When I was seven, the administrators of my school approached my parents with the suggestion that I be skipped up a grade due to my amazingly above-average test scores. To this day I don't understand why I was the one singled out for this privilege; I started kindergarten knowing how to read, but that was pretty much the only advantage I had over my peers, for whatever it was worth. My parents agreed, thinking that I'd find the third grade more challenging than the second, and I spent the summer bitching about having to learn cursive writing so I'd be all caught up to the rest of the third graders. School was school, and I went into my first day of third grade just as unenthusiastic as I'd be about any other grade. It was then that all of my problems started.
As a side note, my natural handwriting remained in perfect stasis during those elementary school years when I was forced to write in cursive, and in middle school, when I was allowed to dust it off and bring it back into regular use once more, I found it just as I'd left it, the handwriting of a six-year-old. My penmanship has aged a few years since; now it looks like something an eight-year-old might have written.
Anyway, third grade. Having just been moved up from a lower grade and not being involved in any school or community programs whatsoever, I didn't know anyone, and I had to try to fit my way into the little groups that had already sprung up during the three years that these other children had been associating with each other. I bounced from group to group depending on who would accept me; sometimes I was trading jokes with the boys, sometimes I was playing jumprope with the girls, and a lot of the time I'd just go sit by myself under my favorite crabapple tree on the playground and dream up stories. I was at that age where I still saw magic in everything, plus I'd recently read The Chronicles of Narnia and A Wrinkle In Time and its sequels (which I still hold up as the most beautiful pieces of writing I've ever experienced), so I had plenty going on in my head. During those times when I couldn't find any kids who'd tolerate me, I'd go galloping around the playground on one of my many invisible horses, having all sorts of arcane, spiritually-motivated adventures.
Apparently this was a bad thing.
I don't remember exactly what started it, but eventually I became "that weird girl." The one who didn't play sports or go to church, who had no grasp of popular culture, who wore dresses when most of the other girls were always wearing jeans, and who talked to her imaginary friends and said, quite seriously, that they were gods. My teacher, a Mrs. Armbruster, didn't help matters either, convinced as she was that her classroom was some sort of police state over which she reigned as a kind of benevolent dictator. Quite aside from teaching us useful or interesting factual things, or at least the rudiments of logical thought, whereby we might explore the world and draw our own conclusions from it, she seemed to think that her job was to mold us into a cohesive collective where everyone got along and had a part to play. I, that kid who never did the homework but tested well, wrote better than any of the rest of the class, and constantly corrected my teacher's spelling and pronunciation (I actually had to convince her that 'recreation' was a word when I added it to my spelling list for the week - she was sure that I was trying to write 're-creation'), did not fit neatly into her collective, and this bothered her, to the point that she began to confront me about it on a regular basis. There were apparently many phone calls to my parents that I only found out about years later, and I also became one of those kids that the guidance counselor calls into their office at the beginning of each school year just to see how they're doing.
Things escalated through the rest of elementary school, and I resigned myself to it and stopped trying. Okay, my peers didn't much care for me, but as long as I had a book and some room to sit and think, I didn't mind it much. There were some kids in my class that I'd casually interact with, and through my masochistic relationship with the Girl Scouts, I even came across a couple of friends. In fourth grade I got an in-school suspension for joking about knifing a kid, but ultimately my parents were only mad at me for my poor judgment in joking about such a thing in a school setting, and the whole issue blew over after that. In fifth grade some of the girls thought it would be funny to put a series of love notes in my locker, by which I wasn't taken in for a single moment (What fifth-grade boy actually leaves romantic notes? Typed notes, to boot?) They were remarkably stupid; each would have some little request to change something about my personal habits, like stop wearing that scarf you found in the art room as a bandanna, or start carrying around a book that isn't Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess (another book that I shamelessly admit to still loving). It culminated in a request for me to come to a parking lot near my house to meet the mysterious boy who was writing these notes, and at that point I turned them all in to my teacher out of annoyed spite for whomever was writing them. The girls came forward, and each was instructed to apologize to me both verbally and in writing, which I found hilarious. My teachers were surprised that I hadn't been seriously traumatized by this or anything, but from where I stood, it was a dumb prank that didn't work; I didn't even like boys yet. What was there to get upset about?
