I’ve finally figured out what’s been making me so ill at ease about this whole school thing with Della. It’s not the school or the teachers or the kids or their parents or the logistics or any of that.
It’s 100% me.
For pretty much as long as I can remember, I’ve always felt different than everyone else. And I’ve never known why. Still to this day, I have no idea what causes these feelings.
I don’t know if it was growing up with such a weird name (if anyone can tell me how to pronounce Picl, i’ll give you a hug), always being so much younger than the rest of my classmates (i would have been young for my grade with a may birthday anyway, but then i skipped a grade on top of that), always being a “smart kid” (though my friends were always smart and got good grades, too, so that was definitely not unique to me), or what, but I always felt like there was just something weird about me. I was different somehow.
In my mind, anyway.
No one ever bullied me or told me they didn’t like me or I couldn’t join them or they wanted me to go away, but I always felt like I didn’t quite fit in. Like I was always kind of the odd girl out. Like just a little bit I didn’t belong. Like people were always talking about me or somehow making fun of me.
I was never really the one everyone asked to do stuff with or be in their group or come to their party or go with them wherever, but I certainly wasn’t shunned either. I was much more of a homebody anyway, preferring to stay home with my family on the weekends instead of being at every party thrown around school, so that actually suited me just fine.
I always had good groups of friends growing up, too, so that even confounds me more as to from where these feelings stem. I don’t think I ever didn’t fit in, that’s the strange part. At least no one blatantly told me I didn’t, anyway.
I still kind of get a surge of this same feeling today, especially in new group situations. I’m a pretty shy person until I know you, then you usually can’t get me to shut up, so if I’m in a group setting where I know no one, I tend to be by myself, a little removed, waiting for an invitation in. It’s much less so than when I was a kid, but I can still feel it a little sometimes.
And it is exactly this that I never want our daughters to experience. I’m sure every kid is shy sometimes and may take a little while to warm up to new faces and places, but I never want them feeling left out or weird or different in a bad way. Because they aren’t.
They are the most beautiful, wonderful, amazing people I know, and it makes my heart ache just thinking that they might feel these same emotions of mine someday. So I really hope they never do. I want them to love being in school with new friends and doing new things and learning new lessons and ideas.
Unfortunately, being clueless as to what causes this in me, I’m not sure how to prevent it from churning in them as well. But I’m hell-bent on doing my best.