Pariah

I'm better now than yesterday. I'll try to continue.

The fifth grade. while I was staying away from school and attempting to elicit some comfort from television, I was also acting out sexually (in a peculiar way). I had two close friends at the time and I sent them a series of letters. I told them I was pregnant with a child by a boy in one of our classes. I have no idea what prompted that. I suppose it was another fantasy that someone somewhere loved me and wished to be part of my family. They never replied to those letters, as I recall. when I finally made my way back to school, those friends were gone. They wouldn't even look at me. Somehow i was not suprised. I was profoundly alone with my depression.

One of my teachers that I'd had when i was 9 was then teaching 5th grade. She called me in to her classroom after everyone else had gone and asked me what was going on. I believed that she was judging me, just like everyone else. I told her that nothing was going on. That's the first time that I remember being angry about the way i was being treated. In retrospect, I think it's possible she was really just trying to be helpful. I was unable to accept help then. There was too much danger associated with telling the truth. My parents were bound to find out if I did and, who knew, maybe the threat of institutionalization might become a reality this time.

There was another little girl who shared the same birthday with me. We had been in school together since the first grade, but we weren't really friends. We had had joint birthday parties before, so her mom called my mom and suggested that we do it again. My mom said okay. She told me that I needed to get a list of people I wanted to invite to the party. I didn't have anyone to invite, having become a social paraiah. But I didn't want to have to tell my mom.

As the time for the party grew closer, I desperately tried to think of a way to get out of going. I may have even floated some trial baloons to see if I could persuade my mom to not make me go. If i did, they didn't work. On the day of the party, my mom drove me over to the girl's house. She had probably five or six friends there. Her mom was surprised that no one was coming to celebrate my birthday. I was miserable. I ate the cake, watched my birthday twin open her presents and got through it all.

I think my mom was puzzled when she found out I hadn't invited anyone, but I doubt that I offered any explanation. I was a precocious and creative child, but I was so emotionally dead at that point that I'm sure I couldn't have come up with an explanation if i'd tried. Besides, what would I have said? "You and dad have screwed up my life so much that I started creating fantasies to help me continue living?" I don't think so.

The year trudged on. I sat by myself in the lunchroom, I stood outside by myself when I got to school early. At some point, I guess I couldn't stand the isolation anymore. I struck up a relationship of sorts with another outcast. She was a very large girl, both in height and weight. That may have been why she was rejected, but I'm not certain. I started hanging out with her during those awful times when I wasn't in a classroom. I somehow felt that I was doing her a favor. I believed that even though I was a pariah, I was less of a pariah than she. Yeah, I know. Creepy. Or maybe just delusional.

I doubt that she liked me any better than I liked her. I invited her over to my house at some point that year. I can't imagine what possessed me to do such a thing. We had moved to another house than the one I lived in when I started fifth grade. (We moved around a lot, but as my mom likes to point out, it was usually just a block away from the last house we lived in.) For some reason, when we moved, we didn't really bring any furniture with us. I recall that there was a television (one of those console types that also had a record player/radio) and a mattress in the living room. We did have a dining room table. I shared my bedroom with my mom, since my dad was sleeping with his (then) wife. (But that's another story for another time.)

The next week, several people came up and asked me why we didn't have any furniture. I don't know what I said, but I didn't invite anyone else over until I was 17. I gave up the pretense of liking the child who was spreading the info around the school. I don't think I ever spoke to her again. It was back to hanging out by myself and hopelessly enduring.