I can I know

“I don’t remember feeling truly miserable until I started school at 5 years old.” – me, today.

September, 1996.

I was 5.5 years old. My brand-new, carefully chosen, pink and purple backpack was almost as big as I was. I had never been to school before.

I tried to pack my favorite doll for my first day, but my mom said we weren’t supposed to do that. I might lose her. I knew I wouldn’t, I wasn’t a kid who lost things.

I was excited. I had high hopes for school, and I wanted to have friends so badly. I didn’t know yet that that wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t know yet that I wasn’t like other kids.

My mom drove me to school. I didn’t ride the bus.

I tried to talk to my new classmates, but the words wouldn’t come out. Over the next few days, as my anxiety built, I promised myself that I would talk to the kids. I would bring my dolls and toys to school anyway, even if we’re not supposed to, because I needed something to help me have a reason to speak.

I tried as hard as I knew how to.

It did not work.

I was too quiet.

I don’t know if it was a few days, a week, or a month. But I very quickly learned that I was going to be alone.

I became stuck.

And I couldn’t get out.

I wonder, had someone stepped in to help me back then, would my life have gone very differently?

But no one did. And I’ll never know.

I played with the toys. I colored carefully, only in the lines. I used all the colors, and was told I was an artist.

Sometimes, I tried to play with the other kids by copying them. I remember pretending to spill glue on another girl’s head, as she had just done to someone else. The teacher told me no. I cried.

Grownups didn’t understand me. Kids didn’t care. And nobody ever asked.

I was miserable.

I cried a lot. I didn’t want to, so I spent a lot of energy trying not to. But once I started, it was game over for the day. I cried, but I didn’t speak. At home, yes, but not at school. What do you do with that? At my school, they chose to ignore.

I couldn’t handle the separation from my mother. I was lost without her, and having spent the first 5.5 years of my life with her at my side every single day, I don’t think it quite showed before. But suddenly, it was out in full force.

One night my mom had to go out, leaving me and my 2 siblings with our dad. This was a rare occasion, him watching us. Nobody was happy about it.

To make the time pass, he played a board game with us. My brother and sister sat at the small round table in the hallway of our apartment and set up the little colored plastic rings. I stood at the front door and shouted my little throat out, screeching at the top of my lungs and banging and kicking the metal door with everything in me for the next hour and a half until my mom came home.

Then, I went silent.