Depression Talk

In line with my last post, I’m not really sure what made, or makes, me different than my peers.

When I was younger, I used to bound into a room, owning it, on top of the world. No one could ever knock the giant, goofy smile off my face, and I was forever hollering out to anyone anywhere about whatever was on my mind.

I’m not sure what set me apart from the other kids in my grade. I’ve never dressed like any normal person would ever dress. I’ve always been a jeans and T-shirts kind of girl, and while my peers were experimenting with padded bras and makeup, I was more worried about writing, horseback riding, and the people I knew outside of school. I’ve forever worn hand-me-downs from my brothers and now I actually make it a point to steal their clothing whenever I get a chance.

I’m not sure if it means that I am incredibly confident in who I am, or if it means I am just that socially unaware, but I’ve rarely ever given two thoughts to my appearance. I am generally clean, as is my clothing, and beyond that, don’t expect too much. I’ve always had that ‘take me as I am’ attitude and I’ve always figured that if people were going to hang out with me, it wouldn’t be because of the super posh outfit I wore that day. Perhaps that is where I fell apart socially.

I never really thought that my attitudes and my constant exuberance would interfere with my social life. And yet, in the sixth grade, I started to be different than the other kids. They were interested in ‘going out’ with each other, they were interested in social drama and gossip about the others in the class. I was still interested in the same things I’d always been: Music, riding my horse, my favorite TV shows and on and on. Perhaps that made me immature, or perhaps I was JUST SO MATURE that they couldn’t handle me any more. I like to think it was the latter, although I do hope that not being interested in the same things as your peers is not what makes you mature or not.

I started the seventh grade the same way, at a new school. I figured that my loudmouthed self would get along wonderfully at the new school, that I would meet a whole circle of new friends and that the sixth grade horror would have ended.

But it didn’t.

I hesitate to post here exactly what it was that I went through. I was only ever physically bullied once. I didn’t bother to tell anyone except my older brothers. My brother thought that perhaps my arm had been sprained or broken and so he wrapped me up in a tensor and we didn’t bother to tell my parents. (In hindsight, that was pretty stupid because the school then wondered if perhaps I had initially hidden my glaring bruises and welts because my parents had caused them. That was a whole big mess. Ugh.)

I suppose that the worst thing about it was that people were so loud about it. To this day, I have the attitude that if you don’t want to hang out with someone, if you don’t want to be friends or whathaveyou, to just move on. But people wouldn’t. They were as loud and obnoxious with their comments and their put-downs as I used to be with my attitude towards everything.

So, I did what I could. I stopped talking to people. I quit answering in class. I did what I could to be unnoticed at all times, regardless of anything else. I learned how to draw up into myself so that I wouldn’t hear what people were saying, or notice what they were doing. I went with my Walkman everywhere I went. I never did my homework so that I could have detention and not have to go outside at recess.

I suppose that made me different in and of itself as well.