Let's elaborate on that..... in A New Beginning

In my last entry I wrote about how happy I am to be so outgoing now, since I was extremely shy for well more than half of my life. I think I want to elaborate on that shyness, and also the fact that I was constantly verbally bullied throughout high school. Any self-esteem issues I have had to overcome in my adult life stemmed 100% from my high school years, not from anything in my home upbringing. Because why?? Because 100% of the self-esteem issues I had.....don’t have ‘em now!....were about my looks. I always knew I was intellectually brilliant, talented as a writer and speaker, and....well, capable of doing a lot of things. But ever since my parents and I left Ohio and moved to Delaware when I was in seventh grade, there was a group of boys....the popular boys, the jocks....in the grade ahead of me, who jeered at me everywhere I went and called me ugly, and names that meant ugly, like “dog.” The boys in my grade followed suit. A few girls made fun of me too, but the big thing with them was, NOBODY EVER SPOKE UP FOR ME. Teachers didn’t either. NOT EVER. And this stuff took place right in the classrooms, when some of these boys were in the same class as me. In tenth grade I dreaded geometry class because this whole group was in there. The first day of class, when I walked into the room some of these boys started making gagging noises, jumping over seats like they were trying to get as far as possible from me, etc. I was TOO SHY TO SAY A WORD. It was like being petrified. I just didn’t react. At all. One name they gave me was “Rock.” This teacher sat us alphabetically, oh joy, so that one of these boys was right behind me and the worst one of all was next to him. All through class, every day of the year, these two poked me with pencils....sometimes so it hurt....put things in my hair, through things at me. And the teacher HAD TO HAVE KNOWN. How could he not have?? It was right there in front of him!! He never said a word.
I went to the nurse sometimes, saying I was sick so I wouldn’t have to go to this class.
Girls dated these boys. Girls who seemed nice, smart, etc....but they were right there! They saw how these boys treated me! Would YOU want to date a guy who treated a woman or girl that way??
Now, funny thing how so many women I’ve talked with have said “Oh I was very shy too. I got picked on.”
But yet, they also say they went to the prom. They went on dates, at least occasionally. They got KISSED, for god’s sake, at some point when they were in high school. So they really haven’t got a damn clue.
I had NO dates until the first man asked me out for coffee when I was in my junior year of college. Nobody asked me out. I didn’t know how the hell to act. The first time he took me out to dinner, I got my first kiss. I didn’t know how the hell to kiss, but I did what I hoped would seem a reasonable facsimile! He looked amused. I LEARNED how to kiss before I met Joe, thank god/dess!
Now, obviously, I was not “ugly.” Why these dumbasses called me ugly for years, I don’t know. But the mere fact that not a single person ever stood up for me and never said I WASN’T, was “proof,” to my impressionable teenage mind that what they said must be true. I saw girls who, to my logical mind, looked worse than me. But THEY were not getting called ugly, so obviously, I was wrong about that. I didn’t understand it; it was evident, though, that I was “ugly” personified. To this day I detest the word “ugly” and will not use it. And anyone I hear referring to another person (or much of anything) as ugly instantly goes waaaaaaaay down in my estimation. People are not ugly. You might not always want to look at them, for whatever reason, but they are not ugly.
I developed such a complex that I began to walk funny....a stiff almost furtive, stay-close-to-walls gait like I hoped no one would notice I was there. I walked behind another person, not next to them....assuming no one would want me next to them.
Oh, there was the time when we had a substitute teacher in my French III class. We had to stand up in front of the class and read reports aloud that day. While I was in front of the class reading my report, the boys were all barking, howling, and saying rude things. YES, OUT LOUD. The substitute teacher…a man....said NOTHING. He never told them to stop! HE. NEVER. EVEN. FUCKIN’. TOLD, THEM. TO. STOP.
So, it took YEARS, ok, for me to get over BELIEVING that I was HIDEOUS. Joe would get so frustrated. “Do you think I married you because I thought you were hideous??” he asked me once. I knew he loved me. I knew he liked to have sex with me. I even knew that HE didn’t think I was ugly. But I didn’t know why he didn’t, because, well obviously, dammit, I was. All those other assholes had thought so, and all the assholes who let them treat me as they did apparently agreed. Maybe Joe didn’t see the same way other people did.
I went through my years, then, of believing that I looked ok as long as I was extreeeeeemely thin. But if I gained any weight, WHAMMO, there I was, unsightly.
But ya know, over the years of being married to a very outgoing man, and then being a mom to our two kids, I began being less shy and then, just kinda so-so.
It was maybe ten years ago that I had a major realization:
By that point in my life I was very well-liked by everyone who knew me, and very loved by my family (including Joe’s side of it). And I thought....”Well gee. Look how LOVED I am. And it must not be because I’m beautiful or something, because I’m ‘alright,’ but I’m not beautiful. So....it must be for OTHER things. It must be lots of other things that count the most.”
That’s when I stopped even worrying about LOOKS or SIZE! And from that point on, I was never self-conscious at all and my whole SELF came out and just shone, it seemed.
And everything that ever happened to me, I LEARNED FROM. My kids also learned from it, because as they were growing up I told them some of those things. And neither of them ever treated any other kids badly. In fact, our two kids were well-liked, BUT THEY WERE ALSO THE ONES WHO STOOD UP FOR THE KIDS WHO GOT PICKED ON. :o)
So, all this is why I rejoice so much in being outgoing now.
It was a long road!