I was...nine. Well, it started when I was eight, but I was nine for most of the school year. An advanced student. The one they moved up early.

I was in a Montessori school, so we learned in three-year groupings. I had transferred in as a second-year elementary student, but given third-year work. The following year, the administrators advanced me to the upper elementary class as a fourth-year, and my teacher was giving me fifth-year work. So I was a third-grader in fourth doing fifth, and the girls in my class didn't like that.

It was worse because I was super social. I was friends with most of the school and basically all of the teachers and adults. The girls in my class, all of them at least a year or two older than I was, didn't like that either. I didn't understand at the time what it meant when my mom said they were scared of my 'charisma'. Looking back, they were just upset I was more popular than they were, and therefore did exactly what stereotypical preteen bully girls do: shunned me.

Led by the girl with the richest parents, hereafter referred to as the queen bee, I was completely closed out. None of the girls wanted to go against her; the one who tried, I was wary of as she was the queen bee's best friend. They wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't work with me unless they absolutely had to, wouldn't sit with me or even near me, wouldn't eat with me... as an elementary schooler, it was devastating.

I've never been what most people would call normal. I was homeschooled for two years before entering Montessori and never had any siblings, plus we moved too much for any long-term friendships. I have never really used social media unless Prose counts. I haven't had television service since I was six. My only big hobby was and still is reading. So to my classmates, I was weird. I didn't fit in. I was a threat to the queen bee's perfect little kingdom.

But because I'm a stubborn twit who was determined to be herself (at least somewhat) and also because I didn't really understand the situation, I didn't even try to fix it. I was friendly, but that made it worse, so I said f*** it (or rather, the fourth-grade equivalent). I carried books to school, did every assignment that could be completed solo. I was fine, academically, and I wasn't bored, but I was lonely. That was the first time I discovered that it's possible to be lonely in a room full of people.

It worsened over time. The boys couldn't have cared less about the girls' war; they talked and joked and worked with me just fine, but they were preteens and immature and got awkward at random moments, and I was nine and didn't understand why. They were also obsessed with video games, most of which I had never heard of. (Even years later, I would really appreciate it if I never have to hear the word 'Minecraft' again.) My crush was being shunned by the boys and I was being shunned by the girls, and I was too scared to stand up for him or myself. As it turns out, for as much as I was a headstrong child, I didn't really like conflict then either.

Slowly, I retreated. I began to avoid the tables where people formed groups, choosing to find a stool and a corner where people would leave me alone. I would eat at the table that only held two people, with no hope that anyone would join me. I became a ghost-like presence, the phantom that just happened to be taking up that seat. My teachers either couldn't act or didn't. My parents fought about whether or not to pull me out, and decided to have me finish the year.

Bad decision.

I ended the year with almost no self-confidence, but a greater sense of self-reliance and knowledge that I could, in fact, complete assignments perfectly well with no assistance. Ironically, I was also more attached to my few friends than I had ever been before. I became clingy and prickly simultaneously in a strange duality.

These days, I'm only the headstrong, social person I was as a child when I'm with only my family or closest friends. I've regained some of my confidence, but now it comes in the form of 'I don't give a s***' and ignoring people entirely. I've not come out of ghost form, really. I just function better within it. (To use video game terms I've since learned, I kept the skill and outgrew the debuff.)

I don't know if I actually answered the prompt, since I can't really consider that a maturity shift or a sudden growing-up moment, but that's the biggest shift I've had.

3rd grade, I’m on top of the world. I have 4 good years of becoming best friends with some of the greatest friends I’ve had, I’m comforted in a school that sits only blocks away from my house so I begin to ride my bike to school. I’m happy.

I’m the fucking king.

4th grade comes, and I’m no longer a fucking king. I’m placed in a of 1,600 kids. All of my friends are split between different classrooms, different places. I don’t know anyone around me, and the kids are so goddamn loud and obnoxious. On the bus to the first day of school, some kid 2 years older than me punches my seat and the shot vibrates through my backpack into my spine. I’m terrified, I’m car sick, and the smell of gasoline is blocking out all sunshine. I’m miserable.

