I’ve always been like that. I was an extremely weird child. When other kids were in the playground learning social skills, I either stayed inside reading or, when I did go outside, I sat by myself gathering rocks and leaves into little piles, eating dandelions for nourishment. If anyone tried to engage me in conversation, I stared at them in a blank, vaguely hostile way. I also would bark and whine like a dog, walk like a chicken, or repeatedly meow in class, complete with face-washing motions like a cat. This behaviour got me beat up a lot, frequently by kids many years my junior. A particularly vivid memory goes back to a girl named Liz, who was kind of the school bully anyway--the sort of girl who brought cigarettes to school in fifth grade--slamming me into a locker and seriously bruising my shoulder. I was also shut inside of lockers, which I didn’t mind so much...with the feel of enclosed space, it was kind of like hiding under my grandparent’s couch.
I told you I was weird.
I also went through a phase, at around age nine or so, when I pretended to be autistic. See, I’d read about it in a psychology book of my mother’s, and it seemed sort of neat. Abnormal psychology was fun, and I tried out all manner of ailments on my long-suffering teachers. I’m sure that no one was especially surprised when I was placed in a “special” (read: delinquent) class my senior year.
As a result of all this creativity, I became a social outcast. Fortunately, I wasn’t even dimly aware of any kind of social structure up to and including junior high, so I plodded along my merry way, scoring in the top two percentile in the country (translated, that means I was smarter than all but two percent of the people in this country). I was a very bright, intellectually curious child...I’d started reading at two years of age, working up to chapter books when I was four (my favorite being Pippi Longstocking).
I have a rather satisfying memory of my first day at developmental kindergarten (the 80’s PC term for what you’d call preschool). The day my mom dropped off me and my sister (we’re twins, so we were always in the same grade), she informed the teacher that her daughters could read. The teacher, whose after-school activities including selling Avon cosmetics, received this information with a dismissive wave. After all, little four year olds can’t read any more than simple sentences, right? “I see cat, I see hat,” etc. That afternoon, when Mom came to pick us up, the same teacher made a beeline for her and exclaimed in an excited voice, “These girls can READ! Did you know that?” Mom replied rather dryly yes, she was aware that we could read. She’d made damned sure of it, since she read to us since we were born. Mom continued reading to us right through our junior high years, only now it was stuff like Jurassic Park and The Catcher In The Rye.
Another memory is of this same teacher handing out and explaining a very simple math sheet, along the lines of one plus one, to the classroom. While she explained the mechanics of the assignment, I started working on it. The second she said, “Okay class, you can now begin,” I handed the completed assignment to her and, without a trace of conceit in my voice, said, “Done.” I can still remember the looks of awe on all of my classmates. That is one of the more vivid memories of my youth, the second most vivid being of a boy named--what else?--Kevin making fun of me for the way I was crying. Another time I was pushed off the merry-go-round on the playground, and was subsequently trampled by the children running along the side, all the while listening to the laughter at my injuries. A girl named Misty was another regular bully, once violently pushing me off the top of the slides.
I didn’t give much thought to all of this abuse. I didn’t like it, but I just thought it was the natural order of things, that kids would inevitably pick on me. I didn’t question why it would happen, or my odd behaviour as a possible catalyst...when I got picked on, I would just mention it to Mom, who would then go raise holy hell with the school board over why her daughter was being bullied (I had no qualms about using Mom as a weapon against my peers, or being labelled a sissy. I was already a freak, so what was one more label?). The schools did nothing, of course--our principal told Mom to her face, “Well, boys will be boys”--so it continued. She also had to fight to keep me in the same class as my sister after that illustrious first year in school, because the school thought that, what with my physical ailments and all (congestive heart failure, among others), I wouldn’t be capable of “keeping up” in actual kindergarten. They also attempted to keep me back from first grade the next year. Of course, my distinguished behaviour probably wasn’t helping the fight much, either. I was a freak, only I was an intellectually brilliant six-year old freak, and I passed with flying colors. They couldn’t do anything.
I was a small kid, and was the target of a lot of initial physical abuse (which fortunately stopped in my later grade school years, since my sister would look out for me). All of those childhood ailments had stunted my growth. To give you an idea, I weighed twenty-five lbs when I was five years old, and started sixth grade at an approximate sixty lbs and four foot six. I was always short and skinny for my age (in junior high I was accused of anorexia), plus I had a multitude of scars from various operations, including a very prominent scar on my neck that resembled a hole more than anything, which got me a lot of questions like, “Can you breathe through that?” or my favorite, “Can you see through that?” I finally had that scar greatly minimized when I was fifteen, just because I was sick of all the harassment over it. I also had gone through a growth spurt the previous year, brought on by both a visit from the Menstruation Fairy and a steady practice of drinking two or three weight-loss shakes per day. Here’s a tip: Those shakes work in reverse, provided you have them in addition to your usual diet. I gained ten pounds in two months--a personal record--and more than forty pounds over the course of four years. I’m now a healthy 100-odd pounds (wavering between 98 and 105, depending on my activity level) at a permanent five-foot two. Still short and skinny, but within normal bounds.
