So, to start off, I will say that I have always been very boy-aware, and that was especially true in junior high. The big thing from about fifth grade on was going steady, but I had crashed and burned so spectacularly the time I tried it that I disgustedly swore off having a boyfriend until high school.
(Basically, I had liked Stephen since fifth grade when he was new. Part of being his friend was that I was there for him when Lora dumped him. By the time he got around to asking me out the next year, I was initially thrilled, but suddenly felt trapped and realized that I was more interested in both Geoff and Jason, and so I dumped him abruptly and cruelly the next Monday, even though I had suggested that we just go till summer, since we would be going to different schools, and I felt like I was more evil than Lora, and fickle, and not ready for this at all.)
Anyway, so I was interested in boys, and thought about them a lot, but I was not planning on going steady with anyone or thinking in those terms. One day at lunch, the kids at the table next to us were goofing off, and Jason (a different one, whom I have never mentioned before) asked me to go steady (we called it going with someone). I ignored the question. Then, another guy there, Matt, started asking, and yet another kid, Steve, started egging him on, and they just wouldn’t let it go. They kept it up all through the lunch period and even followed me to my next class until I finally shouted “yes” at the door to get rid of them.
Junior high school age boys being stupid is nothing new, nor is horsing around at lunch, so it shouldn’t be so such a big deal. There were probably two factors that made it worse. One is something that even the few times I have shared this story, I have not shared, but I am going for it now, is that after school as I was heading for the bus, they were out there and Steve came up and started ripping my shirt open. It was a snap up shirt so that was pretty easy to do. I instinctively brought my knee up to his groin, and just kept walking, snapping back up. It just added that extra level of shame to everything that had already happened.
The real problem is just that I was a joke. Even when I kicked Steve, he just laughed it off. One of them said, “Her daddy taught her how to kick.” Everything about me was a joke for them. Because there were parts of them asking me out earlier that were a little exhilarating. It was attention from a boy—that’s good right? Even though these were not the boys I wanted, they were paying attention to me. Except it was ugly, and demeaning.
The real message that I ended up carrying away was that a boy liking me would be a joke. And since my other core belief was that I was fat, I figured that was why it was a joke, so no one would ever love me until I lost weight, and as long as I was fat I just wasn’t good enough. It should have been extremely motivating, but it was hard to take healthy actions with that much emotional baggage, especially when it is largely unacknowledged. I mean, yes, I consciously did not expect boys to like me, because of my weight, but really taking a hard look at why I felt that way, or how deeply I felt it, was just off the table.
From then on I just always kept myself in friend mode, with the hope that someday I would be able to fix myself, and then someone would love me. My happiness was always going to be deferred until I lost weight.
So, one problem with developing the core belief at six that I was fat was that it really became a self-fulfilling prophesy when it should have been very possible to grow up healthy with a normal body weight, when I never even knew that was an option. Likewise, I may have missed out on some key things by believing myself not capable of love. Looking back now, I can see some cases where people might have had crushes on me. They would not necessarily have amounted to anything, but I sometimes wonder now if it was really that boys were never interested in me because I was fat, or maybe that boys were never interested in me because I never seemed remotely available. As it is, my prom dates were a friend who would later turn out to be gay in tenth grade, stag and really shouldn’t have gone but felt like I needed to because I was in charge of the chaperones in eleventh grade, and a blind date set up for me by someone else my senior year.
When I was doing my writing therapy, there were a lot of regrets, most of them having to do with boys, and I thought they were related to fear. That may be partly true, but on a lot of them I can look back and see that it wasn’t even fear, it was me not even believing I was worthy to take the chance, and that is even more depressing.
The other part that frustrates me, with both cases, is that I didn’t even like these people. Suzy was not nice, and she had a pinched walnut kind of face. Adam thought she was really cute, but I’m the one he kissed when opportunity struck, so even if he was a freak, on the scale where she is adorable I am still desirable. As for Matt and Jason and Steve, they were so far off my register that I didn’t even have code names for them, and that was a list of about forty boys who had code names. They weren’t good looking or smart or interesting, and yet they have had the biggest discernible influence on my life. Why couldn’t I have listened to someone with some merit?
I doubt they were trying to emotionally handicap me and tarnish the next thirty to twenty years of my life—not because they were truly nice or anything, but I doubt they were that ambitious. But right now all I can do is focus on what I am going to do with the next thirty.
The good news is, there is only one major tragic recounting left, and it is actually the most positive one, because it was the turning point. It was just hard getting there. However next time I will be waxing philosophic about Weltanschauung.
For now, I have included pictures of me at seven and fourteen. They look a lot different now.
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