scars

Recently, I've been dreaming about my old school a lot.  It's strange- I hardly ever think of it, except to make jokes about my good Catholic upbringing and the joys of single-sex schooling.  It's a good line, rich mining ground for smiles.

But that's all.

In October, I went up there to see a teacher who used to look after me, in a way, when "things" were bad.  She took me to Lourdes with a group of kids- Group 199- when I was 15 and it gave me a lot of perspective on a lot of things.  It was good to catch up with her after so long.  It was good to go back there with a degree and published poems and a bright future (potentially) looming.  An "up yours" to the doubters and a "thank you" to the people who entertained the hope I could do it.  It was also odd, in the state I was still in back in October, to go back there and feel nothing had moved on.  "You look exactly the same," they said.  And "you're still so slender."  And "the braces worked!"  And "you haven't changed- it's just like it was ten years ago."

I was an odd and contradictory child-adolescent.  Shy, awkward, often desperate for invisibility.  I walked funny because I was scared of walking funny.  I smiled often but blinked too much.  I hated to be alone, convinced I looked weird.  Alone, I was nervous and edgy and clung to the walls.  I wanted the black-and-white tiled floor in the main entrance to swallow me up, blend me in, vanish me.

Then I discovered cutting.  Attention seeker. I discovered wanton vandalism of school property. Badly behaved.  I must admit, I retain a certain pride for the stroke of genius that was the shotput in the toilet.  Oh, come on.  And I won't repent for all the giggling. Another favourite teacher- Latin- wrote on my report that I had "a keen sense for the ridiculous."  Never-mind disruptive.


Attention was the new invisibility.  It started with the discos, actually, even before the cutting.  The two-foot-tall boys from the boys' school, their gelled hair and roving hands.  ("I only snogged her 'cause coloured girls are easy," one said.  "Innit.")  I knew I wasn't special but I knew no-one else would go as far as I would.  I courted awe and disgust, rolled my skirts up after school, got attention from men and smeared my lips a pink that didn't suit my skin.

And where that led.

Invisibility.  Behind all this, the bad behaviour and slipping grades (except in English and Latin); the bloody sleeves and refusal to participate in PE, I felt safe.  I had a group of friends who pretended to be satanists with me- started a spate of trendy wrist-scratching.  Was blamed and helped and finally, hospitalised.

It meant I didn't have to smile so much.  It meant I didn't have to worry that I looked weird.  I knew I was weird.  It meant I was too dizzy to worry about other people.  I didn't eat.  I didn't sleep much.  I was medicated, dulled.  I didn't care.  It was embarrassing, actually, to be discovered post-cut or have to confess to an OD. It was embarrassing to wear clothes meant for women. But it meant no-one saw the awkward little girl inside.

I pulled my grades up.  I'm smart, it's what I've got.  I do well.  I came out and the boy-stuff could finally end.  I discovered alcohol.  Before school, after school, at weekends, in the clubs I got into with my nipples and my false new smile.  I changed school (more Catholics but a local one, with boy-mates and old friends from Primary.)

I'm left with the scars from back then- a disappointment to those close to me and a reminder of what someone can do to herself.

And now I dream about it: PE changing rooms, old friends (I kept just one), corridors.  There were good times as well as bad.

When I went back there were- shock, horror!- non-white kids (I was rare back then.)  Everything, and nothing, had changed...