THE 5TH GRADE INCIDENT
Oh, friend. Bear with me on this one. It’s still a bit of a hard truth to speak, but it’s important to my story.
My dad took a job at a Navy base outside of Memphis, Tennessee and my family found themselves moving from Chesapeake, Virginia to Millington, Tennessee. Having spent most of our time on the coast, I was, frankly, amazed by the amount of wide open corn fields.
At the time, Millington was pretty rough around the edges. The elementary school I was attending was tiny with only 2 5th grade classes. My brother was at the middle school and my sister was just in 3rd grade, so I was pretty well on my own and I stuck out like a sore thumb in more ways than 20. For starters, 98% of these students had been going to daycare and school together since they were in diapers. Immediately I was “the new girl”…like, literally the only one…and the transition didn’t go well.
I made friends, sure. If you’ve read my story, this was right in the chameleon wheelhouse. I joined Girl Scouts and enjoyed my time with my troop. I eventually had a 5th grade crush object/boyfriend named Andrew.
But I clearly wasn’t from around the area, I was smart and nerdy which earned me the label “teacher’s pet” and made me stick out even more. For a multitude of reasons, most of my classmates resented me, but one in particular took offense to my existence.
One particular day, the teacher called on him and he didn’t know the answer. She called on me next even though I wasn’t raising my hand, but I got the answer right.
Immediately after, she got called to the office to take a phone call and, upon her absence, I felt this particularly offended student behind my back. He wrapped my hands around my neck and squeezed and soon the dots started dancing in front of my eyes. I woke up on the floor just in time for the teacher (who I really loved) to hustle back into the room. She asked if I was okay and why I was on the floor.
I’m a chameleon at this point, remember? A people-pleasing, don’t-upset-the-apple-cart-er. So what did I do? I told her I dropped my pencil and fell out of my seat trying to reach it. Our classes were small, but not so small I was nearby her for her to physically see anything amiss. None of my classmates said anything. I didn’t go home and tell my parents. I didn’t want to move again, didn’t want to exacerbate the “teacher’s pet” bit by getting anyone in trouble, you know the drill.
He ended up getting expelled later that year due to some other charges about harassing another girl in my class. Everybody was glad he wouldn’t be back, but no one more than me.
Why does that story matter? Well, I was a girl and experiences shape us - especially experiences that go unresolved.
I felt alone, like I had to handle things for myself (My parents would have stepped in had they known. They didn’t until I was at least 24.)
It ingrained somewhere in my subconscious that if I stick out, I will definitely be judged and bad things will happen, so I stuck to the wings and stayed behind the curtain. Do I believe that’s true? Of course not, not now that I’m an adult and have learned how to process heavy things, but this was a piece of heavy life luggage that I was toting around in my subconscious that was skewing my few of my present, my future, my confidence, and my potential.
THIS is why we have to do the excavating work. This is why it’s worth it. Free yourself from the past pain that isn’t serving your present and future. I’m here for you.
It’s also why we shouldn’t give a single damn about what people think our life is like looking at it from the outside or why WE shouldn’t assume we know what others are going through by looking at them from the outside.
If you’d like to begin to learn the tools I used to heal and the tools I still use in my daily life to conquer even the largest of goals and mountains, learn more here.
With all my love,
Beth
