my mom drove a Buick, Amy, leave me alone

We did not have very many conflicts during our friendship. She wasn’t really inclined toward conflict of any kind, which it turns out is not a trait I can work with in a close friend. I need people to tell me directly when I’ve done something that hurts them, and I need people to listen to me when I do the same.

But during one of the two conflicts we had, she said to me, “I don’t understand how you have such low self-esteem.”

I was shocked. Low self esteem? Me? I sat there for a minute, then said, “I don’t think I do? Have low self-esteem?”

“Then why do you never think anyone wants to spend time with you? And why do you assume such bad intentions of people that are supposed to care about you?”

I didn’t know the answer then, but I think I do now.

When I was in elementary school, I begged my parents to buy me Guess brand jeans.

At the beginning of fourth grade, my family had moved to a bigger house in a nicer neighborhood. The elementary school my sister and I now attended was much fancier than the old one. The dropoff line in front of this school in the mornings was long, full of parents dropping off their kids instead of making them ride the bus (we only lived a block from school so we walked).

The new kids were bullies. Evan and Lucas were my seat mates and they would open up paperclips and poke me with the ends, even though we sat right in front of the teacher. I asked her if I could move seats and she said no.

I would find sticky tack mashed in my hair. When I got a short haircut I was called Alison Afro for months. Lucas and his friends would kick me off the swings at every opportunity.

The new kids came from wealthy families, and they were obsessed with the clothes they wore. Specific kinds of jeans and shoes and purses and backpacks were fashionable, while others would get you made fun of.

One day Amy asked me what kind of car my mom drove. I didn’t know what she meant or why she was asking, but I knew that on the back of my mom’s car near the trunk it said BUICK on one side and JOE GRILLO on the other. “She drives a Joe Grillo!” I said confidently, not realizing that Joe Grillo was the name of the car dealer. Amy laughed me off the playground and told everyone what I had said.

I became vigilant. Before I said anything in class I interrogated every single word I was planning to say, turning each one over in my mind to see if I could anticipate how it would be mutated into an insult by one of my peers. I let my short haircut grow long and kept it in a ponytail to minimize my curls. I gently rattled each chair and desk I sat at in advance to make sure that when I sat down it wouldn’t make any kind of sound that could be interpreted as a fart. Every day after school I checked my hair for gum and my backpack for mean anonymous notes.

I examined the habits and fashions of all the girls at school. My parents had wisely refused to buy $100 jeans for their 10 year old, so if I couldn’t dress in the brands of clothes the other kids wore, I could at least tuck my shirt in like theirs, roll my jeans up the same way, wear the same type of scrunched up socks with my Keds.

It didn’t work. The name calling kept on. The “you can’t sit here” kept on. The paperclips kept poking me in the arms.

One night William Anderson called me on the phone. I’d never had a boy call me in my life, especially not a fifth grader. “Will you go out with me?” he said.

Shocked, I quickly said “No!” and hung up the phone.

I called my friend Nancy to tell her, and she said that William Anderson had called and asked her out too! We talked about it for hours and concluded that he must like both of us and wanted to see which one of us would be his girlfriend. Nancy had said yes, so it would be her. I bravely conceded.

I pretended to be sick the next day¹ , too nervous that I would face attention from other students who had heard what happened. William was a popular boy, but I didn’t like attention, how quickly it could turn on you.

You can guess what happened. Nancy called me after school and told me that one of William’s friends had called every unpopular girl in the fourth and fifth grade directories and asked them out on his behalf. When Nancy had arrived at school that day, William was adrift in a sea of girls.

I’ll concede that this is a pretty solid prank if you don’t think about anyone’s feelings. These days I think it’s sort of funny. But it served its purpose at the time. I was reminded of where I stood.

I was consistently bullied like this from 4th-9th grade. Every day at school was a horrifying Russian roulette of interactions with my peers, in which I never knew if they were being genuine or if they would suddenly explode into mocking laughter when I said something I’d thought wholly innocuous. I contemplated suicide.

I had friends. Some of them were bullied too, and some weren’t. Some of them turned around and bullied me later. But having friends didn’t seem to prevent the mocking from the popular kids, who as best I could tell were popular because they were wearing a specific brand of shirt. Whatever brand it was, it was way too expensive for my parents to buy it for me so I could become invisible.

All I wanted was to be invisible.

Things got better through high school. It was a bigger school so there were lots of different crowds, and you seemed to be able to make friends with people wearing different clothes than you were with no problem (cheerleading and football uniforms excepted). I worked at a grocery store in another school district and made friends with a bunch of kids from a different high school, who didn’t know about Alison Afro or the time I farted in class or whatever.

I grew up.

I wonder sometimes what the bullies saw in me. My barely-developed brain looked at everyone’s fancy clothes and decided that that was the dividing line between the popular and the bullied, but now I don’t think it was, not entirely. There was a girl named Lacy whom everyone in 4th grade loved, and she wore secondhand clothing.

I think they knew, years before I did, that I was different. They saw that the socializing that came easy to them didn’t to me. They saw that I didn’t understand their jokes or taunts. They noticed how quiet I’d become, how I never met anyone’s eyes.

They knew.

My secret is that at 46 I have pretty high self esteem. Listen, I think I’m fucking rad as hell. I’m very funny, I have great style, I’m creative, I care about people and the world around me, and when I care about something I give it my all. I can learn how to make anything with my hands. I’m smart as hell.

But I’m still hypervigilant about social interaction. I watch everyone I meet for signs that they might not like me. I never, ever assume my presence is wanted in any social situation, no matter how well I know the people. If someone hurts my feelings I have a hard time giving them the benefit of the doubt. When I don’t understand a joke or reference, I ask about it, and as people explain I watch their faces carefully for signs of scorn.

None of this is because I have low self-esteem. My brain is not tricking me or lying to me, and when people tell me that to reassure me that my fears are unfounded (people love to say stuff to depressed people like “your brain is being a liar!!!!”), it makes me angry. I’m not like this because my brain is a liar or because I don’t think I’m good enough. I’m like this because this has all happened before.

Adults don’t always bully the same way that kids do, they have different tactics. But the Amys and Lucases of the world will still laugh at you for saying the wrong thing and then find a way to kick you off the swings. You can still wear the wrong outfit.

Such is life.

1 I pretended to be sick a lot, so I was an expert at this.