A Longing

A memoir based on my past experiences growing up, especially during my junior high years. This was a very difficult time for me emotionally, and I'm sure many of you can relate.

          In my inner fantasia where everyone was pleasant to you so long as you were pleasant to them, anxiety was a byword. The fact that someone could wander through life in a state of such miserable urgency was incomprehensible to me. It wasn't until the fifth grade that I began to develop my own thoughts on who I was; or at the very least, who they thought I was. For years, I was terrified of them. Terrified of what they might do to me, what they might say to me, whether or not their brief utterances among their peers would have the capacity to leave my dignity in shambles.

You see, I’ve never been a girl to stand up. I’ve always been the girl to give in and numbly nod along with the masses, to recede at the very thought of opposition. All along, in retrospect, I was on nothing more than a quest of desperation to be liked.

I wanted nothing more than to fit in with them. They weren’t just feared. They were respected. And oh, how I had longed to be like them.

I tried dressing like them, what with their name brand t-shirts and tight low-rise skinnies. Their thick bedazzled belts, scrunched hair and their large, likely designer totes. Their black kohl eyeliner that smeared and wore off prior to our lunch hour; before we were smart enough to reap the benefits of instead using liquid. Their low cut tops and colorful padded bras whose straps often times slid our from their designated resting place and created a semblance of the ideal femme figure that we all secretly longed to have. 

My inner longings went deeper, still. I longed to be feared. I longed to be the girl that people looked at, studied, and appraised of; boys especially. Oh, those middle school boys. They were immature, gross, and in no stretch of the imagination the type of individuals to partially base one’s self and supposed "constructive" criticism on. 

But we were young and foolish. Fooled into thinking we had what we did not; into daring to think that we had the power within us to decipher ourselves through even the most perplexing situations that life had to offer if we were thin and beautiful; exceeding the socially acceptable criteria of what an attractive girl our age should have looked like. Such unspoken rules implied the rest of the world would surely be at our beck and call, so long as we stuck to them like glue. In this regard, I would much later realize our adolescent pride had clearly gotten the better of us.

 I wish I could have understood sooner. Instead, I wasted years walking on eggshells and let their words dictate my self worth. I'd become an opaque shell of what I could have been, and honestly didn't even know who I was anymore. Looking back, I remember wondering what it would be like to be one of the top girls, to be someone who others cried themselves to sleep at night trying to measure up to and once in a fitful slumber dreamt about having even a short exchange of words with me, friendly or not. Someone whose name would cause lips to quiver at the mere thought of my embodiment. Someone who could make another burst into a blubbering, teary-eyed fit of discontent by the passing of a deadpan and seemingly disproving glance their way. For once in this sorry life, I wanted the tables to be turned.

        The unfortunately reality of the situation was that I was not one of them. I could dream all I wanted about being one of them, but when I came back to earth I sure didn’t appear any different. I was the pariah they giggled about in the halls. The girls whose body, or her hope of one, and her general social awkwardness was the subject of the clamor of the surrounding pubescent voices. The girl who even the teachers seemed to have sympathetic tones for when they spoke to her.

           I was at a loss. I wanted to fit in, yet I also greatly desired recognition for my uniqueness, or my hope for it. Even at the tender age of eleven, I saw that my figure did not measure up to those of the top girls, even if they were the results of push up bras, ridiculous crash dieting, and sometimes, in the case of the slightly older girls, Spanx. I saw that I clearly did not deserve genuine acknowledgment, let alone respect from my fellow classmates.

            I was in the midst of an internal and ongoing feud over the fact that I craved and was drooling for more attention, yet could not muster the strength or the confidence to direct it towards myself. When in the darkness, I could dance the night away. Yet once the unforgiving light was thrust my way, I suddenly couldn’t bear to force my fatigued limbs to produce more than a strangled two-step.

            Why, I constantly thought, can I not fit in? I had tried, though unsuccessfully, and all I’d accomplished was being rendered “important” enough to be whispered about for suddenly scrunching my hair, followed by a low hum of accusations that ranged from “She’s probably doing it because she saw Lindsey wearing it like that the other day,” to “She’s so ugly, why does she even try?”

            It was a sickness, a ravaging disease of the mind. As I grew older, I began to marvel at not just the prospect of being respected and feared, but actually obtaining fame. After a short while, however, I saw that such a life of endless scrutiny in the public eye would not be good for someone who “looked like me.” Again, my inner battle had resurfaced itself like a hideous throbbing blemish on a pearly porcelain complexion.

            Years later, I still wondered how it felt for the feared and respected in this world. How did it feel, I’d ask them in my mind, to get out of bed every day knowing that you’d be reckoned as a force to be one with, surely not against; as such would then lead to a certain social demise? How does it feel to know that you have the power to deeply wound those who even attempt to conspire against you? To know that in all honesty, they were most likely in awe of your very existence, just like the rest of them?

            

Would I ever know?

Only time would tell.

§

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

-

=

Backspace

Tab

q

w

e

r

t

y

u

i

o

p

[

]

Return

capslock

a

s

d

f

g

h

j

k

l

;

'

shift

`

z

x

c

v

b

n

m

,

.

/

shift

English

Deutsch

Español

Français

Italiano

Português

Русский

alt

alt

Preferences

Author's Note

Open to all constructive criticism, any comments on the style or the description are greatly appreciated.

Reviews

[Miranda]

I think the story began to be very heartfelt and touching. Nicely done.