From there I moved into middle school, and everything went to hell. I still had my best friends from fifth grade, but the whole student body was hitting puberty and was just waiting to lash out at anyone for any reason they could think of because of it. It didn't help that in sixth grade I met Greta, a singularly odd child who was feverishly obsessed with sexuality and the Harry Potter series. I declared her my best friend when I found out that she had read the His Dark Materials trilogy, a series of which I was extremely enamored at the time, and I was so glad to have made a new friend that I eagerly went along with whatever she wanted to do. I turned a blind eye to her defacing of public property with her bodily wastes, accepted all of the wild stories she told me about herself, and even let her destroy a few of my personal possessions. When it got to the point where she began showing me pornography when I went over to her house, I broke down and told my mom about it, and from there our friendship became much more strained. I still spent time with her, even though my other friends and I agreed that she was no good, because even though I'd given up on being well-liked by my fellow students, I still couldn't bring myself to outright refuse someone's acceptance. Eventually she got me, herself, and our school's one black girl suspended as part of a conspiracy to further spread the rumor that our shop teacher was a child molester, and soon after that, she moved. I never spoke to her again.
Associating myself with Greta had two major side effects; the first was that people started to pay much more attention to me because of her. While I had kind of formed my own little pocket of oddness to curl up in, Greta flaunted hers, and delighted in the attention she got when she'd go to the guidance counselor (usually with me in tow) and complain about the teasing. After lying down with this particular dog there was no getting rid of the fleas, and I became the target of the same vitriolic hatred regularly directed at her; I did odd things and didn't fit the suburban mold. In the chiding words of my guidance counselor, the nail that sticks up must be pounded down.
The second side effect was the lesbian thing. I don't know if Greta herself started that, although I wouldn't put it past her; I refused to sleep over at her house, even before the pornography incident, because of her repeated suggestive advances. At any rate, it became 'common knowledge' throughout the school that I kissed girls in the bathroom, because I never showed any interest in boys (asking me to dances became a spectator sport among them) and homosexuality was just coming onto everyone's radar as something new to use as an insult. I'd been complaining about the abuse I'd been getting since way back in third grade, and nothing was ever done, so I didn't pursue the issue much this time. However, when certain people started throwing rocks at myself and my 'lover' (my best friend, whom I would later affectionately refer to as 'S-chan'), I went to the principal with renewed vigor, thinking I might actually have a case this time. He assured me he'd take care of it, and told me to come to him if it happened again. Well, I did, and after the third time he started pretending he wasn't in his office. I just gave up at that point; middle schoolers were going to be hateful middle schoolers. Whatever.
Things looked up in high school, where everyone was mostly content to ignore me. I went about my business, and even formed a group of friends through my interest in anime. However, I'd gotten in the habit of not doing any homework whatsoever, and it showed in my abysmal grades. My parents, who had already taken my brother out of third grade (by an odd coincidence, he too had been subjected to Mrs. Armbruster, and dealing with her again was more than my mom and dad could bear), removed me from school after my sophomore year, thinking that I'd do high school over again. I was devestated; I'd finally found my nook in the school community, and I enjoyed going because I always seemed to see and hear interesting things when I was there.
It was around that time that things got really bad. After I left school, none of my friends bothered to keep in contact except for S-chan, with whom I could only communicate seriously though the fictional characters we took on as personas in our online roleplay. When she too started to ignore me and then act like she'd been all worried during the periods when she hadn't spoken to me, I finally said enough is enough and wrote her a note telling her never to speak to me again. I felt like I didn't have any purpose in the world anymore; I didn't know what I wanted to do, I hated everything school related, I was still very upset with my parents for taking me out of high school when I'd finally found a place there, and now I was all alone for the first time since third grade, except for my dog. I wanted very badly to die, but I was too afraid to do anything about it. Pretty much the only things that kept me going were my internet acquaintances and Paku Romi's "Tooi Kioku" album, from which I drew my current 'net handle.
When I was almost 18, my parents told me that I was only allowed to live with them as long as I was working or in school. I tried and failed to find a job locally (I'd never even considered learning to drive, as I had nowhere to go), and nearly ended up killing myself on my 18th birthday, out of an intense feeling of sheer pointlessness in the broad scheme of things. I was still too scared to actually do it, though, and just ended up listening to what I'd planned to be my last song ("Aqua" by Gabriela Robin, from the Earth Girl Arjuna soundtrack) over and over again until I'd cried everything out.
And hey, I'm glad I stuck around. I got my GED and started college, and now I'm taking a bunch of art and design classes to build up a portfolio for actual art school someday when I can afford it. I have a job where I like pretty much everyone I work with, and where I make just enough to keep my car fueled and inching toward being paid off. I get along fine at school, and as a whole, things are pretty awesome right now.
So, to all of you bleeding-heart idiots who martyr every kid who kills himself because he was called a fag one too many times: I don't even want to hear it.
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