I was ten years old when I first realized it.
My parents and I were at the store, the toy aisle actually. My mom and dad were talking about toys to get Sara, my younger sister who was 5 at the time, when I wandered over to the other side of the aisle. It was the aisle in between the "boys" and "girls" toys, where the aisle was split half and half.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the most beautiful object I had ever laid eyes on. A pink, sparkly wand with pink and white ribbons dangling off the tip of a shiny pink star sitting atop the tip of the wand. There was something so delicate and perfect about the way it seemed to float on its rack, above all else. It lifted off the rack and into my hands, where it fit so perfectly.
Smiling from ear to ear I danced over to my parents and showed them the wonderful prize I had found. Then they did something I hadn't expected. They smiled at me, told me I did a great job, took it from my hands, and handed it to Sara, saying it was perfect.
Yup, that's right. I had found the absolutely perfect toy for my little sister. Go me! I left the store that day with a new hot wheels car. Yes it was a lot of fun to play with, but i couldn't get the toy wand out of my head for the longest time.
Three years later something similar happened to me again.
Again we were at the store, clothes shopping this time. Back to school shopping, Sarah was going into the third grade and I the eighth. I'm in middle school now, where kids notice that I act differently than all the other boys in my grade.
They tease me on how I stand, how I walk, how I look, and sometimes even how I talk. I don't know what they mean by all this, but regardless I try to change myself. For them. For my tormentors, for these people that I hate. These people that I have to appease to make life even slightly better...
People call me gay in the halls, call me faggot in class when the teachers backs are turned, even though I know they hear and just stay silent, and some even follow me on my way home, taunting me nonstop, laughing even when I would begin to run away from them. Even more so, thanks to the ever popular social networking sites they can continue their bullying 24 hours a day. Yay me!
I won't lie, these last few years have been utter hell for me. All the name calling and isolating and every other thing possibly imaginable.
I won't lie, I have contemplated the worst possible options. Killing myself, killing them... Of course the second is highly unlikely, simply because of how I am. I don't do well with physical contact, or even confrontation. I also don't want my parents to learn about how bad it is for me at school, they don't need this extra stress or worry on them.
Anyways, the fam and I were back to school shopping when again something I knew I could never have caught my eye. Except this time it wasn't a wand, it was something bigger yet so much simpler.
It was a pair of shoes.
But not just any pair of shoes. A beautiful pair of red high heeled shoes. A red so deep it looked light, 6 inches tall, a delicate buckle strap on the inside, and they were on sale. Of course, I knew asking my parents for them was out of the question, I had tried something like that before.
Not to long ago I had "jokingly" asked my parents for a matching skirt that Sara got on her seventh birthday. The best part is that they laughed, actually laughed at me! Of course, they thought I was kidding but still... I mean who laughs at their own child for wanting something so simple as an article of clothing? Mine apparently, but who could blame them, right? No one in this society thinks about how much little things like that hit home and hurt.