I get to school. They have me sit in a gym full of 1,600 kids. We’re placed in our respective sections, classes. I know little to anyone. I see a friend across the gym. Sunshine. I wave out to them. Nothing, they don’t see me. I yell out to them, and I’m a loud fucking kid. They can’t hear me. All these other kids, all 1,600 of them, they’re as loud as I am, and while I’m trying to reach out for that one friend I knew, the one kid that I could talk to and be happy around, all 1,600 of these kids around me are making new friends. They’re talking and laughing and yelling and they’re happy. And with all this noise around me, I shrink. My voice isn’t heard. I’m a small child new to this big intermediate school and no one cares. I am, perhaps for the first time in my life, silenced.

I get to class. I get a teacher on her last year before retirement. She’s hard on me like she is with everyone, and she makes the class, while not even being an advanced class, more difficult than need be so that our 5th grade year is easy. She carries that philosophy with her, that everyday she teaches, she‘s teaching a class that will learn to understand all subjects at a 5th grade level by the end of the year, and she was damn good at it. Truth is, I needed a teacher like her. I didn’t need someone that would bullshit me and coddle me when I was anxious. I needed someone to pull the reigns, force me to continue on and keep me in check. A happy-go-lucky teacher could make me happy but would never be able to fix how goddamn anxious I was.

School was hell. It took only 3 days for my first meltdown. And this meltdown happened in front of everyone. One moment I was fine, and the second I got thinking back to 3rd grade when I had all my people, I just let it all out. All the stress and the anxiety, everything. Poof. I had never felt that before. I had never, to that point, been so utterly terrified and so anxious all at once. I had cried in front of people before but not let out all of my emotions in front of a group of people I didn’t know and didn’t feel comfortable around. Absolute misery.

I started getting sick about 2 weeks into the school year. Morning after morning I’d throw up. I don’t throw up because I wanted to and it wasn’t because I was trying to. I became so anxious and stressed that out of the pressure, I’d just throw up. And we didn’t know it at first. My parents thought something was wrong with me somehow, and we didn’t understand, I included, that I was throwing up due to stress, and so I spent a lot of the first quarter of school in the hospital with IV’s in my arm. Through my time in the hospital that year, I probably had at least 10 IV’s, if not much more. I got pumped full of electrolytes and good shit for my body, but I continued to throw up. I was so scared and I was in a building 7 hours each day that I’d rather die than go back to. I couldn’t stop crying.

When the throwing up stopped, the crying continued. It got so bad that during the month of October that year, I got strep throat 3 times in a tow. I’d get it, it’d go away, and then I’d get it right back again. More hospital time, more ridicule. When I was out of school they were all probably laughing at me. The crybaby kid giving himself strep. Doctors told me if I got strep one more time by the end of November they were going to have my tonsils removed. I wanted it, I wanted to be out of school. When November hit, it was like I was incapable of getting it again. The tonsils stayed in and I immediately had to go back.

My 4th grade teacher was no angel, but she was a saint. She started up a deal with me; everyday I went without crying, I’d get a can of Barq’s Root Beer. Root Beer was and is my favorite soda of them all, and she utilized that to get me out of it. She cared for me. She wasn’t going to baby me and wrap me up in swaddling clothes but she was going to set me straight, one can of that root beer at a time. I ended up getting 2 cans, that was all she allowed me, and when she rewarded me with my second can, she told me the deal was off. She said now it was time I continued on without tears, do not be afraid. She told me I could continue to sit in her classroom at lunch so I wouldn’t have to hear people talking about me in the lunchroom, that was my reward. I relied on it.

I learned fast that shell I had was gone, and what a shell it was. Most people are protected by their ability to fend for themselves and survive in the climate they find themselves in. I had to break into that state of being. Until 4th grade, I had been coddled. My childhood magic was made up of parental love and the idea that life would always be happy and loving and exciting, and in the flash of a light, it wasn’t. Life was cruel and school was full of people who were growing older and closer while I remained fixated on the past, leaving me vulnerable. I needed an inward ability to laugh at myself, laugh at situations, and find my personality in the moments of despair. It came, finally.

4th grade, I was assigned to an old, rusty locker that barely opened up for anyone, and more often than not, my bus had to wait on me before leaving because I couldn’t get my locker to open. Some times they would leave me, and when that happened, my mom would get a call and she’d have to come to the school and pick me up, and I was so embarrassed. But one day was different, and that one day changed me.

It was time to leave, and my locker of course, wouldn’t fucking open. Try after try of the combination, no luck. I had to tell my teacher, but man, I didn’t want to. It had been a good day though, that day, and so I went back to that classroom with a defeated, yet smiling face on, and with a chuckle, I said, “Mrs. LaTour, you’re not gonna believe this but my locker isn’t opening again!” And I laughed. I fucking laughed. I had never laughed at myself before, never found the happiness of a misfortune, but there I was, and goddamnit, I was smiling. And Mrs. LaTour, she stood there and she smiled, and she knew immediately I had gotten somewhere.

