Note: I've been working on this part of the memoir for several weeks, and I think it's finally ready to be posted here. I'm still not finished with it, but I'll get there. You'll notice it gets progressively more detailed as I go through the grades, because my memories get fresher and more vivid. And the parts that are boring are supposed to feel that way, because I was bored during those parts of my life. Also, it's very long, so I don't expect us to get through it all in just a few meetings. 

School has been my enemy almost since day one. Before 3rd grade, I was actually pretty excited about going to school. I attended school for only half of the day, from 8 AM until lunchtime, when I was in preschool and kindergarten, and then for a full day for most of the rest of grade school. I don’t really have many vivid memories of my life in elementary and early middle school. I have some, but not many. Most of my memories are fuzzy little clips of my life, which makes writing about my earlier childhood difficult.

I don’t exactly know why I only have a few memories here and there of my life before I turned 12 years old, but I have my theories, one of which being that my upbringing was too traumatic for my brain to want to remember. I’m not denying the fact that I have a large and deeply loving family, but they weren’t the ones making life difficult for me. I was going through hell in other ways, which is why my brain chose to forget most of my childhood.

Living with Cystic Fibrosis is already a challenge most people couldn’t handle. Living with divorced parents makes it harder. Dealing with hard-to-get-along-with family members is even harder. And to top it all off, I was bullied for most of my time at school, not just by the students, but by a few of my teachers as well.

School has been more of a giant black hole rather than a stepping stone to success, at least to me. I had to learn how to learn despite school. When I got sick, often for weeks at a time, I’d fall behind, and catching up fell onto my shoulders. I did end up catching up in knowledge, but I had to develop my own ways of thinking and learning to understand two or three weeks worth in material in a single class period. This drove many of my teachers crazy. Most of them decided to just deal with it, and brushed it under the rug.

During parent-teacher conferences, the teachers often brought it up to my parents, which actually prompted my mom to put me through a series of intelligence and psychological tests when I was around 7 or 8 years old. I don’t know exactly what came from those tests, but my mom told me I had a genius IQ in many places, which labeled me twice-exceptional in school. I was also diagnosed with something related to Hypoxia, which is something I had when I was a newborn. Hypoxia occurs when parts of the brain don’t get enough oxygen, and if the brain is deprived of oxygen for too long, connections within the brain start to die off. I don’t have brain damage per say, but something weird is definitely going on. However, that diagnosis has been challenged very recently, which I’ll get to.

Honestly, I don’t feel I’m twice-exceptional. My thinking and learning skills are not disabled in any way, shape, or form. I have anxiety. That’s it. That’s my stumbling block. When I get anxious, my mind goes blank. School gave me anxiety like nothing else. But going into online school in 11th grade (which I wish I did years before), solved that issue. Plus, even if I was anxious, when left alone, I could do the work almost better than most students. I’ve always been great at taking tests and solving problems, just as long as nobody tries to talk to me. Small-talk has never been my forte.

My main issue with school was my inability to be my own boss. I do great when I’m not bossed around. I hate rules when other people make them up and expect me to follow them. But at home, I have my own schedule I follow that I created, and I’m easy to predict. Of course, most of my schedule is just treatments and pills, then there’s school and sometimes work. The rest of the day is mine to do whatever I want. That’s when I can be unpredictable. But this is my schedule today, not the schedule I followed before I dropped out in the middle of 11th grade.

The schedule I followed before was very hard on me in a lot of ways. I’m certain it had a pretty big part in my failing health. I woke up at 5:30 AM every morning to make it to school on time between 7:45 and 8:00 AM. These very early mornings already had me tired and begging for an extra hour of sleep before I was even dressed. At school, the only reason I stayed awake was because I was running on anxiety-induced adrenaline. I was always anticipating an attack from my bullies, or some off-handed comment about my missing homework from ignorant teachers. I didn’t know what to do. I was just trapped and wanted nothing to do with anyone.

In elementary school, I only remember briefly attending a meeting in 4th grade, in which my teacher, principal, nurse, and a few other staff members expressed concern about me. I was very withdrawn and quiet. I spent most of my recesses inside in the library drawing, and if I was forced to go outside, I’d sit against the side of the building and draw while everyone else played. In the classroom, I definitely understood what was being taught, but I refused to raise my hand in class, and if I was ever called on, either I stuttered over my words or just refused to answer at all. I also complained about being bullied often, and I even remember one of the staff members (who would supervise recess), talking about how she saw students punch me and throw balls at me in an attempt to hurt and scare me. I’m glad I don’t actually remember anything like that, but it hurts to know that happened to me regardless if I remember it.

That was probably around the same time I realized I was actually different than everyone else. I had something no one else had, and no one else understood. Being a tomboy also made me different, but that wasn’t the reason I was bullied. In fact, in some ways, I’d argue that being a tomboy gave me an advantage. Back then, Wall Ball was the most popular game during recess. There were no rules other than throw the tennis ball as hard as you can against the school, so the people behind you had to chase it. The goal was to make the people chase it as far as possible. I had a damn good arm, even then, so I’d make the kids behind me chase that ball for almost a full minute. It helped that there was a hill just behind us. I only remember a few seconds worth of Wall Ball, but it’s a good memory from my childhood, and I cherish it.

Anyway, in 4th grade, kids noticed that I was different from them. I think they were jealous, because I was allowed to leave the classroom 5 minutes early to get my medication and lunch before everyone else. Also, I was allowed to eat snacks in the classroom at any time, while everyone else had to wait for lunch and snack time. I was even allowed to buy extra meals the first time around, which is something most kids could only dream of. But the most obvious difference, which went on between kindergarten and 3rd grade, was the fact I wasn’t allowed outside for recess until I finished all of my food. However, that ended before students cared to notice or question it.

Some kids noticed the weirdest things, such as my clubbed fingers. They wanted to know why my fingers were so big and round compared to theirs. I had no answer. Not even my doctors really knew why. I just shrugged it off. But that didn’t satisfy anyone. The kids thought I had all of the answers to everything about me, which I didn’t. And even if I did have the answers, I didn’t want to tell them much about it. I just wanted to continue being treated like everyone else, and hold my elite ranks in Dodge Ball and Wall Ball.

There was a time when people stopped asking those questions. Some kid was involved in a major car wreck, and came back to school in a wheelchair with two broken legs, a broken arm, and a broken orbital. He may have gone blind in that eye, because I remember he wore an eye-patch from that day on, even when he was able to walk and use his hand again. But suddenly everyone was drawn to him and wanted to know what happened, and everyone especially wanted to sign their names on his casts. While they harassed him for pretty much the whole school day, I was left alone to draw and sit on the swings undisturbed. But that kid healed within several months, and once he was back on his feet, all eyes were back on me.

Those are the only vivid memories I have. I don’t really remember the rest. The rest comes from what my family has told me. I know I refused to go to school many days and often made myself sick so I didn’t have to go. I became extremely introverted, and refused to talk to anyone as soon as school let out. I was just exhausted, and couldn’t wait to come home and relax. I never did my homework, and not because I was lazy. I was simply too exhausted to care. I had friends, but rarely did I see them outside of school. I never participated in any sleepovers. I only went to birthday parties if they were somewhere other than at someone’s house. And for the most part, I cherished my own company and loved it when I could just stay at home and do my own thing.