Professional Draw-er

In first grade, I loved drawing. In my heart, I truly thought I had a shot as a "professional draw-er."

But on my report card, my first grade teacher wrote (to paraphrase): "[NAME] loves to draw. She wants to draw for the rest of her life. I don't think she has what it takes to do that... but I know that she's going to be something big, somewhere big, and I'm gonna read about her in the news one day." 

This completely broke my spirit and discouraged me from pursuing this dream.

"Well, she can see you."

Between kindergarden and first grade, I started to put on some weight and developed into a quite chubby kid. My mom was very proactive when I started gaining weight, and enrolled us in many family "get healthy" programs. I was aware that this was an issue, but for me at the time, it was an internal one. 

After one of my parent-teacher conferences in first grade, my mother came home and reported that I got glowing reviews from all of my teachers. She also said that one of my teachers, a beautiful and very thin woman, mentioned to her that she was overweight as a child as well and that she eventually grew out of it. I asked my mom how my teacher knew that I was overweight, and my mom responded, "Well, she can see you". 

I have never forgotten this moment. It was an innocent comment by my mother, one that would be obvious to any adult. However, as a young child that was the first time I realized that others were seeing and discussing my weight gain. That was the beginning of many years of self-consciousness and self-hating regarding my weight and looks.

It is only in the past several years that I have come to accept and like myself and how I look.

I don't think my mom remembers this comment, or has any idea how it affected me.

"You're too miserable."

Said to me by my best middle school friend, who would often sit me down and confront me about all of the things that were wrong with me. 

Before I met her, I was a happy-go-lucky kid. If she perceived me as being miserable, it was only because her presence made me miserable. 

Of course, at the time, I couldn't recognize this, and I took her comment to heart, thinking that this was just another part of me that was inherently bad or inadequate.

"You are stuck up"

In the 7th grade, I befriended a girl who I became incredibly close with. But before we grew close, she told me that she thought I was really stuck up. I had never heard anyone describe me as "snobby" or "stuck up" before and it hurt my feelings very much because although I'm stubborn, I didn't think of myself in that light. It was a description that I associated with kids who had wealthy parents and spoke over their classmates with arrogance.

It was always in her character to be bluntly honest, so I put my trust in her because I thought she would always tell it to me straight. I started to think that other people may have the same impression of me but never told me.

In the end, we grew apart. I endured an emotionally-abusive friendship because I was a self conscious 13 year old and I wanted to be edgy and "fun." She took advantage of the fact that I was highly impressionable and I trusted her; she was clever, charming, and could argue her way out of any situation. I wanted so badly to be more like her and less of an uptight "snob." 

I don't think of myself as stuck up anymore. I am now 24 and much more confident than I used to be, but I haven't forgotten what she said.

"Are you manic?"

A competitive high school acquaintance asked me this very bluntly, and in a very cutting way.

It was one of the first times I realized that my depression was apparent on the outside.

These words still echo in my head any time I hit a really high high, or a really low low.

I don't even think she'd remember asking me that, but it's one of the cruelest things anyone has ever said to me.

One time when I was in high school my mother and I were talking about sex. My boyfriend at the time was an Evangelical Christian and because I loved him I had started to become one too. My mother kept trying to bring up sex and I kept laughing, insisting that we weren’t having sex - we weren’t - and to close the subject for good I told her that I was saving myself for marriage. She was stunned. She said, “But what if you’ve waited all that time and it’s bad?”

Always ready with Evangelical sound bites, I said, “If I have nothing to compare it to, how will I know?” I smiled. My mother looked me in the eyes, her face deadpan.

“You’ll know.”

“You’re really intense.”

It was an interview for a company and position I had dreamed about. I’d be studying for weeks. Met with three people in the office and was feeling awesome.

Then, in walks the VP. He sits down, spreads his legs out, puts his hands behind his head in a cocky manner, and asks me to tell him about my interests. I start talking and he almost immediately interrupts me with this statement.

He asks me to start talking again, then interrupts me again: “Yeah, you’re intense. Has anyone ever told you that? Like, really intense.”

Turns out, he was testing me. But I’ve never left a room feeling so unsure of myself.

“You are a cool breeze on a calm sea.”  He wrote that on the last page of a paper I’d written for the class he taught.  There was an “A” in red ink, which pleased me not half as much as being compared to a summer’s day.  I was fifteen, just coming into focus.  I reminded him of himself, he said, and when he asked me to meet him at the football field on a Saturday afternoon I didn’t hesitate.  He drove me to his apartment, told me to take my clothes off in a way that made me uncomfortable.  But I liked having a secret.  

Later, much later, he told me he had a boyfriend, someone he loved.  He’d die if anything ever happened to him, if he were to find out what we did on Saturday afternoons.  So it stopped as abruptly as a needle being lifted from a record.  

What stuck with me wasn’t the rape, as my therapist insisted I call it, it was the power of words to seduce, to shatter.        

When I was 13 I went to a summer camp and had to share a shower with other girls. 

While I was bathing a girl yelled out, “What’s wrong with your boobs?!” And all the girls stopped and looked. I couldn’t understand what she meant. They were mine they weren’t overly perky but I never thought of them as wrong.

Another girl asks “Did guys ya know, do stuff with them?” And the same girl replied, “Who would want to play with those?” I lowered my head in shame and confusion.

To this day I’m always self conscious the first time I reveal my body to any guy. Will he want to know what’s wrong them as well? 

When I was in college, my friend was struggling with coming out as bi. I wasn’t understanding the struggle, nor did I understand the coming out process. Our mutual friend accused me of not being supportive of our friend and told me I was insensitive, and that I’d never understand how difficult it was.

A few months later, I came out as gay, and the mutual friend’s voice played over and over in my head, telling me how difficult it was to come out. It made me feel like the sudden peace and understanding of who I was was somehow wrong. I felt like I was doing something wrong and I should have been struggling so much more. To this day, I still wonder if I should have struggled more.