After seeing a post on my dash about the traumatic effects of bullying, I remembered an unhappy part of my childhood. I mostly have gotten over it, but to this day I can get angry and fixated on the subject. My family has a lot of stories about little Raire. Baby Raire could climb before she could walk. Baby Raire was fearless. Baby Raire followed a cat up to the roof of her aunt's house, and crawled on the roof while her aunt and cousins tried not to panic. Toddler Raire would order her cousins and uncles to draw 'phants and tats (baby approximation of elephants and cats, only in Spanish), and was absolutely sure she would be obeyed. Toddler Raire spent a day in a daycare as a favour for her mother, and despite being two years younger than all the kids in the daycare, she was the first child ever to climb on top of the playground play-house. Little Raire was loud, strong, fearless, and confident, with a presence that demanded attention. I find these stories fascinating. There always seems to be some disconnect between this almost mythical little Raire, and the child I remember myself to be. It can't be that my parents' natural bias stretched stories, for my extended family and my parents' friends have the same, or similar, stories. Where did this self-assured, cheerful and un-self-conscious Raire go? I have very few memories from before I turned six years, fewer than most people I know. But there are many situations and images that stay with me from when I lived in Colombia. We moved after living some six years in three cities in Ecuador, to a city called Cali. When we arrived, the guerilla had great power, and the ongoing struggle in a multi-front war had a lot of repercussions for the country. Apparently, the USAmerican school was filled with the children of narcotraficantes (druglords). In order to not attract the attention of these families, much less to my dad's job in development of the rural communities caught in the crossfire of government forces, the far right paramilitares, and the FARC, my parents put us in a British school. There was a bit of a problem. My younger brother and I were the only foreigners. The first year, it went ok. I played with my classmates, did well in my classes, and enjoyed myself. We had a wonderful house in a gated community, with lots of neighbours to play with. There was a pool, a huge garden complex, and plenty of wildlife to explore and poke, and my brother and I were unfazed by moving to a new country. Trouble started the second year. Over summer holidays, all the girls had developed a fixed idea of how a girl should behave. They no longer ran around playing tag during recess, but would instead sit in a corner and talk about people and clothes and gossip in a way I found absolutely mind-blanking. It was boring. I couldn't sit still. The only game they played used a small rubber ball thrown against the wall that would bounce, and everyone had an order to catch and throw again, or something like that. But even that wasn't played often. We were only... seven? Eight years old? It was absolutely baffling. I started to pull away and spend more time playing with the boys, who were still happy to run around and push each other on the monkey bars. Of course, by the third year, the boys refused to play with me, because I was a girl, and I was not following the rules. I don't remember when it started, or if it ever stopped and I simply only became sensitive to it over time, but my classmates had many questions. Why were my eyes that colour? Why did I sound different when I said the same word? Why did I not know what patacones where? How come I looked and sounded different? Why did I use that word, and not this one? Why did I look different? How come I laughed so loud? I'm sure that at first it was fine. But at some point, it became Wrong, that I was so different, so unapologetically different. I remember standing one lunch break, a group of kids around me, all asking me why I said tajador (a word for pencil sharpener in Ecuador and Bolivia), instead of saca puntas? Why couldn't I use the right words for things? And then they started repeating it over and over, a group of kids laughing and jeering and shouting "Tajador! Tajador!" while I cried. I remember running away from a crowd of boys straight into the girls bathroom, and screaming at the girl who came in to ask me if I was ok to leave me alone, to not talk to me. I remember standing in the front of class feeling absolutely terrible, absolutely foolish, and turning and running out of the door from - what? What did they say? What did they do that had me running away from class? I didn't run out of school - it was closed in by tall walls and guards that would not let me out - but the school was very big, and it had creeks spreading around it. I remember that once I ran away to hide behind the gym, where some previous construction had left a pile of rubble and stone and dirt, climbing up above it as fast as I could and then sliding down to the other end next to the gym wall, so no one could find me. Who would climb the small mountain of mortar and brick? I could hear people calling my name and searching for me. I remember crying while kneeling next to one of the streams, and watching my tears fall into it, thinking that I really liked the sound of it. I remember sitting in a circle with the worst boys in it, my teacher there to mediate so I could explain why it hurt and bothered me when they said the things they said - what did they say? why can't I remember it? - and that I wanted them to stop it, and everyone nodding and being Very Serious as the useless teacher looked around as they agreed to not bother me... and them going right back to it, slightly different this time, the next day. I remember having no friends. I remember waking up and staring at my uniform, dreading the day, hating the rough, green woolly socks we wore in tropical weather, the horrible little ribbon the girls had to wear instead of ties, and wanting to hide underneath the bed. I remember countless recess, hiding in the girl's bathroom, the toilet lid down, my feet up, reading books and books, so that no one would find me and bother me while I escaped into fantasy worlds. I stopped talking. I stopped responding to people. Mom says I would not talk to a stranger, not a single word, where before I loved meeting people and getting to know them and ask questions. I was more still, more withdrawn. She took me to a child therapist, and at first I wouldn't talk to her either, but she was fine, she never pressured me, she let me play with the many toys in her office until slowly I started relaxing and talking to her. I don't remember this at all. I don't remember a therapist, or not talking, or being so afraid of strangers. I only know that this happened because mom told me. I remember sitting, waiting in the principal's office for my turn to see him, while I was missing classes, and seeing a boy walk in with a bright red mark in the shape of a child's hand on his cheek. Or I remember putting it there. Or I remember fantasizing about being the one who put it there, to be brave enough to slap my anger out at somebody. I was fascinated by that. It is somewhat silly, that I can't really remember what they did that hurt me so much. All I know is that there was some teasing about my accent and words. I don't really know now, what it was that happened, and instead I have the memory of dreading and hating that uniform, the grey skirt, the ungodly hot scratchy socks, the stupid ribbon that I always lost, not wanting to put it on, hating everything it represented. I used to write a lot, short stories, or attempts at them. But for many years after we left Colombia, I would often start writing and open a scene with a little girl, lying on her back on her bead, legs and arms spreadeagled, and uniform neatly laid out at the side, and hating, hating it, dreading everything that was coming that day, focused most of all in the ugly green socks we had to wear.
Thanks. It is kind of weird to look back at this and go "this used to be a huge fucking deal, and in a way still is because it still affects me some", but mostly it is just super weird to know I used to be like this and I cannot remember what being so confident even felt like.
