What it's Like to Be Me

What it’s like to be me. Remember primary school? That was cool. At least it was for me. I was nothing special, just a regular primary school kid with a few friends. On sports day though it was different, that was when I ruled the school. Any running race I had, I won. It was the one lap that I loved the most and the one I would get so nervous about, even though I always ended up winning easily. Running was so much fun, I felt so free and as if that was what I was supposed to be doing. I joined an athletics club the summer after primary school finished, the world seemed like such a great place.

Then high school started. With that came my introduction to stress and even worse to bullying. Now I know there are a couple of people in this room that have bullied me, but this is not about me calling you out, getting my revenge or saying how much I hate you. I don’t even hate you. We were all trying to get through high school the best we could whilst dealing with whatever shit each of us was going through. I have no idea what you were going through, and are going through. But this is what was going on for me.

What was my crime that meant that I deserved to be bullied? The colour of my skin and my hair. I am so glad that I am privileged enough to never been a victim of racism, that must be horrific to deal with. Apparently though in high school there is such a thing as too white, my pale complexion came in for a lot of mocking. Then there is my hair, no matter how nice people are trying to be it is not ‘strawberry blonde’, it’s ginger let’s face it. (I got a nice little laugh from the group at this point which settled my nerves a tiny bit). I wonder who decided out of all the different hair colours that ginger is inferior and must be ridiculed? Is it the same in every country? I am sure it’s not, maybe I should do some research and see if there are any countries where they treat redheads as Goddesses. Then there was being skinny. This one was particularly odd coming from girls who spent most of high school worrying about their own weight, quite unnecessarily of course. Spending time laughing at me for being so thin, whilst trying to get thinner themselves must have been a bit of a head fuck for them. Why was I so thin? Just guessing here but maybe it was because I did a lot of running and did not eat too much crap? (Another encouraging bit of laughter). Although many of you found out over the weekend about my obsession with jaffa cakes.

The first few years of high school were pretty shit because of that bullying, but I could handle it, especially with my best friend Fred by my side. For those of you that don’t know, Fred is a girl. At the time I did think the bullying was pretty bad, but I had Fred and my running to get me through. By the end of year nine my running was becoming serious, I was winning regional events against girls my age from all over the county, and I had my own coach that set fitness regimes for me to follow. I was starting to feel like a proper runner, which was really cool, partly because my Dad was obsessed with sport and loved that I could be a professional runner one day. We used to chat for hours when I was a kid about the Olympics and all his favourite middle-distanced runners. The more obsessed I got with running, the more it became the latest things for bullies to pick on. Being good at running somehow became something else to laugh at me for. I love running so much that I did not care about what the haters were saying. It helped me find new friends. There’s Sandi the long jumper – great name for a long jumper. At the regional camps I started to go to I met Brigitte the javelin thrower who is a couple of years older and like my big sister, and Dyanna the four hundred metre runner who is my age and constantly trying to get me to switch from eight hundred, to four hundred metres. Along with Fred they have become my allies in this war that is life.

Just when I thought the bullying was dying down and people were perhaps growing out of it, it got a whole lot worse. At the start of year ten everybody found out that I found other girls attractive when they heard about me having sex with an older girl. Still don’t think either of those things made me a bad person. But in like a day or two it felt like everyone in school knew about that one thing that I did. I found myself longing for the times when I was known for being the skinny, pale, ginger who was a running geek. Instead, I became known as the dyke slut. I was still getting the comments about my appearance, whilst some lads who had never spoke to me started hitting on me all of a sudden. Some girls did too, but always in private. For the rest high school, I was really confused, on the one hand I was this hideous ginger who was too pale and too skinny. And yet I was so impossibly sexy that people could not stop hitting on me. Maybe they were hitting on me because they thought I was easy, but my ego prefers the impossibly sexy theory. (I got a little bit of laughter at that point but I think many of them were too concerned about how serious this talk was getting, to laugh).

Then came prom. I know you all know about what happened. Even though most of you are polite enough not to mention it. Yes, the rumours that spread all over Carlisle quicker than wild fire are true. Should I have done it? Probably not. Am I proud of it? No. But did I make anybody do anything that that did not want to do? No. I know have been called all sorts of hideous names after that in group chats and messages all over the City. Maybe I deserved some of it. I do wonder how many things were said about the two lads? They were the ones that cheated on someone that night.

I have become known as an angry girl, especially by adults in my life, but virtually none of them ever seem to stop to ask why I am so angry. I am not angry about the bullying. Okay I am a little bit angry about the bullying. But the main thing I am angry about is my Dad. Not angry at him, but about him. He’s got Alzheimer’s. I don’t know how many of you know anything about that horrible disease. If any of you know anybody with it, then I feel for you. I am guessing if you do know anyone it will be a grandparent. We expect it to be someone really old. But this is my Dad. My super-hero. The person who got me into running and the person I still run for now, even though he has no clue when I am running anymore or what races I am running. Most of the time he doesn’t even know my name anymore or that I am his daughter. (At this point I starting choking up.) I am sure having a parent die must be horrendous. But this is a bit like watching him die every day. If he doesn’t think, talk or act the same, he isn’t my Dad anymore is he? People tend to have heard of Alzheimer’s but maybe not know too much about it. I have done loads of research on it, and to sum it up, it’s shit. Really, really shit. All the cool chats that we used to have, will never happen again and all the chats I was looking forward to having with him as I got older will never happen. I won the eight hundred metres national title last summer, he was only there because Mum had made him go. He had no idea what race I had just won and why it was such a big deal for me or even that I had won at all. If I ever achieve my dream of an Olympic medal, I will have him to thank, but he won’t understand what I am saying.

On Prom night I came downstairs in my dress. Mum made a few comments about it being too short and too tight, but that I looked good. She had to tell Dad to say something, but all he said was to ask why I was so dressed up. When I told him that it was my prom, he just laughed and said no it was not. Even if he did believe I was his daughter, he must have thought that I was only about eleven or twelve years old. So, I went to that prom angry as if my heart and soul had just been ripped out. Some comments from girls who I had heard plenty from throughout high school made me even angrier and I did not give a shit about anything anymore. That’s not an excuse for what I did, but it was a reason.

I am not telling you all this to feel sorry for me. I just want all of us to think about what might be going on for other people before we rush to judge them negatively. I have not even told you everything that is going on for me. Maybe the next time you mock someone, laugh at hearing somebody else mocking them or pass on a rumour you will catch yourself just in time and stop. Thanks for listening to what it’s like to be me.

To buy my novel about this character Raven, follow this link:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0D4VL81V6