Who am I? I am a woman. I am a daughter, a mother, a sister, and a friend. I am a person who has always strived to help others simply because there aren't enough people in the world who help. I am a person who enjoys listening to life stories and learning from them.
I've always been different. Since I was young I knew I was unique. Not unique in the way that people are. Everyone is an individual. Everyone has qualities or lack of qualities that makes them individuals. Technically everyone is, in their own way, “unique.” But there are those rare people who never fit in. Our minds never seem to rest on the same level as other people and we are truly unique.
My first memory is being rocked in a rocking chair by a little black boy who took care of me in foster care. It was before I had turned ten weeks old. An old 80s episode of Bugs Bunny played on the TV, the ridiculous sounds of the cartoon characters echoing in the background. I remember looking down at my feet. They were small, curious. I remember not knowing exactly what was going on. The only thing that stands out in this memory is the little black boy's voice singing “You Are My Sunshine” to me. He sang this to me in the rocking chair, his voice magnifying over anything else. I don't remember if he sang it well. I don't remember looking up at him but I do remember the black arm cradled around my tiny body. I remember not being able to care about anything else or focus on anything else but his voice. I was his world. That felt nice.
My next memory is lying on an old brown couch my parents had after I was adopted into Ohio. I was still young, less than a year old, I'd say, and I was wearing a light pink onesie as I laid on the couch. I adored my brother Rocky, and he adored me. I remember him coming up to me, shaking his fingers at me with a big, silly grin on his face, and pushing his hands toward my stomach, proclaiming, “Goochie goochie goo!” I'd burst into laughter at the tickles that ensued.
I knew I was different after I started taking up an interest in horseback-riding. Not for that very fact alone, of course, but for the undeniable guilt that caught me when I realized I could never repay the favor that the horse had given me. It wasn't fair, I thought, how my parents paid for me to ride on the horse for an hour when poor Fancy was only going to be ridden over and over again on any given day, and none of the money went to her. Sure, it was an impractical thought. But it was also complex for a six year old.
I remember not fitting in while I went to preschool. The other kids wanted nothing more than to play with each other, pick boogers and try to cut their hair. I remember wanting to be different. I wanted to be the only kid that went to kindergarten and remembered what I had been taught from preschool. There was an apple with my name on it on the wall amongst a cluster of others. My name was the only one of its kind, and I remember feeling strangely proud of that. I was different. At a young age, I wanted to learn rather than play, and I strived to be different rather than fitting in.
I was always good at that, and it wasn't always good.
I went to Our Lady of Lourde's elementary school, a place of uniforms, brown tile and cedar chips for vomit piles. They had a building strictly for music class and Girl Scout meetings. The carpet was rough and a dark grayish-blue, and I remember the smell of spit would permeate the air whenever we were forced to play our stupid and generic musical instruments: the recorders. I never could play that thing, and I remember envying the kids who could.
It was there, though, in that very music room, where I was ridiculed for the first time. I don't remember why, but I can see the kid clear as day. His name was Ryan, and he had bleach blonde hair that stuck up in murderous spikes. He had cerulean blue eyes that would have been pretty if it weren't for the evil and mischief so obvious within them. We sat on the floor of the music room one day, and I was overly aware of the kid I didn't like sitting a few feet away. While the teacher couldn't hear, Ryan looked over and said the one word that insulted me like no other:
“Baby.”
I nearly cried. Call me ugly, call me a loser, call me anything but that. My six year old first grader mind could not comprehend being called a baby. At the time, I didn't know the meaning of the word “mature.” Yet, that's what I considered myself. To be called a baby was to insult me to the fullest extent, to say that I wasn't every one of my six years.
I was a vengeful kid. I was teased and prodded at so much that I couldn't help but keep what I called “The Revenge Notebook.” It was a little magenta colored notebook I hid in the top drawer of my bedroom desk. In it, pathetically organized, was the person who had hurt me in one column, what they had done in the next, how I would repay them in the next column, and finally, how long I had to get revenge before it didn't seem worth it any longer.
I remember so much about being a kid that I don't pretend that kids are innocent. My memories of childhood are so awful that I am relieved to be an adult. Kids are the most cruel people you could ever imagine, if you could only remember. Well, I do. Who I am today proves that surviving childhood can either quite literally kill you—or simply make you stronger. And why do I say this, you ask? Because sure, as a kid, I kept a Revenge Notebook. Most of the time, it was simply for daydreaming. Other kids killed animals for fun or enjoyed watching others cry. That is the true evil.
Are you wondering if I got revenge on Ryan? Whether you are or you aren't, I will tell you. I did. Oh, yes, I did. It was something I had not planned to work out so perfectly—I actually hadn't planned it at all. I made up my mind to simply avoid Ryan rather than seek him out for revenge. Yet Karma, my good friend and most beloved colleague, had a different idea in mind.
One day, in that same music room, the teacher scolded Ryan for talking in the middle of class. I felt a twinge of satisfaction for having him shut up for good—I never had heard a single positive or productive word come out of that terror's mouth—but out of nowhere, the blonde haired kid started to cry. His cruel blue eyes welled with tears, and he wiped at them before they could fall with the wrists of his uniform's sweatshirt sleeves.
Then he looked over at me, if only by coincidence. I stared back, and I smiled as if to say, “Baby.” Ryan looked away, embarrassed and defeated. I turned back to the teacher, but every once in a while, I would look over at him with a grin of satisfaction on my face.
Needless to say, Ryan never bothered me again.
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