I was awkward before puberty hit in middle school. All of the sudden my chest got huge, and even in my tom-boy clothes, it was pretty obvious. Other kids quickly took notice and made comments. A rumor spread that I stuffed my bra with tissue or something, and that my chest was not real. Terrible nicknames followed taunts and random verbal assaults from kids I did and didn’t know. I somehow offended half of the girls I went to school with my new physique, and they were cruel. Several times they threw tissue at me or balls of paper, and said stupid remarks like “hey this fell out of your shirt”, nothing very original, just your usual teenager crap.
I really pissed the girls off when people started looking at my chest while we changed for P.E. It’s pretty hard to hide fake boobs with your shirt off, so it was pretty obvious that I had the real thing, and was not in fact stuffing my bra. The girls I had that class with must have started talking, because people soon spread the rumor that I had fake breast implants. Seriously? I was all of 12 or 13 and the rumor was about fake boobs? I remember cracking up at that. They must think my parents have a lot of money, or are crazy.
So for a long time I had a hard time in school because I was constantly getting crap about my body. I was pretty sure people liked boobs, so I couldn’t figure out why they were so mean about mine. Other girls got boobs, and they were suddenly more popular, and their boyfriends just got better looking. I must have done something wrong. I didn’t realize at that point, what a calling card your physical traits become. I would be known as the girl with boobs for the rest of my life, real or fake, I wanted to be known for more.
One student was really mean to me about my physical appearance. She always had something terrible to say, and friends who would laugh along while she made fun of me. We had several classes together one year, and I was miserable. She followed me out of P.E. one day, calling after me as I left. I did my best to ignore her and keep walking, but she came up behind me. She threw some tissue at me, and told me I dropped it. I just kept walking and tried to avoid whatever was happening. This seemed to piss her off more, so she decked me from behind. As soon as her fist hit the back of my head, I knew I was going down. I stayed down, and she laughed and walked away.
When I told my parents what happened, they called the school. The school decided that the best thing to do was let it go. She was a student that was having a “hard time” at home, and in school, and her counselor thought that it wouldn’t be healthy for her to be suspended. The school did agree to make sure we wouldn’t have any more classes together, but this wasn’t the last time things didn’t go well between us. I was very frustrated because I felt like the school wasn’t doing anything, but school bullying was a normal part of life at that school. It was in the low-income part of town, so it was a mix of bussed-in kids, and low-income kids. Gang bangers and preps? Yea, pretty much. It wasn’t very functional, but to the schools credit, they had the best teachers in the district.
I was pretty done with people in general at this point. They only hurt me, left me, or set me up for more pain, and I didn’t want much to do with anyone. I was very against drugs and alcohol, after seeing what my brother and grandfather had become. I hated cigarettes too, my foster-brother always smoked, and it smelled so bad. I didn’t have any good or bad outlet, or way of letting my feelings out, so I held them in. I held my feelings in for years, and it made me a very unhappy, cranky, depressed person. I hadn’t found anyone I could really connect with or trust yet, and I felt so alone and miserable.
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I Am Not Defined 