Back in First Grade, I was really proud of my ability to read. I loved it, and really felt good about it. Of course we were all still learning, but I was the type of kid to want to learn spelling lists before we were supposed to get to them (got a teacher's aide in trouble for giving me the next week's list early because I wanted to learn). So when we were given an opportunity to show off what we had learned, how far in our reading we had progressed, I was excited. We were going to read a book together as a class in front of our parents in the gym. Sheep in a Jeep. I still remember the title. The teacher had one of those really big copies, so all us students could see the words and read along. So, being excited and proud of this, I told my mom, asked her to come see me do this with the rest of my class. She promised she would make it. That she would get off of work to come see me read with the rest of my class.
So, when she didn't show up, I was heartbroken, I was devastated. I didn't participate I was so distraught. I sat outside the gym on a bench and bawled my eyes out. She didn't even show up late or anything. I heard my classmates reading along just fine inside the gym, and she didn't bother turning up. I'm not stupid, and looking back, I'm sure she got caught up in work and forgot. Happens to all parents, right? But also on looking back, it just seems like the first in a long chain of events that resulted in zero trust in my mother, and an often overwhelming feeling of worthlessness.
In sixth grade, I failed my first class. Health. Yeah, I could blame it on the fact that it was about the kind of changes I was going through, and it was really awkward for me to focus on. Or that while in elementary school, I had some semblance of friends, even if I wasn't really close with anyone, now I had no one. I had zero friends and no idea how to make any. Whatever the case, I failed, and it was ultimately my fault. When report cards came home, and my mom finds out about my F, she doesn't talk to me about or talk to someone else about it discreetly. She gets her sister and goes on a walk, bringing my three siblings and I on this walk on a big bike trail. The four of us are trailing behind, not that I can't hear her telling her sister how I got a "fucking F." Like I couldn't fucking hear her. I get that she was disappointed in me, but I just remembering feeling like the worst person in the world, because who else would be forced to walk while having your crimes so vehemently proclaimed to a relative? Not like I didn't already feel awful and horrible about the whole situation or anything. She couldn't have left the four of us home and gone to talk with her sister? Was it really necessary to humiliate me in front of my siblings as well?
The summer after seventh grade. I had decided I was quitting band. I hated it and I sucked at the trumpet in any case. I was done with it. I told my mom, and she asked me what I was going to do for an elective instead. By seventh grade, I actually had a friend. My only real friend. He was in choir, and so I thought that I could do that too. I tell her I'm thinking of trying choir in eighth grade. She immediately bursts out laughing. At me. Like I've just told the biggest fucking joke. No, more that I am the biggest fucking joke. So, caught extremely off guard and very embarrassed, I laugh too. Because clearly I couldn't have been serious. Clearly it wasn't a matter of trying to find something new, and having a class with my friend.
Since entering middle school for sixth grade, I started swimming competitively. I loved it. It was awesome, and it was mine. My brother had his sports and I finally had mine that I was good at and I liked. Of course, my mom puts all of my siblings in it as well, and they're good at it too, and that's fine. Easy to have us all in the same sport so she doesn't have to drive herself nuts trying to get us everywhere. I can deal with that. This was still something I did first, and finally a physical activity I enjoyed. My younger brother still plays soccer though. He's done it for years, and he'll continue to do it for years. In eighth grade, my last year swimming for the middle school team, I'm excited to be swimming at conference. We had a huge team, and it was co-ed. I was excited to be swimming in the final meet of the year. There was no state competition for middle school. Instead, I get to do warm up for the meet and then am told by my mother that my brother has a soccer game in Denver (probably a good hour, if not longer, drive away). I tell her that I'm staying because I really want to swim. This is important to me. I'll find a ride home if I need to, but I really want to stay and swim. I am instead herded in to the van with my siblings and am shuttled to Denver. Because my brother's sports are more important and come first, and this is clearly some sport that I'm going to give up after this, just like the other sports I tried and didn't like. That it wasn't something I really enjoyed doing. This is, of course, how I feel looking back on it all. Because when we get to where the soccer game is supposed to take place, only then do we find out it's canceled. It wasn't even an important soccer game, just another one placed throughout the season. Not like the end of the year conference swim meet I was forced to miss for absolutely nothing.
Since kindergarten, I knew I wanted to write books. I love the hell out of them, and so growing up I would write stories all the time. Though it took a long time for them to grow beyond the pages given to us by teachers as an upper limit. But eventually our family got a computer, and I eventually got my own. I would get on whatever typing program I knew about at the time, and I would go at it. Throughout middle school and high school I write bigger things, and I was again excited about what I could do. So, when I'd ask my parents to read things, I understood that they'd worked all day and wanted to relax for a while. They'd tell me to leave my stories on the counter in the kitchen, and they'd get to it. I wanted my mom to read them most, because between her and my dad, she seemed like the one who'd actually want to read a story. She'd written her own children's book when she was in college, and she was the probably the one who was the reason for the books on our bookshelf. I'd wake up in the morning, hoping to get some feedback, wanting to know what they thought. But they'd never mention it, and I'd realize over time that my printed out stories never moved from the spot I'd put them on the counter, sometimes over several days. So I'd silently take them down and try with something else, some other story. But the result was always the same. They never talked about it, and they never read them.
There were other events in my growing up, like being told my ideas sucked and were stupid when I tried to add some creativity to a group map project. It was supposed to be an older map, of old sea routes or something. I thought it'd be really clever to draw in a little sea monster or something, because I'd remembered seeing some maps like that having "Here Be Monsters/Dragons" for areas unknown. I thought that'd be a nice touch. Of course I was told it was a stupid idea (thus starting my hatred of group projects). This was just one of the non mother-related times that slowly and subconsciously taught me I was worthless.
Over time I just grew to believe that my ideas, my actions, and just myself, were worthless. Not worth the time to pay attention to, or to be proud of. That it was wrong to be proud of them, because no one cared. "And why would they?" I'd ask myself. It was just me. I'm not worth the effort. No need for anyone to get excited about me.
It's all convened in to the fact that I don't trust my mother with anything about me. Because every time I felt most proud of myself, of who I was, or where I was going, what I was going to try to find out more about myself, she told me that I was worthless. She told me I wasn't worth the effort of caring. So, I eventually stopped feeling pride in my accomplishments and trying new things.
Because clearly, I wasn't worth it.
