was there to take care of me.
I would write about wanting to die and then leave my diary lying around where someone could find it and read it. I wanted help. But I didn't know how to ask for it. And I wasn't convinced that anyone would care anyway.
No one ever read my diary.
No one seemed to notice me at all.
Until Miss H.
Miss H was a strict teacher. She taught my English class and my Family Studies class. She never said anything about the bullying. Or about me not having any friends. And yet, she managed to find ways to protect me. Her classroom was the only place that I ever felt safe.
Miss H changed my life.
Miss H needed groceries for her Family Studies class. She could have bought a week's worth of ingredients at a time. Even a month's worth. But she never did.
Starting in January, my grade 7 year, before lunch everyday, she would give me money and a grocery list and send me to Loblaws. I would walk over, buy what she needed, and bring it back to her classroom. It took my whole lunch hour. I was too busy to have time to go to the lunch room. I was too busy to have time to stand in the school yard being harassed. I had a job to do.
That Christmas, Miss H gave me a gold necklace. She said that it was because I had helped her so much. She told me not to tell the other students. But I knew that it was because she cared about me. At a time when I believed that no one cared. That no adult would ever help me. Or protect me.
I cherished that necklace.
Miss H had an ongoing assignment in her English class. Everyday we would have to write a letter in our journal. We could write to anyone in the class and they would have to write back to us. We were supposed to write to our classmates. Get to know each other ... But I began to write to her. Each morning, period 1, I would write a letter to Miss H. And the next day, there would be a letter waiting for me. She made me feel special because she took the time to write to me, instead of forcing me to write to another student. As a teacher now, I know how much extra time she would've had to put in to be able to write to me everyday. And I loved her for that.
She also took the time to encourage my writing. No one had ever done that before. My teachers at my alternative school had all sorts of criticisms about my writing. Miss H would give me feedback, but praise my effort and my passion. I began to write all the time. Everywhere. It was the one thing that brought me pleasure. I would show Miss H and she would praise me. It was the only praise I had gotten. It was a new feeling. And I liked it. It countered all the horrible things being said to me by other people.
Miss H gave me the English award. I was shocked when it happened. I'll never forget that moment when she presented it to me in front of the entire school. I wasn't expecting it. At first I didn't realize that she had called my name. And then I tripped walking up the stairs. Everyone laughed at me. But in that moment, I didn't care who laughed at me. For one glorious moment, I didn't care what anyone thought of me except for Miss H.
Miss H was dating the music teacher, Mr. C. We weren't supposed to know that. But it was obvious. She would tell Mr. C to give me opportunities and he did. He taught us all to play guitar.
I joined his guitar band.
And he would sit and teach me extra chords.
For Christmas, he ordered a guitar for my Dad to give me.
With support from Miss H, I began writing music. I discovered that my guitar was an extension of myself. I loved how it sat perfectly on my knee and how my breast rested in the curve as I strummed the strings. I would spend hours at time playing that guitar. I used it all through high school and even university. When I moved to Halifax to do the Masters program there, I brought one giant bag and my guitar. I still have it. All the strings are broken and it has since been replaced with a more expensive, better quality steel string guitar (which is also broken and sitting in my cupboard). But there are times I think about buying cheap nylon strings and restringing that old guitar. I think about how perfectly it held my body. Hid my stomach from the world. Kept people just enough at arms length.
I often think about Miss H and her protection. The safety she gave me. All of that is held in that cheap, old guitar. Just the scent of it brings back those feelings of safety.
Miss H encouraged me to write stories and poems and music. I started to write all the time. She called me prolific.
By the time I was 14, I had begun to sing. Miss H told Mr. C to let me sing in the winter concert. I had never sung in front of an audience before.
I loved it.
With the support of Miss H, I decided to audition for a school of the arts. That school changed my life. I had friends and started to feel less alone. I stopped going to see my older male cousins. And I continued to write, to sing, to make music.
When I was 13, I wanted to die.
And Miss H protected me in the only ways she knew how. By introducing me to ways to express my thoughts and emotions through the written word and through music. By keeping me away from the other children. And by making me feel like I mattered to someone.
I don't remember her spelling or grammar lessons. I don't remember the recipe for lemon meringue pie she taught us. But I remember that she cared about me. I remember that I mattered to her. I remember that she made me feel special. Made me feel like she cared. And that is the most important gift you can ever give to a child.
Be kind to yourself, to the children around you, and to your inner child,
xoxo
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