Survivor Literacy

Junior High School- A Special Hell

I matriculated up to junior high and everything slowly fell apart.

The girls remained my responsibility outside of school hours. Mom went back to work with Grandpa. I didn’t see her much and when I did there was just this distance between us. She did her job and I did mine.

Really, when I turned 13, it was like the whole family just gave up. When the cousins were going through their teens, the family rallied to deal with running away, and drugs, and to celebrate achievements. We went to choir concerts and musicals, and drove teams to debate tournaments.

None of that was present when I became a teenager. They were tired. They didn’t have time. They had already been through it. They started performing this narrative that expected me to be a screw up. I don’t know what I did differently.

Find out why I’m so Triggered!

They made sure that I knew that if I needed anything beyond the routine, I was a burden, and nuisance, and annoyance.

In seventh grade, I was the understudy for the school musical. I learned every single line. Mom showed obvious signs of exasperation whenever it was brought up so I learned them by myself.

I went to the show by myself, and Mom was not pleased about having to take me.

The lead choked. She panicked at the last minute and refused to go on. I donned the costume I had made, by myself, for just in case. I nailed it. I was a badass.

Kids didn’t really celebrate me, but they did give the original lead a significantly difficult time about it. That’s not the same.

Mom did not want to hear about it when she picked me up.

Junior High is brutal. It’s when kids are the most creative with their torment, without the character building to keep some of it in.

They would bait me, telling me some upper-class cutie secretly really liked me.

“No, really! He really wants you to go talk to him.”

I fell for stuff like that so many times. I really wanted to be wanted. Each time there would be an entire group of people erupting into gales of laughter. They would point at me later in the halls and erupt into laughter again.

I started working in the cafeteria so I wouldn’t have to find a place to sit. If you worked there, you could have your choice of things to eat, not just the free lunch offering. I had nachos every day, and ate them with the other kids that worked in the cafeteria. It gave me a little sense of belonging, but mostly a safe place to hide.

I got nicknames in Junior High. Somehow, paying attention and knowing the answers are NOT desirable traits in a classmate. I was called the “human dictionary,” or “the brainiac.”

When called on, students would answer out loud “why don’t you just ask Protyus?” I had class periods where I wasn’t allowed to respond. The other kids hated me when I did, and they especially hated me when I didn’t.

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