English, Math, and Other Fascinating Subjects
During middle school, I only found enjoyment in two classes – English and sometimes health. My health teachers were also the P.E. teachers, but I scarcely remember anything they taught. I was always too busy reading ahead. I enjoyed health topics – learning about the functions of the human brain and the human body. I usually read ahead because I was researching solutions to my on personal problems regarding my menstrual cycle or my mental state. The only disadvantage to this subject area class was that health was not seemingly regarded as an important core subject. So there were times when we would go weeks without even covering health topics, and I never understood the reason for this.
Since elementary school, English class was always my favorite subject. My middle school English teacher was the only one who helped in my desire to fight against my mental anguish and hold on. I was always wide awake in English class, but that was only in sixth grade. My other English teachers from seventh and eighth grades passed by me like I did not even exist. Most of the time they did not even know my name and always called me by someone else. To correct them was such a chore when their blunders over my name were such frequent occurrences. So I let myself be whoever they said I was to them. Internally, however, I took their blunders to mean that these teachers could care less about me if they did not even bother to learn my name. They had an entire school year. So what was the problem?
All other classes were a haze of boring talk and meaningless chatter from opinionated teachers who catered to a certain venue of students. Academically, I did not feel challenged, but none of my teachers could see this aspect about me, and those that did see me considered me to be a heap of wasted space. My sixth grade math teacher said this much … that I was just a waste taking up space in her math class who would probably never amount to anything in life because I never paid attention to anything going on. Other teachers would say that I was a mute, a non-speaker, or a shy child. In social settings, my anxiety was severe. I was always quiet. I rarely talked unless I was asked a question or was comfortable talking around a very small group of friends.
This particular sixth grade math teacher, however, was the bane of my existence during sixth grade. She had no idea that my primary focus was more on calculating the amount of time I would have in class before I bled through my pants and whether I should chance looking like a fool asking to go the the restroom at a perfectly timed moment because I needed to change my pad. This teacher could also not have known that I spent time calculating the percentage of sleep I did not get the night before because of an ongoing night terror. I solved a lot of math problems in her class … just not the problems she gave the class to solve. I sincerely felt like I had a lot bigger fish to fry that really had nothing to do with school and more to do with my personal survival.
Standardized testing was not even that big of a deal back then. There was nothing high stakes about school testing. Those tests were given in annoyance by the teachers, and I took them half-heartedly wishing that I had been absent for the test because the reading material and questions bored me to tears. There was no question to me even then that teachers had already decided which students were lost causes before a student had even entered their classes for the term or semester.
Based on teacher gossip that I overheard between the music teacher and the school secretary, I was considered to be a lost cause. When I heard this discussion, I remember how dissociated I already felt to even acknowledge that I felt hurt by their comments about me. I took it all in stride and reasoned that if I was a failure to them, then I was just a failure to them. I figured their thoughts had nothing to do with me.
Many times I battled fighting sleep in some of my classes and lost out, but because my eyes were always open from complete exhaustion, sleeping during class was never commented on my progress reports or report cards. It was always assumed by teachers that I was simply in a fog or daze from daydreaming. I was stoned before I knew what being stoned was, and I was never even into drugs. I was simply floating through my life in a dissociative bubble never quite feeling myself. I often grounded myself by biting my fingernails, looking for patterns everywhere, or envisioning myself anywhere but school or anywhere but my life.
In retrospect, I learned based on observance and through the gossiping music teacher and secretary that I was “marked” by several teachers in the school. Clearly, I was a troubled child, but no one questioned me as if they wanted to help me. I was simply branded and then herded into a category from which some teachers decided to bestow their mean rants upon. It was strange because I never said a word in class, and I hardly even socialized outside of class. I just accepted my lot because I had been conditioned into believing that was something I was supposed to do to show my respect.
I do not even know why the particular math teacher I had in sixth grade stressed out all the time about me as a student, but she clearly did not like me and expressed it during a class to me in front of everyone. I was dumbfounded and embarrassed. Instead of outwardly showing emotion, I stood still and suppressed my urge to cry by opting to shed tears inside of myself as I had trained myself to do since I recalled doing at the age of three.
Yet, I thought maybe the math teacher had me confused with someone else because I was the most introverted and quiet student that she had in her class. I could never understand the reason she seemed to hate me so much. I struggled in her class and spent most classes counting the days until I would become a seventh grader, and if that distance was too far away from me to imagine, then I would count the tiles, the crack in the tiles, or any other object as I gazed around her classroom. She marveled that I even passed her math class, but I simply used my sheer common sense of basic math facts.
To think about it, that math teacher acted like she hated her job and took her anger and misery out on anyone who could not get into the boring lectures she called teaching. I hated going to this particular class because she was so mean and hateful. I daydreamed or zoned out as a means to just get through my life while trying to figure out what her problems might be so I could help her solve them. I was glad when she called in sick and her class was covered by a substitute from time to time. Only when there was a substitute could I comfortably complete the math assignments without stressing about her.
I did try to do my best through middle school though, but I failed miserably. The only “A’s” that I ever got were in Health [when the subject was taught] and English in sixth grade because the teacher was my favorite and the subject was my favorite as well. Something about that teacher touched not only my soul but my spirit, and I could leave all of my troubles and cares behind when I got to her class. In fact, I forgot my problems even existed in that teacher’s English class, but in all of my other classes, life was that much tougher. I survived on daydreams or sleep as an escape.
Sixth grade English class was my world, however, if I ever kept up with any homework, it would always be for that one class. Otherwise, other assignments for other classes were always complete misses. But I lived to please my sixth grade English teacher. I had never had a teacher like her since before her or even after her, and when she left at the end of my seventh grade year, I was a broken mess. I had never cried over a teacher before, but this teacher simply meant so much to me. Her leaving meant that I was not going to be able to sneak to her class to say “hi” or see her after school just to listen to her rant about her new classes. This teacher had no idea that she represented strength to me during a time that I severely struggled with depression and the ideation of ending my life.
I nearly flunked out of seventh grade and barely skated through eighth grade. During those years, my parents were frequently called about my work habits and failing grades. I recall numerous parent conferences where I would promise to do better only to forge my mother’s signature on bad progress reports and pray that my lies of forgery would not be found out. Frankly, I only cared about failure if it meant that I would not be promoted to the next grade level. Otherwise, I new enough about mathematical averages to compute just how low I could score on a test and still pass the class. I did believe I had a method to the madness that helped me to succeed all while praying that the method saved me.
I was on a mission to succeed, but it was not in the way that anyone would have ever believed that I could achieve for myself.
Read more to come of The Middle School Years.
My Voice Unchained 