The Quiet Things that No One Ever Knows

Mining through Middle School PTSD: Dollz Mania, black eyeliner and coerced exhibition

I don’t have strong memories from Middle School. When I try to reminisce, it’s a daisy chain of traumatic moments; I see flashes of humiliation and torture, but I can’t feel the essence of it. I can’t remember what I was like or who my friends were, and I can’t go into great detail about my life during those years. I imagine that there is some fucked-up Pandora’s Box waiting to be opened, burrowing itself into my subconscious; somehow, deep down, I think all roads lead there.

I don't remember much about this time, but I do remember learning about the currency I carried with My Body along its perilous path. I developed at a young age, and I started to understand that I had the physical assets to move me up the social chain. I could feel a kind of attention on me that was new and thrilling, but oftentimes it was scary and drenched in coercion. I remember going to a co-ed hangout one night, freshly coiffed: I had just gotten face framing 2000s style layers and a blowout, and I felt unstoppable. I wish someone would have stopped me. I remember during a game of Truth or Dare being challenged to show a room of gatorade-mouthed and gel-flipped boys my breasts, and I put up a fight, but truth be told, I was a little excited. I was learning the plague of Compulsory Heterosexuality: a dangerous conflation of male validation for sexual arousal. I let that feeling guide me through most of my young adult life. At the hangout, the mother of the boy whose house it was presented us with a box of Krispy Kreme donuts (a personal favorite), and because I was painfully histrionic and overly emotional, I probably expressed a love for these donuts that was too big for their small minds. And because I showed them my breasts and ate donuts that I loved in the same night, a story developed that my bosom could be bought…in exchange for deep fried dough. 

Along with my stint as Krispy Kreme Girl, I dealt with countless rejections from girlfriends who told me I was "too much" for them, or cyberbullying from popular girls who made me feel like I was the weirdest and worst person in the world. The same girls would corner me at every Bar and Bat Mitzvah with antagonizing waves and sarcastic "hi’s" and pointed whispers in each other’s ears that sent me pounding away at my rainbow buttoned Nokia. My parents used to make sure they dined near the venue, as they usually did not make it to dessert. It was a funny situation in some ways: because of my popularity with the opposite sex, I would occasionally flip-flop between feeling like I was finally cool and being totally ignored and shunned. It made me into a popularity chasing monster. I wanted desperately to be a part of the "Hot Top 25." The Hot Top 25 was a crude website created by the most popular girls in my grade, which assigned Cartoon Dollz to each of its VIP members next to a short blurb about being HoTt and kEwL and good at soccer or whatever, and it really begged the question: Why were we all coders at 13? I remember a follow-up website created by the social caste below them called the "Tangy 21," and I wish I could have seen back then that in life you need only the confidence to make things up as you go. But, I was always abiding by unspoken rules on my march towards acceptance. I’m still following them, I think.

As time went on, I really fleshed out my personal story: that I was unfairly trapped in a hellish world (a wealthy Jewish suburb) and that my true blue friends were the freaks I went to Performing Arts Sleep-away Camp with. And bitch? That's when I began to live the *fantasy*—the fantasy of feasting on your own emotional anguish and becoming voyeuristic to your pain. Spending time with my Camp Friends made going back into The Matrix even harder than it was before, so I stopped scrunching my hair and I started wearing black eyeliner. I drew flowers on my jeans and wrote song quotes on my Chuck Taylors. Oftentimes at lunch, you could find me in the bathroom with my own hands around my neck, staring at my weeping reflection. You might find me scribbling feverishly on tear-soaked journal pages about how much I hate these homogeneous normies, with their Hardtail pants and Juicy Tube lip gloss. It was a tortured existence, but it gave me a strange sense of control.

Throughout my teenage years, I lived my life in this voyeuristic way: watching myself get hurt, writing about it in my head, setting it to music, and, in some sick and twisted way, kind of loving it. If I sound mentally ill, it’s because I am. It's a difficult knot to untangle: the actual pain and feelings, as well as the narrative understanding of them. I think in some ways, my movie screen filter of my trauma was my first foray into dissociation, something I’ve been coming to grips with for several years now. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5),1 defines dissociation as "a disruption, interruption, and/or discontinuity of the normal, subjective integration of behavior, memory, identity, consciousness, emotion, perception, body representation, and motor control." And further, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Robyn Brickel says, "Dissociation can function as protection, by keeping people unaware of the distress of being traumatized." As I stated earlier, I don’t remember the feeling of Middle School, but I can watch the movie in my mind—a plan of protection put in place by Me for Me. 

I want to thank her, Little Me who suffered. I want to tell her I think she’s strong and cool and powerful. I want to thank her for always writing and making things and letting her pain fuel her creativity; I hope she can teach me to do the same.

I also want to tell her I forgive her. I forgive her for harming herself and for clout chasing and searching desperately for meaning. I forgive her for showing sacred parts of herself to undeserving boys. I hope she can forgive me too, as I continue to look for seats at the Cool Table, as I continue to use the protective tools she put in place, as I doom scroll and daydream to a fault, when I’m afraid of my own thoughts and side stepping imagined danger.

I want to tell her to please never stifle her emotions; they could end up getting lodged in her body somewhere and forming ragged edges, staying dormant while causing sickness and pain. You could end up needing your partner to massage the shit out of your shoulders until you let out heaving sobs, removing the pain like a splinter. Feel Everything, my girl. Your protection is not needed. I have your back now. I can’t wait to make things with you.

See you next time.

xoxo,

A