Another deciding contributer to my social estrangement was when I started keeping hamsters in fifth grade, and went through a rather intense “hamster phase” for several years in junior high, during which I lived, breathed, and slept hamsters (although, contrary to rumor, I never ate them). I would frequently bring my hamsters to school on whatever flimsy excuse, and gave my peers yet another excuse to pick on me. I had various rumors flying around about how I used my hamsters for fiendish experiments, inappropriate sexual practices, and the aforementioned culinary habits.
Because I was so weird, my sister was often forced into the position of explaining or apologizing for my behaviour, which I wouldn’t blame her for resenting. When I got a bit older and started having crushes on guys, I took the direct opposite route and claimed that I hated boys, since I had somewhere gotten it into my head that sexual feelings were bad and to be avoided (this from an agnostic upbringing!). Now, when you’re seven years old that sort of behaviour is considered normal, but people start looking at you funny when you’re spouting the same thing at age twelve or thirteen. This naturally caused rumors of my questionable orientation to circulate, and I was frequently called a dyke. An entirely new source of abuse blossomed. By then I had stopped most of the really outlandish animalistic behaviour, but it was too late. I was permanently--and probably justifiably--labelled as a freak and an outcast.
This really hit home in high school. Mom finally pegged on to the fact that I was really, really strange, and it wasn’t just the normal genius eccentricity. She had me tested for autism when I hit junior high, which lead to the diagnosis at around age twelve of my Attention Deficit Disorder. For a while this reality didn’t really affect me--I was issued the usual twice daily Ritalin, and got a “student aid” to assist me. This student aid was a very nice lady whose son went to the same school as me, and her job was to keep track of all my assignments and remind me about my schedule. She also followed me from class to class, and sat with me all the time, including during lunch. While I liked her personally, she did not do much in terms of help, and I became overly dependent on her, while at the same time becoming even more ostracized from my peers because I was (naturally) presumed to be mentally deficient--why else would I need personal assistance?
The Ritalin also did not help. I took it for three years, and it exacerbated every negative quality I possessed. On Ritalin, I became twitchy, hypersensitive to, well, everything (light, touch, sound, smell--you name it), slightly paranoid, and moody, and I would frequently sit on the floor, not touching anything, rocking back and forth. If anyone interrupted this state, I would scream at them and physically flinch if they so much as made a motion towards me. It was bad.
I got off the Ritalin the year after I started high school, which was a good thing because on top of everything else, I had started to be seriously sexually harassed by a boy three grades above me. Thank the gods, during that same time I had started watching Xena, which saved me. It sounds corny, but I don’t know if I would have made it through high school psychologically intact if it hadn’t been for that show. I took up staff (which was a major improvement over physically harming myself, my previous outlet for all my various self-inflicted psychoses), and became mildly proficient at it, in an amateur self-taught way. I’ve since graduated to throwing knives, and can hit a tree from twenty feet away. Of course, this just increased my freak quotient, since who wants to hang out with a violent psycho who watches lesbian shows? Anywho...
On top of everything else, I was wracked with the Catholic-boy puppy love described in my rant, and was fairly messed up in that department. I also felt (and still feel) horribly guilty for indulging in self-pity as regards my mental state, because I’ve technically had a pretty easy life, since I’ve never really had traumatic events take place. High school was about an all-time low. In about tenth through eleventh grade, I went through a fairly severe depression lasting a little over a year, in which I cried every single day during that period. I took Prozac for a little while, but it was less than a placebo--it did nothing. Around this time, I met DC, who became my first actual friend (not just a sympathetic classmate or casual acquaintance), and that was a fairly major catalyst to getting out of my depression, since I now had someone outside of family to rant to and give me a new perspective on stuff...cleared my head.
My senior year I was placed in the aforementioned “special” class, where I met kids that made me look like a poster child for sanity. Hard-core druggies, kids with anger-management issues, and one girl who was just plain around the bend, and would hit people with no provocation. I got belted in the side of my face one day, out of the blue. She was soon after sent to another, even “specialer” school up north, much to everyone’s relief.
