Growing up “Unique”

Continued from: “I know what’s wrong with you”

I call it unique; others may call me different or weird. To me, I was unique. I was the only one who had this issue. Not one person that I had spoken with had anything like what I was going through. My parents would still take me everywhere and I’d walk, or ride in a wheelchair. I played baseball with my brothers and at times I would have to sit on the bench.

One story that really sticks out in my mind is when I was about seven years old. I had spent the night at a friend of my parents. I, at that time, had several large blisters on the bottoms of my feet that were causing me problems walking. My parents’ friend thought he knew how to help. He like everyone else did not understand what was happening behind the scenes. His wife popped the blisters (like we normally would do when it effects my walking) and he proceeded to wrap my feet, tightly, with duct tape. He insisted that all we needed to do was make my feet tough. They needed to get stronger so that I could walk like a normal person. I seriously think I must have blocked out the rest of that memory because I can imagine the pain seven year old me would have been.

When I started school, I could mostly play and run around the play grounds with the other kids. If I hurt, I’d sit out and no one knew the difference. It was easy to tell people I just didn’t want to play today.

PE, however, was a whole different world. My mom would write me notes excusing me from running and playing sports when it became too difficult. It wasn’t all the time, but it did happen a lot particularly during periods of hot days. Most of the time, all the teachers let me sit out without an issue.

During 5^th grade, I was having a particular rough patch, and note after note, my PE teacher suddenly stopped believing. There were no excuses as to why I couldn’t participate like the other kids. I begged, I pleaded for her to understand that I wasn’t faking it, that I really did have an issue. I was limping and couldn’t she see that? I was in pain and couldn’t she see that? It didn’t matter to her, I had been excused from PE for too long and she wasn’t having it anymore. She told me that if I really had an issue to show her.

So, I did. Here I sat, a skinny little 10 year old girl during PE and I carefully removed my shoes and socks. I removed them in front of my teacher, in front of my classmates. I’ve never felt embarrassed about my issue before because only my family ever really seen them, and they were part of who I was.

My teacher was shocked. She now understood I had an issue. I wondered if she would apologize for not believing me. I wondered if she would tell the higher ups at school and get the police involved.  After all, my childhood doctors thought my parents were abusing me, why wouldn’t she think the same thing. She told me I didn’t need any notes for the rest of the school year and I could only participate when I was feeling up to it. She didn’t ever apologize.

To this day, I feel like what she did to me was so wrong. She put me on the spot in front of my entire class. She embarrassed me. If she didn’t believe the notes, she should have talked to my parents. She didn’t do any of those things and now the damage was already done. My classmates, my friends, they had seen my feet. They had seen the blisters. They knew something was wrong with me.

As we walked back to class from PE, one of my “friends” stayed away from me. She didn’t want to sit near me. She told everyone who would listen how I had a disease and that I was contagious and everyone should stay away from me. They all seen my feet, there was no point in arguing.

That was it. From that day forward I had no friends in my class. No one wanted to sit with me, no one wanted to talk to me, and no one wanted to hang out with me. I had two friends during the remaining part of the year and neither of them was in my class.

I transferred school districts for 6^th grade. I vowed that I would never let anyone see my feet again if they were blistered. I was never going to go through that again. I made new friends, and also discovered that one of my *old* friends (from my classroom) had transferred as well. As children do, we made up and we are still friends to this day.

My 5^th grade experience however, had changed me. I suffered more because I didn’t ask to me excused from PE. Typically, if you didn’t want to participate in the activities they were doing, you were allowed to just walk. So, that’s what I did. I walked for most of my PE classes. I’d go home, pop those blisters and soak my feet and do the same thing the next day.