Later on, when we moved to northeast Denver and I began middle school, I quickly realized that I was very different from the rest of the students, and they knew this. Northeast Denver isn’t the nicest neighborhood to live in. Drive-by shootings, muggings, drug-use, and other crimes were not uncommon. I just learned to sleep through the gunshots that occasionally rang out from within a few blocks of my house in the middle of the night.
Our house was also cheaply built, with vinyl siding and cheap insulation. It would’ve been fine, only we lived in a noisy neighborhood in Colorado’s tornado alley. I struggled to sleep at night because I could hear a neighbor’s dog barking several blocks away, and the airport was just a few miles away, so I could hear every airplane coming in and out of DIA. Our vinyl siding didn’t last too long, and our garage door took a major beating one day when our house was hit by the outer winds of a small tornado that rushed through. We also lost a couple of windows to our tile shingles. I’m glad I wasn’t home for that, but I did come home from school to shovel 5 inches of hail and debris off our driveway while my mom surveyed the damage.
My mom got me into the nicest school in our area of town. It took a lottery to get into, and those who made it through middle and high school there got a guaranteed scholarship and spot in some of Denver’s most distinguished universities. This was very appealing to my mom. Clearly, that school took education very seriously. But there were multiple problems that I only found out once I started to attend the school.
For one, they were ridiculously strict, but I’m sure they had to be considering where the school was located. The uniforms they made students wear were very specific. You had to wear the school’s polo shirt. You had to wear black or khaki dress pants. You had to wear plain, black or brown dress shoes. You had to wear a black or brown belt. If you forgot to wear a belt, or wore something that was a shade too close to being red or grey, you were given detention.
You couldn’t talk in the hallways or step out of line. Any of that resulted in immediate detention. Cheating, talking in class, drawing, or even just coming to class without a pencil were also easy ways to get detention.
Finally, missing homework wasn’t an option, and there was a lot of homework. Every teacher assigned at least 20 minutes of homework per class, so I often came home with at least an hour and a half worth in homework, which I couldn’t even think about completing. There was even a part of my 504 plan that said teachers need to excuse excusable work such as homework for me, but that school didn’t listen to that.
I got used to getting detention every single day for not completing my homework. I’d be at school literally from sunrise to after sunset, and I’d be in tears by the time I was in my mom’s car. My anxiety was at an all-time high. I barely slept at night, and I barely ate during the day. I grew sicker and sicker as time slowly dragged on, however I barely realized it, because of how stressed and anxious I was. I beat myself up, because my teachers often complained about my inability to do homework or keep my desk clean, or how I was always drawing on the side, to the whole class.
Because of how teachers treated me, students saw that as a green light to bully me, even though the school often prided itself in not being tolerant of bullying. It started small, as it usually does, as students tested the waters. I was too small and weak compared to everyone else to really defend myself. If I tried to stand up for myself, the students just mocked me more. Eventually, I was being elbowed against lockers and water fountains, tripped in the hallways and between desks, and had doors slammed into my face. I got pretty good at bracing myself and falling so I wouldn't be in pain, and to be honest, I think that I've since saved myself from a lot of injuries, thanks to my bullies' attacks. The students knew that if they did anything that was more physical, it wouldn’t go under the teachers’ noses, and they’d get in trouble. Clearly, they knew what they were doing was wrong, but they did it anyway.
It wasn’t long before students started to notice that something was going on with me. I was sick often, and I went to the office everyday, 5 minutes before lunch to get my pills. Then I’d head over to the lunch room, which was in a separate building on campus, to get my food. I’d be the first person sitting at the lunch table. Kids noticed this because each class had their own assigned table. So, no matter what I did or where I went, I was stuck with my bullies. I couldn’t retreat to another table at the far end of the lunch room. I had to sit, shoulder to shoulder, with some of my worst enemies.
However, that all changed when the name of my condition suddenly made it to the other students. I’m not sure how, but it spread like wildfire, not just in my class, but throughout most of the school. Suddenly, I was labeled a biohazard, and most of the kids didn’t want to be anywhere near me. They were even wary about touching my stuff. I remember one student used a couple pencils to flip through my text book during a partner project in class, and she didn’t let me write anything down on the assignment paper. I was allowed to sign my name, only after she was done. Some kids turned this into a game, similar to the Cheese Touch in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series, which was very popular in school back then.
Everything that was happening to me was too much for me to really deal with. I didn’t know what to do or where to turn. I was stressed out, chewing my nails even when they bled, and crying everyday after school. I also kept getting sicker and sicker, though I barely noticed that I spent a lot more time curled up in the nurse’s office. I asked for help often, but I rarely got anything out of it. Nothing changed. No one but me seemed to get punished. I was at school for 9 hours a day, and because of how stressed and anxious I was, I didn’t get anything done. I’d just sit shivering in my seat, counting down the minutes to when I could finally go home. Minutes felt like hours, and an entire school day felt like years.
I ended up barely passing 6th grade, and I had to go to school for a month during the summer. Clearly, this just made things worse for me, but no one seemed to notice. I actually ended up only spending three weeks in summer school, because I was enjoying the white sand beaches of Destin, Florida for the first week of summer school. I think that saved me from going to a place of mind I would’ve never come out of.