4th grade was never easy. Even after I stopped throwing up and crying, it was still a hard year for me, and halfway through April of that year, my family moved away and I had to start brand new at a new school where everyone was talking about me all over again. And I was scared, and slightly anxious, of course, but I tell you what. I wasn’t crying when I stepped foot in that new school. I was thinking of Mrs. LaTour. I thought about that time I laughed when my locker wouldn’t open, and when I stepped my right foot into that school for the first time, you best believe I was smiling.

Goddamnit, I was really smiling.

XI.

I've always hated the number eleven. From a young age I'd dreaded that vile number, dreaded the birthday where it would become attached to me like a parasite for 365 days.

Turns out my fears weren't entirely unfounded. A self fulfilling prophecy? Maybe. Or perhaps 11 was merely planted in my brain as a warning, a cautionary tale of the year that would send me spiraling.

When you're a kid, hyperactivity is amusing. And when it comes in the form of a straight-a student reading young adult novels in his first grade classroom instead of paying attention, you might dismiss it as cute. Maybe you even see it as a good thing, a habit to be carefully cultivated and encouraged.

Sixth grade teachers find it much less amusing. Especially when you forget to turn in your work.

I did the work. Painstakingly filled out each and every multiple choice question, regurgitated answers to questions like a fucking machine. And spent countless nights, like my ancestors before me, crying over math problems at the kitchen table while my father tried and failed to offer aid.

I just forgot to turn it in. Left it in my color-coded binders to collect dust while my report card collected zeroes.

And while my parents tried their best, my memory of these years have been obscured by "you're better than this" and "it's not that hard" combined with intermittent screaming matches, unhealthy friendships, and a lingering feeling of disappointment like humid air clinging to your forehead, right at your hairline, where it feels impossible to wipe away.

When I was diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and ADHD, I shed my skin for the first time. Exposed the raw, fragile skin underneath, only half formed and easily split, easily severed.

For the first time, people began to see through my crumbling facade. I had become translucent, a waxy shell the only barrier between the outside world and my internal organs, still churning away despite my best efforts.

I thought I was done. I'd finally ascended out of that childhood innocence and into the apathy of adulthood, the suffering that forms the rite of passage to maturity.

Yeah. Not quite.

XIII.

I never had much love for the number 13 either. However, I have always been emboldened by claims of unluckiness. Black cats, or broken mirrors, for example. I'd actively seek them out, in order to challenge superstitions. To this day I'm not sure how I feel about my transition into my teenage years, but I do know that the age of 13 marked my transition in another kind of way.

I had begun to feel increasingly uncomfortable with my body, and with my name, and didn't yet know the vocabulary to describe the word "transgender." Until, of course, my crush of three years, announced that they were transgender.

I lost touch with them after that year, so I don't know how their journey is going. But I know that the introduction of that concept created something inside of me, a burning quest for answers. WHO AM I?

I still don't know. But at 13, I began a new journey of self discovery and shed my skin one more time, letting go of my paper-thin, scarred exoskeleton and growing a new shell, one that fit me much better. It's a shell that's still growing, still forming around me even now.

I'm not sure what I did with the skins I've shed over the years. Perhaps I have forgotten them in a box somewhere. Perhaps I flushed them down the toilet. Perhaps they were confiscated and thrown out, like the countless twisted paperclips that became weapons of self-destruction in my hands. Perhaps I have willed them into nonexistence, buried them in a now-forgotten plot of land for some distant future relative of mine to unearth as they dig through archives of faded photographs and distorted memories to find the truth between them. Perhaps they exist in millions of other who are just like I was, just searching for a skin that was a little more resistant to verbal abuse and out of synch DNA. And what happens when we all shed our skins? Well, what happens to a butterflies chrysalis after they emerge? It is left behind, decomposed and sent back into the bowels of the earth, and we ascend to a new journey, waiting until the time when we shed our skin for the last time, and leave something beautiful behind in our wake.

my skin was battered and bruised

I kept it on as long as I could

scared to reveal what was underneath

for fear of finding something worse

one day I was struck

my skin tore

I picked at the wound

pulled back the edges

what i saw was not only beautiful

but terrifying

I stitched myself up

an attempt to keep my outside together

after poking and prodding

mending and repairing

it all fell apart

I had shed my skin

and stored it away to look back on

today I disposed of it

for I no longer need it

Realization is the worst way to have to "grow up"

I was in elementary school when I found out that people can stab you in the back.

