I wrote this two days ago: Why is it so hard to believe what others think of you when those things are good but so easy to believe what they think when those things are bad? and since then several people have asked me why. Why I feel that way. Why I have an obvious self worth issue.  I’ll tell you why. And what I’ll tell you is just part of the reason, not the whole reason, but certainly a microcosm of everything that is a reason. Because I will tell you this [tl;dr] story and then you can imagine a hundred or more scenarios similar to this one and then you will know. 

I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up. Well, I had friends but they were more like neighbors who were a group of friend who tolerated me. I never belonged. I was just that token kid. The one that is there for everyone to pick on. Even as I got older and recognized what was going on I still hung around with them and I still spent a lot of time doing stupid things to try to prove my worth or try and gain acceptance.

It was sixth grade, I think. I was 11 or 12. I had a slight crush on this kid James who lived around the corner. In one of my delusional moments when I thought of one of the girls in the group as my real friend, I divulged my crush to her. Two days later, James asked me out. He asked me to be his girlfriend. I almost died. I didn’t even know what to do. I called the girl I considered my friend and asked her what to do because she was experienced in the ways of boys and crushes. She told me to say yes. She told me James really liked me. So I said yes. In James’s garage on a hot day in early June when I was wearing a yellow tank top and brown shorts and James was wearing Levis and a white t-shirt and his father’s Impala was parked in the garage, I said yes. I’d be his girlfriend. 

I wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen after that. James’s mother called him inside for dinner and I went home and daydreamed about first kisses and holding hands and prom dates far in the future. I wrote his name in the margin of my math notebook and wrote “michele + james” on the front of that notebook and enclosed those words in a heart. This was about more than a first crush and pubescent ideas of romance. This was about acceptance. It was about finally feeling part of the group. As James’s girlfriend, I would be one of them.

James wasn’t at school the next day. His brother said he was sick. I walked home from school with the intention of going to his house to see how he was feeling. When I was about two houses from his, five of the kids from our group approached me. I could tell it wasn’t a friendly approach. My heart sank. My stomach formed an immediate knot of worry. Steven grabbed my math notebook out of my hand. Dee, the girl I thought was my real friend, pointed to my scrawled heart and laughed. 

Twenty torturous minutes later it became clear what their laughter was about. James didn’t ask me out because he liked me. James asked me out on a dare. On a bet. Everyone chipped in a dollar and dared him to ask me to be his girlfriend. I laughed and pretended like I got the joke even though I knew I was the joke. I acted like it didn’t bother me. I said a typical 12 year old thing like “I didn’t really want to go out with him anyhow.” I turned away and walked until I was out of their sight and when I rounded the corner to my street I ran and didn’t stop until I got into my bedroom. 

I thought I would cry. I waited for the tears. But I didn’t cry. Instead, I sat on my bed and stared at the wall and I felt something inside me change. It was emotional, it was physical, it was mental. I felt it. I felt it like a hand had crawled inside me and twisted my organs and stuck its bony fingers into my brain and turned some dials and changed all my inner channels. I was different. 

It wasn’t just James. It was everything that came before it. It was all the taunts and names. It was the finger pointing and sideways glances. It was the lunch times spent alone. It was the people who swam in my pool on weekends but pretended they didn’t know me when we were in school. It was the awkwardness, the emptiness, the feeling that I was always missing out on something everyone else had, the feeling that I was living on the periphery. 

I would never take kind words at face value again. I would never trust anyone’s feelings for me again. I would always doubt and question. I would never be good enough. I would never be enough. 

A few years after the James incident I transferred to a private school, made a lot of friends and had a lot of fun. But I was never the same. I never trusted myself to be liked for who I was. I never thought I was worth liking. I had friends but kept them at arm’s length emotionally. I had boyfriends but the relationships were always on my terms. I ended relationships quickly so I could avoid the hurt that came with being inevitably dumped. And I formed long relationships later in life with people who preyed on the fact that I probably thought no one else would love me. 

That’s why. That’s why I am who I am. I have healed a lot, I have learned a lot, I have changed a lot. But some things stay with you. The thoughts you form about yourself when you are young will color the rest of your life and every relationship you have. 

But there’s your answer.