Binding 13: Part One

This is your fresh start." Turning on the tap, I washed my hands and splashed some water on my face, desperate to cool the heated anxiety burning inside of my body, the prospect of my first day at a new school a daunting notion. Any school had to be better than the one I was leaving behind. The thought entered my mind and I flinched in shame. Schools, I thought dejectedly. Plural. I'd suffered relentless bullying in both primary and secondary school. For some unknown, cruel reason, I had been the target of every child's frustrations from the tender age of four. Most of the girls in my class decided on day one, in junior infants, that they didn't like me and I wasn't to be associated with. And the boys, while not as sadistic in their attacks, weren't much better. It didn't make sense because I got along just fine with the other children on our street and never had any altercations with anyone on the estate we lived in. But school? School was like the seventh circle of hell for me. All nine, instead of the regular eight, years of primary had been torture. Junior infants was so distressing for me that both my mother and teacher decided it would be best to hold me back so I could repeat juniors with a new class. Even though I was just as miserable in my new class, I made a couple of close friends, Clare and Lizzie, whose friendship had made school bearable for me. When it came time to choose a secondary school in our final year of primary, I had realised I was very different from my friends. Clare and Lizzie were to attend Tomman College the following September, a lavish, elite private school with massive funding and top-of-the-range facilities, coming from the brown envelopes of wealthy parents who were hell-bent on making sure their children received the best education money could buy. Meanwhile, I had been enrolled at the local overcrowded public school in the centre of town. I still remembered the horrifying feeling of being separated from my friends. I'd been so desperate to get away from the bullies that I'd even begged Mam to send me to Beara to live with her sister, Aunty Alice, and her family so I could finish my studies. There were no words to describe the devastated feeling that had overtaken me when my father put his foot down on moving in with Aunty Alice. Mam loved me, but she was weak and weary and didn't put up a fight when Dad insisted I attend Ballylagen Community School. After that, it got worse, more vicious, more violent, more physical. For the first month of first year, I was hounded by several groups of boys all demanding things from me that I was unwilling to give them. After that, I was labelled a frigid because I wouldn't get off with the very boys that had made my life a living hell for years. The meaner ones labelled me a tranny, suggesting that the reason I was such a frigid was because I had boy parts under my skirt. No matter how cruel the boys were, the girls were far more inventive. And so much worse, they spread vicious rumours about me, suggesting that I was anorexic and threw my lunch up in the toilets after lunch every day. I wasn't anorexic, or bulimic for that matter. I was petrified when I was at school and couldn't bear to eat a thing because when I did vomit, and it was a frequent event, it was a direct response to the unbearable weight of the stress I was under. I was also small for my age, short, undeveloped and skinny, which didn't help my cause to ward off the rumours. When I turned fifteen and still hadn't gotten my first period, my mother made an appointment with our local GP. Several blood tests and exams later, and our family doctor had assured both my mother and me that I was healthy, and that it was common for some girls to develop later than others. Almost a year had passed since then, and aside from one irregular cycle in the summer that had lasted less than half a day, I was yet to have a proper period. To be honest, I had given up on my body working like a normal girl when I clearly wasn't. My doctor had also encouraged my mother to assess my schooling arrangement, suggesting that the stress I was under at school could be a contributing factor to my obvious physical stunt in development. After a heated discussion between my parents, where Mam had pled my case, I was sent back to school, where I was subjected to unrelenting torment.