The summer I turned 13

I can’t remember what I did the summer I was 13.  I don’t really remember much about it.  I learned about drugs and lying to my mother, I learned that I really didn’t like to kiss boys.    One day I was at the local public pool and my sister was outside of the pool fence.  I was in the pool, a fat, unattractive girl, heavy already, already the brunt of many cruel jokes.  My sister was with her group of friends… the cool kids.  The cool kids teased me too, but not as much as everyone else, they didn’t tease me because of respect.  Not respect for me, but for my older sister who was as much of a “rocker” as they were, the only difference between us, she smoked and was thin, she had a boyfriend and had smoked pot.  

As I played in the pool, the kids around me were all yelling, calling me a whale and making rude fart noises whenever I walked by.  God, I really loved to go to the pool, the feeling of being weightless was such joy for me…..God I really hated going to that pool, the feeling of being stared at, called names, having derogatory terms thrown at me as though I was just a wall that they could graffiti anything that they wanted on it and it would make no difference.

I heard Dena before I saw her; she was yelling, cursing and laughing.  Once she saw that she had my attention she called me over to the fence where she waited for me, surrounded by her “gang” of friends.  I suppose, looking back on it, that she was trying to be cool by corrupting someone younger than she.  I arrived at the fence as Dena lit a cigarette, it was Export A blue I think….   She asked me if I wanted a drag of her smoke and trying to be cook, I said yes.  I took a puff off the cigarette and lit it out right away, not inhaling at all but still thinking that I had the look of someone cool.  Dena’s friends all burst out laughing at my pitiful attempt at smoking, yelling and jeering, saying that I was a “goody goody” because I couldn’t smoke.  “You get the same effect by sticking your head in a fireplace,” they yelled.  Determined, I tried again.   This time I succeeded in inhaling the smoke into my lungs.  The burning in my lungs was the only thing I was conscious of; I need so badly, to get a drink of water.  The tightness in my chest was scary, so I did the first thing that came to mind, I jumped into the pool….. Definitely not one of the smartest things I have ever done, I must admit, but I did it anyway.  I was in the deep end of the pool, gasping for breath, breathing only water deep into my lungs which made me cough more.  I couldn’t breathe, I was panicking, I felt like I was going to die and couldn’t figure out which way was up.  

Being a heavy girl, I float; luckily it doesn’t take long so I floated to the surface where I managed to breathe in great gulps of air, coughing between each inhalation.  My head started to hurt, the pounding of my heartbeat reverberated through my head as with having the music too high right next to my ears.  The life guards, not having seen what had transpired beforehand, jumped into the pool to rescue me.  I felt so powerful and so protected.  The smoking was stupid, it hurt and I should have learned my lesson, I didn’t but that is a storey for another time.

The summer before grade eight, I learned the lengths I would go to please someone else, to get their approval.  I went to these lengths for many years, pleasing others were such a priority.  That summer was full of firsts for me.  The first time I kissed a boy, smoked a cigarette, smoked a joint and drank alcohol.  My 13^th summer, I learned to lie to my mother when I stayed out past curfew, where to hide when one of my sisters friends spotted my mother and who was my friend and who wasn’t.  I spent the summer trying to fit into a group of peers who frightened me, hoping that when I entered high school I would no longer carry the burden of being different.  I went to camp in August of that year.  It was the end of my innocence and the beginning of a spiral into self-punishment, hatred and conspiracy.  That year, we went to Alice Lake and I finally fit it.  I fit in with the cool kids!  They asked me to sit on the beach and smoke cigarettes and pot, drink with the guys and keep watch while they had sex.

That summer I got a bug stuck in my hair for 3 hours and no one could find it.  It walked, creeping, tickling, and teasing my conscious mind back and forth across my head like a thought that doesn’t quite form…. Niggling, you know it is there, just not what it is….  At camp that year I hung out with the man I would eventually marry, at far too young an age, for all too many wrong reasons, who would father my children and who struggled as hard to fit in as I did. 

We signed each other’s shirts, went midnight swimming against camp rules and sang rock songs at the top of our lungs… 

The year I turned 13 was the first and last year that I was cool and it was a mind blowing year!