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 13th
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!
