Rooted: Starting middle school

If you missed the start of this series, please start here.  This post is a little longer than I like to make posts, Rooted: Starting middle school.

Before I move on to my transfer to a new school, I feel like I need to spend some time in middle school first.

Middle school for me was fifth grade to eighth grade.  It seemed like such a scary idea to move from elementary school to middle school because I would have to change classes and this sounded so big and foreign to me.  I had no idea there would be other bigger reasons why middle school was scary – like kisses, boyfriends, girlfriends, parties with alcohol, and innuendos about sex – big things little kids don’t know much about.

We lived  next door to my dad’s sister, my aunt, and she was a fifth grade teacher at the middle school, so I often rode with her to school.  The middle school was U-shaped and on one leg of the U was the fifth and sixth grade hall.  The other leg was the seventh and eighth grade hall.  The connector was the locker area for the bigger kids, the gym, the lunchroom, the office, teacher’s lounge, and break room.  The band room was at the end of the 7th/8th grade hall.

The year before middle school, I had a crush on one of the two most sought after boys in our class.  He seemed to genuinely “like” me too, and although we did were not boyfriend/girlfriend, that’s how I viewed him.  Over the summer before 5th grade, though, things changed.  When we came back to school, all of a sudden boys and girls did not just play boyfriend/girlfriend, they seriously had boyfriends and girlfriends, and everyone was hitting puberty.   That particular summer, unknown to me and my secluded world in the country, he got a girlfriend. My mom has a photo of me tanned, in a bikini, crying on our couch after I found out.  I too was changing.

Fifth grade was the year that segregation naturally occurred between the popular and the unpopular.  In my mind, I thought maybe I could be a “popular” kid because I was top of the class.  Going to such a small school, most of the popular kids were also smart kids.  As I look back, I just don’t know what I was: perhaps on the fringe of the popular kids and normal kids.  Popular kids had boyfriends and went to lots of parties with friends.  I typically did not.

I don’t remember much about 5th grade, except that my mom and I fought a lot (verbally) and went many rounds with one another.  I was in Mrs. P’s class – I think many of my friends were in my aunt’s class, so that too was a change for me.  That year we studied that all you needed to sustain life was water, food, and air.  My teacher said love was not an element required for sustenance.  I distinctly remember thinking you did need love.  At the time we were not in church, and I for some reason I did not feel loved, and I thought to myself I might die without it.  Of course my hormones were changing, and that did not help matters at all.

I think too, the idea that I should be perfect had become so rooted deep within me that I carried a heavy load of pressure to obtain perfection.  Perfect was obtaining straight A’s and being smart.  My family was not social, so I never felt the weight of trying to obtain social perfection, at least not yet.  As I mentioned before, I was so clueless in the rules of social engagement, I thought I might even be a popular kid.

Rewind for a minute to my little first grade self.  She was skinny, long-legged, and bubbly.  She talked a LOT, so much so that during the first year of school her first grade teacher moved her desk outside the classroom one day.  I saw this happen to another kid, but never imagined having to experience it myself.  The teacher got into my face and made me feel small.  It had a great effect on me.  The strict rule to always be obedient and good now crossed over from home-life into school-life, and I believe some part of my me-ness was exchanged for the “good” version of me.  I decided, unconsciously, that the part of me that loved people and loved getting to know them, the part that was bubbly and exuberant should hide in order to say in control and in line, so that I did not talk too much.

That same 1st grade year, in only the first 6 weeks, I brought home a B in reading comprehension.  My mom sat me down for a serious talk and said that B’s were unacceptable.  Suddenly a B became a matter of right and wrong.  It was wrong to make a B, so I never made a B again, at least not on a report card.  In my mind though, there was a fear to what-if I did bring home a B.  My desire to make my parents proud and mostly to stay away from the wrath of my dad’s anger kept me motivated to make the right grade.  I became at an early age a people-pleaser.  My home was a house full of rampant emotion, but I didn’t feel my own were acceptable to express; I was the secret keeper, and secrets and emotions unexpressed get heavy over time.

After that fifth grade year of fighting uncontrollably with my mom, I consciously decided to stop expressing anger.  I was becoming full of rage like him, but unlike him, I was certain I could control it.

Fortunately, for me, 5th grade was the year that I met Mrs. Stewart.  She was a piano teacher who traveled to many of the county schools and taught piano.  I think I begged to take lessons.  I was ecstatic that mom and dad said yes.  I rarely asked my parents for anything, and I often thought it odd to see other kids ask for money.  This inability to ask for good things stayed with me into and beyond the college years.  Mom and dad bought me a keyboard, and I began to take lessons.  It turns out that lessons that year were sporadic because Mrs. Stewart’s husband died unexpectedly.  Playing the piano gave me hope and made me happy, even playing simple beginner songs like “Bone Sweet Bone.”

Next time, we’ll look at more middle school.