Being human. in Like No One Is Reading

I can remember, as a small child, watching other children, studying them, and mimicking their behaviors. Trying to, anyway. The one behavior I could never mimic was the sitting still one. I had twitches and tics and my leg always bounced. I can remember it bouncing away in kindergarten. I can remember teachers telling me to be still. My parents, my family, everyone always telling me to be still. My mother believed, and said often, that children are to be seen and not heard.

So that’s what I practiced. Kind of. Not only did I not want to be heard, no. I decided it was for the best if no one saw me, either, if no one noticed me. Shrink down small, quiet like a mouse, be still, be still, don’t make a sound, don’t cough, don’t sneeze and definitely, for the love of all that’s good, don’t raise your hand! Don’t get called on! It doesn’t matter how badly you need to use the restroom, don’t you dare stand up and walk across the room in front of all these people and ask the teacher to go! I was biting my fingernails by the third grade, and I didn’t stop for 20 years. I got my first headache when I was 8 or 9 and those turned into a whole thing. I’ve got them mostly under control now.

What I was taught, and what I enforced on myself, was the idea that being human was bad. Having emotions and expressing them? Bad. Fidgeting? Bad. Not being able to control my thoughts or my mouth that never wanted to stop moving? Baaaad. Normal bodily functions? Bad. Having a human body? Bad. Affection? Bad. Sexuality? Very, very bad.

I was shamed for so much, so early, I was already starting to mask by the time kindergarten rolled around.

I had my first bully in first grade. She called me names and made fun of me and got other kids to laugh at me for being “weird.” And that kind of stuff happened pretty much every school year of my life, maybe with the exception of senior year. There was always someone who would pick me out of the crowd and decide I was the one who was going to catch some shit. It was always someone bigger than me and 99% of the time I had done nothing at all. In 5th grade, a girl who lived on my street and another kid brought one of those plastic bubble pack things that hold like allergy medicines? The kind where you peel off the paper and poke the pill through the foil? They took it to the principle and said I gave it to their little brother in 3rd grade. The police were called. Literally. My mom had to come to school. I had a meltdown. The policeman threatened me, said he was going to fingerprint the thing and prove I was giving little kids drugs. More than once, I didn’t even know the person that suddenly wanted to beat me up or whatever. Once, I was walking down an empty hallway in high school and a girl who rode my bus was coming from the other direction and she just… started talking shit at me? And then started swinging? A couple of super popular girls decided I was it freshman year and tormented me until I snapped and smashed one of their faces into a cinderblock wall. Sophomore year, it was a senior girl who didn’t like the way I looked at her. I didn’t even know her name and suddenly found myself running for my bus as she chased me. She was 3 times my size. A boy on the bus senior year knocked me clean the fuck out.

Then, the men.

And me. Bullying myself. Feeling shame for being human, for having emotions (okay, extra-big emotions), for letting my feelings get hurt. It’s my own fault, don’t you know, that my feelings get hurt. If I didn’t let my feelings get hurt so easily, they wouldn’t get hurt so easily. If I just had some control. I’m sure I wouldn’t be so sensitive then.

Instead, I stay sensitive. I stay hurting. And I bury it away, internalize it, believe it’s no less than I deserve, and shrink down small, quiet like a mouse, hide it where no one can see and pretend everything is fine. Heaven forbid my struggle should cause anyone else discomfort.