The teacher was one of those extremely patient people who fancied themselves to be a motherly type (ironically, I heard she was pregnant with her first child the following year), and alternately talked-down to the students and failed to control their behaviour. She had us do the exact same type of math problem on the blackboard for the entire year, which was so horribly dull that eventually I gave up and stopped doing the homework, which of course gave her incentive to make me keep doing the same thing, since I wasn’t seeming to be learning the remedial math! Ridiculous! She read the most horribly depressing books to us--The Giver and A Child Called ‘It’ stand out quite clearly--because she claimed they taught us empathy. And yes, I say “read to”...she would sit and read the books to us, never mind letting us read them for ourselves. Whenever I was absent--which was frequently, as I hated school and would sleep in--she would let me catch up, but only as far as the rest of the class had read. When I had reached that point, I was supposed to stop. She would actually punish me for reading ahead. Is that not twisted? I thought the point of school was to encourage your desire to learn, not stifle it!
I also had to do remedial spelling, leading to another homework rebellion until she finally got a book on advanced words and let me write out words that she’d never heard of before to my heart’s content. Speaking of which, I also consistently corrected her spelling, grammar, and punctuation--and this was before I got on my internet literacy-kick! On top of which, all of the rest of the kids were either sub-par intellectually (not having all their ducks in the pond, if you get me), or so aggressively hostile and verbally abusive that initially I would end up in tears on a semi-regular basis. I eventually grew a backbone, and learned to verbally spar right back. However, at the time I was studying White Wolf and Malkavian supplies...I learned the art of verbal tongue-twisters, and thoroughly fucked with their heads. I became known as an aggressively arguementative bitch (which is, sadly enough, slightly better than a doormat, since at least aggression is respected in America), and for all of my nuncupative nonsense, I had a final rumor tacked onto my name: that of being on drugs. Just peachy.
Fortunately during that same year, I had started to seriously apply myself to my writing, and penned Billy Bluegill one day in class. I also had one “normal” class outside of the freak factory, and the teacher for that class read Billy, raved to all the other teachers, and even loved it so much she had me read it in front of the other students, pronouncing me “brilliant” in front of the whole class. Music to my ears.
After the school year was over, I celebrated my graduation by learning that I was not allowed to graduate, since my grades weren’t good enough. I was, however, allowed to leave the hallowed halls of the learning institution (gee, could that be sarcasm? Nahhhh) as I had apparently clocked enough time in the system to be set free. My sister, however, was allotted the requisite diploma, and we hosted the expected graduation party together. A few months later, as a combination graduation/birthday present (and the fact that we hadn’t had a dog in five years), I was allowed to get Tai, who was a major influence in my personal growth, development, and all-around self-esteem. Nothing like having another living creature thinking you’re the greatest thing in the world to boost your ego.
Since leaving school, my overall mental health level has greatly improved, since I no longer have people beating the verbal and emotional shit out of me on a daily basis. That’s always a plus. I also have the internet, which allows me to be less isolated from people than I otherwise would be (especially since DC has since moved), and I have a nice steady job with living breathing grown-ups. I still get very nervous around teenagers and peers, however, to the point of reverting to less-acceptable behaviour in their presence. I still do semi-embarrassing things when I run into former classmates, but it’s been less frequent than before.
A few years back Mom and I figured out how I got my ADD: the doctors seriously fucked up when she was in labour (she woke up during her C-section, among other things) and did something that made me very ill. I came down with all sorts of life-threatening conditions, and spent a good portion of my infancy hooked up to tubes...hardly the only time I was ever handled was when I was given an injection of some kind, because I was too critically ill to be touched very often. So touch equalled pain. In addition, I was ill for such a long time--first fifteen months of my life--that it eventually affected my brain, and gave me ADD (I’ve read that childhood illness can trigger ADD). This would explain why I’m affected, but my sister isn’t. In case you’re looking for details, well, I’m pretty hazy myself, since Mom cries every time she tries discussing it with me (I, my sister, and Mom all nearly died, plus she was going through a really bitter divorce/custody battle at the time). I do know I had congestive heart failure (I still have a pinpoint hole in my heart), and required a tube in my neck for feeding , hence the trachaeotomy scar. I also nearly lost my right foot when it began to necrose for reasons I’m fuzzy on. I don’t remember any of this, since it all happened before I was two.
The trache inhibited my ability to talk until I was a little over two, so I developed breathing problems, frequently gasping for air over the slightest aggravation (normal conversation, for instance), and I had a lisp. I went through intensive physical therapy until I was six or seven to strengthen my muscles so that I could engage in normal activity like running, jumping, and engaging in hand-eye coordination (throwing balls etc.). I can honestly say that I was able to read before I could walk or talk! My aunt happens to be a speech pathologist, and she coached me on pronunciation, and helped get rid of the lisp (although apparently I still have a quiet semi-breathy voice and slight lisp, especially when stressed out).
As to why Mom didn’t sue the doctors...she was involved in aforementioned custody battle plus dealing with medical bills and caring for twin girls, one in critical condition and herself seriously ill, and couldn’t afford it. I think that’s a pretty good reason, don’t you?