My Full Story

Well, here it is. Since I cannot actually pinpoint an exact event in my life to start any explaining and/or story-telling, I will just start from the very beginning; my childhood years.

5 – 7 years old

My kindergarten and  first-grade years. This was a while back, so let’s see what I can remember. I remember that in these years I was pushed around a lot, and experienced my first taste of being bullied. In these years I went to day care and there was this one girl, Madison. We were friends, (or so I thought), but looking back now I see that it was not the case. She was spoiled, and probably still is. Madison pushed me around. I got her lunch for her, I did her homework (in kindergarten we did a lot of drawing/coloring homework.) I took the blame for her every time she got into trouble. But worst of all? I helped her mess with people. We name-called, we stole stuff from other kids, we back-talked the teachers and other adults. “But you were a toddler, how could you manage to do something so complicated?” I haven’t the slightest clue as to how we could have been so mean, but so carefree and happy at the same time. All I know is that I was completely clueless to how much pain I caused other children and their families.

7 – 9 years old

These were my second and third grade years. I think that my problems started to develop in these years.  I cannot remember if I was six, seven, eight, or nine, but around this age one of my older brothers, (I have four), began to sexually assault me. I can’t remember exactly when or how it started but it happened. It continued until I was ten years old, when I finally told my mother. I don’t want to get into detail about what he did, I still have nightmares about it. All I am going to say is that I still fill with disgust every time I see him. I didn’t think I would be able to ever look at a boy with any sort of affection, but somehow I did. I developed a childhood crush on a boy named Owen in second grade. It turned out that he “liked” (child logic) me back and we “hung out” all the time (again, child logic) until third or fourth grade, when I stopped caring too much about him.

9 – 11 years old

My fourth and fifth grade years, (personally my favorite). Fourth grade was the best; I didn’t care about what I looked like, I had a lot of very good friends, and I was doing great in school. I won the fourth grade and the entire school spelling bee. I was so proud of myself for achieving one of my goals. Personally, I was on top of the world. I had a group of close friends consisting of guys; Colton, Harry, Chris, and Jacob. I did not think anything could break us up but to this day I am only friends with Jacob, who I ‘dated’ for a few years. Every one went their own ways. Now fifth grade comes around. (You see, the elementary schools we have here went Pre Kindergarten to 4th grade. We had fifth grade in our Central Upper Elementary where the three or four elementary schools here combined into one for fifth grade until the end of high school. It was the last year of CUE so it was just fifth graders in the school, making it a pretty small student body.) I get stuck in classes where everyone there is new, and I have no friends anywhere. Over the year my old friends and I drifted apart, severing our ties to each other. I get pushed from the top and most popular crowd of people to the very bottom of the ‘social ladder’. It didn’t affect me very much.

6th grade

My life got even stranger. We moved from CUE to our Junior High School, (the three year school below high school). More people moved from other places to this school, and everyone had to adjust to the schedule very quickly. The few friends I made in CUE were not in my classes in this grade, so I had to make new friends again. Sixth grade was what I like to call my “last year of pure happiness”. After I had made new friends and gotten my acquainted with my new teachers and classes, I had begun to be happy. I was in band for my second year playing the clarinet. I was one of the best clarinets in the grade. Halfway through sixth grade I get transferred from clarinet to the bass clarinet, which made my parents proud and me very excited. I develop another crush for one of the so-called ‘popular’ guys. Thankfully he didn’t like me back. He was and still is a humongous jerk and I am glad that nothing happened. I would have gotten my heart crushed.

7th grade

I had finally started understanding the world. The horrors of it, how sad and ugly it actually was (is). My insecurities developed and I begun having major issues with life. I started cutting, started crying myself to sleep, and started hating myself. I attempted to kill myself at least twice, and tried to run away at least four times. I always turned around and went back home however. I stopped eating for long periods of time, I began shutting people out, and I began having terrible mood swings. It all changed when I met the one guy I had ever actually loved; Brian. (Don’t start the “too young” bullshit, I don’t care.) I do not understand how I started liking him in the first place, but meeting him made me believe in love at first sight. I loved and still love everything about him from the way he walks to the way he talks. From the sound of his voice to the gentle movement of his chest when he breathes. I started eating more, I stopped running away from my problems, and I stopped trying to kill myself. He is the reason I still hold on. He is the only thing that makes me want to live, for I do not think I could stand to be without the feeling of love.

8th grade

The final grade I will talk about, for this is getting awful long. I realized how little time anyone wanted to actually spend with me. I would say hello and try to start a conversation with someone only for them to walk away in the middle of a sentence. I had made plenty of friends from band and they connected me to other friends, so I was set. Sadly, every time I was ignored it only made me more and more bitter. It made me hate myself more and more. I began to shape my friendships, and over time I established an honest connection with a small, select group of people. Still, I was ignored. I began to get used to it. I would stop talking in the middle of my sentences when I got interrupted. Nobody ever noticed I stopped talking about how my day was, or how I felt.

It got to the point that I began to talk to myself. I began to make small jokes and puns while my friends were talking to each other. I began to amuse myself, and it made me hate myself more and more. “Why don’t you stop being such a baby and MAKE them listen to you?” my conscience would scream at me. I ignored it and let my friends value their time together. One day I would just disappear and it would be like nothing happened. It wouldn’t be any different than before. Over time I just stopped wanting to talk to people. I hated myself to the full extent now. I couldn’t look in the mirror without wanting to kill myself. I stopped eating again, only subjecting myself to small snacks. I cut every few months so not to make it obvious. I cried in those big gaps when others weren’t noticing my presence. I drew and wrote on my arms, using them as personal diaries. I stopped trying to make myself look okay. I knew it would never happen.

I still fell more and more in love with the one who hurt me most. The one who made me hate myself and question my existence the most; my previously talked about boyfriend. He wasn’t/isn’t a bad person. He just made me realize how ugly I am compared to him. Why would he want to date me? I’m a brick. A wood plank void of emotion; of expression. I fell so in love with him that it hurt to think about him, to listen to his sweet voice, to hear any of my friends talk about him. Yet I missed him every time I wasn’t near him, and missed him when I was with him. I knew that I would only get a small amount of time with him before he ran off to go hang out with his best friends. I knew that when that happened that I should just go find a friend of mine to hang out with. To distract me from the pain I felt every time he walked away. He is still the one person I can’t talk to about personal matters, or the one person I can’t talk to in general. I feel that if I tried to talk to him, he would stop listening, or he would walk away. That he would not care. That he would see how much of a basket-case I actually am and have been for a long, long time now.

I fear that I will always be a basket-case.