I was middle school when I found out that friends can tear you down in an instant, with no regret.

I was middle school when I found out that it is hard to build yourself back up after someone close to you has torn your down.

I was a in high school when I realized that you can fall for the same awful trap twice.

I was in high school when I realized that maybe "Blood is thicker than water" isn't always the saying to live by.

I was in high school when I realized that people can be gone in an instant, and there is nothing I can do about it.

I was in high school when I realized that the religion I was in lied to me about a lot.

I was in high school when I realized that I wasn't straight.

I was in high school when I realized that sometimes family doesn't always mean no one gets left behind or forgotten.

I was in high school when I realized that you have to fight tooth and nail for everything.

I was in high school when I realized that my letter grade meant more to some people then I did.

With every realization, I had to grow up. I had to shed my metaphorical skin.

Now I display that skin in an effort to show others why they should be kind, why they shouldn't destroy other people, why they should notice others.

I show it to tell people that I care, that I will hear them, because I know what it is like to to be heard, not to be cared for. I know what it is like to feel like you are not even on the sidelines anymore, but instead on a completely different planet.

But I also hide it. I don't want everyone to see what I have been though, I don't want people to judge me and tell me that I have "Daddy issues" I don't want people to tell me that I am overreacting, or being to sensitive.

So I share online and though stories,

that way I can share with people, and they won't attach the things I say to my name, but a pin name. I wont have to go up to someone and say "This is who I am and this is what I have been though!" and watch them judge.

We all thought Shawn Kiely was sex in a Speedo the summer of ’87. Adults openly clucked tongues while whispering about the Adonis on the local pool swim team.  We were less subtle; when he walked by the lounge chairs, still wet and glistening in the golden light of late morning, girls would close their eyes and take a long, slow breath, trying to capture his sweet smelling skin over the chlorine; boys would watch too, with mixed parts of jealousy, awe, and a hidden desire to be him or naked next to him in the shower, pulling the cheap white plastic curtain shut, ignoring the metal scraping as the grommets screech across the rod, if only for a brief, tangy, mind-melting kiss. Yet he was either unaware, uninterested, or unwilling. By summer’s end, we came despite brutal heat for one last glance, sigh, and poolside fantasy before the first sprout of hair on his shaven legs popped out, heralding the end of our time with the sensuality that remained ephemeral and palpable.

(trigger warning for mention of mental illness etc)

I watch her smile too wide

I watch her leave the house in just torn tights and a fluffy black jacket

I watch her as she twirls through the street with a can in hand

I watch her cry until she has to change the pillow

I watch her insult some 14 year olds back

I watch her lay in bed until she cries from the hunger pains

I watch her sneak a weighing scales into our house

I watch her spend all day at the skatepark

I watch her talk to people she doesn’t like

I watch her fight with her girlfriend everyday

I watch her flush food down the toilet

I watch her throw up what little food she did eat

I watch her do lines off a self-help book

I watch her hurt herself to the same hyper-pop song everynight

I watch her sneak out of the house at midnight

I watch her meet up with people who just want her drugged

I watch her sit in the CAMHS waiting room with big boots and a bigger scowl

I watch her take antidepressants and antipsychotics

I watch her become more and more numb with every day

I watch her take an OD and fall asleep with the worst pain

I watch her lie to doctors and show her scars when she felt unheard

I watch her long to be so ill that they would hospitalise her

I watch her hit her head off walls and black out, not remembering it when her mother brings it up

I watch her scream at her girlfriend for caring

I watch her romanticise Euphoria and use bad eyeliner

I watch her never sleep and give herself tattoos that she knows she’ll regret

I watch her sit on her windowsill because she liked how it made her friends worry

I watch her destroy herself

I watch her, trapped in the future, thinking if only she knew that her future self cares about her

I watch myself stumble upon that same hyper-pop song and have honest to god flashbacks

I watch myself hear the name of the meds and have even more flashbacks

I watch myself have to take the same OD substance and have yet another flashback

I watch myself start to have compassion for my teenager

I watch myself defend her, she was just so angry and so sad

I watch myself recognise that she made so many mistakes

I watch myself grow, while leaving room for her to stomp around

I watch myself move away from the half closed blinds