The Disappointment Kid (Completed)

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If I really wanted to stay on the safe side, on the politically correct and clean side, I would probably tell you all about how my conception was a small miracle, what a shiny childhood I had with parents who doted on me, a sister who adored me, about the ton of fun friends I had, all the cool things we did and all that Kim Kardashian kind of crap. And then I'd be done. A simple, boring story about an average privileged white female's middle-class life. But that's not actually my truth. It is most likely everybody else's, but it isn't mine.

My truth started to deviate from everyone else's at a very young age. In one of my earliest memories I see my younger self being dragged to pre-school by my mother. "You'll make so many new friends here. You'll see. Of course, Katherine, you'll have to smile, walk up to the other kids, be outgoing. Don't hide the way you usually do! Do you understand me, Katherine? Shy kids don't find any friends. Just be like your sister! Everyone loves her. Do you hear me? Katherine?" I nodded dutifully. No pressure here then. Suffice it to say, I didn't make lots of lovely new little friends. I got by. I was pretty invisible. And the teachers liked me. No trouble and all that.

Primary school brought more of the same for me. Invisibility. I thanked the Lord for that every day. I wasn't stupid. I knew about the bullying, the verbal, the physical and the virtual. I saw the victims every day, clutching their school bags tightly, terror in their eyes as they were walking through the school gates in the morning. I, hallelujah, was invisible like the boring, transparent brother of the pink balloons at a wedding.

Unfortunately, this did not apply at the home front. "You are eating sweets again, Katherine." My mother's exasperated voice still rings in my ears. "It's not surprising you haven't got any friends. Nobody likes a fat kid." 

I would leave the food, go to my room, get out my secret stash of sweets and nourish my soul. It would always feel like a hug, a caress, a soft touch. For twenty minutes. Then the recriminations would start in my head. "For crying out loud, Katherine, you fat cow! How could you? Again! Of course nobody wants to be your friend. What do you expect?" On and on and on.

Then came middle school and high school. Puberty. Growing into a woman. Well, in my case, it was more like growing into a big fat sack of potatoes. My classmates spent all their money on clothes and makeup. I spent all my money on anything edible. Didn't get too much of that at home. "Your lunch is ready, Katherine!" Oh, thanks, mother, some cottage cheese and a few lettuce leaves. Can't wait for my dinner. Yummy! At least, I didn't only grow in size. I also grew in hatred, towards anybody, especially myself. But I also learned a lot. As I never actually got involved, connected with or offered my true self to anybody, I had lots of opportunity to watch people, and I learned to see right through their white middle-class bullshit.

And my truth remembers a lot of this bullshit. It also remembers a lot of loneliness, anxiety and, above all, a sense of failure, of being a disappointment, at first to my parents, then to the rest of the world and, finally, to myself. Was I outgoing and fun? No! Was I tall and graceful? No! Was I beautiful? Hell no! What were my parents supposed to say to me?

I was different. And I knew that I was different. My mother told me so, every day. No sugar-coating. No kid gloves. Just my mother's truth. Because she loved me. Honesty is the best policy and all that. You'd probably agree.

When I was around 14 years old, someone told me that children who were born with disabilities used to be kept away from the public eye, as they were a disgrace, or a disappointment, to say the very least, to their own families. "Those poor dears were, in actual fact, prisoners in their own homes," I was told by an outraged relative. This story, whether truth or urban legend, remains with me to this day. I have never checked its truth content because that makes no difference. The reason this story resonated so deeply with me then, and to a certain extent still does today, was that it made me jealous. I wanted to be a prisoner in my own house, even in my own room. My room was my sanctuary. The only place where I was truly myself, where I breathed easily and where I felt a sense of peace and acceptance. 

Unfortunately, I wasn't born in those days where a disappointment kid was simply left to hide her shame away from the world. I was sent to school, to music lessons, to sports clubs. Places that were supposed to help me be 'normal' but were actually places I didn't belong. Places which highlighted the fact that I was different. Places which scared me to death sometimes. Not that death would have always been so unwelcome. I felt that there would be a certain sense of peace in death, at least in my fantasies.

To sum it up, I felt like some kind of female Rumpelstiltskin. Not exactly lovable, I guess. But it wasn't as bad as all that. At least my brain seemed to work just fine. I did well in school. English? Easy. Maths? Easy. Italian and German? Easy. No problem with Chemistry either. Didn't that make me the most popular kid in the schoolyard! Yes, school was a walk in the park for me. Piece of cake. What did it matter that I had no real friends, that nobody really liked me? I had my invisibility. My peers looked straight through me most of the time. Everyone else agreed. Katherine? A tad boring, a bit grey all in all, thankfully not our daughter, but at least no real cause for concern with her unassuming wallflower personality. No problem, really.

And why should there have been a problem? Mother a successful manager with an international semiconductor manufacturer, daddy a successful lawyer. I was living the white kid's dream.

I mean, there was this boy in my class. Mixed race, as I found out later. Quite cute, actually, but also a bit withdrawn. Huge pair of glasses, but piercingly intelligent eyes peering out from behind them. He was pretty tall and slim, too, but really wiry. He always wore cheap blue jeans and what looked like hand-knitted sweaters that the Prada girls and boys who ruled our school life sneered at.  I, on the other hand, would have loved to steal a quick feel. Those sweaters looked as soft and fuzzy as his short, curly black hair that I loved but was the centre of ridicule for the Barbies and Kens of my school.

Nice guy. Used to actually smile at me, whenever he saw me. Henry. Henry Thornton. His father was black, his mother white. His father was no longer in the picture, his mother a music teacher and an artist. Quite the cliché, I hear you say, but there you have it.

Even more than my parents, Henry's mother made sure that he focused on his studies. Like me, he was different from the other kids. Henry knew how to use words like 'surreptitiously' and 'obsequious' with ease, words that most kids had never heard in their entire lives. I liked his calm manner and the aura of intelligence he projected. Unfortunately for him, many of the other kids didn't see it my way. Instead of being admired for his wit and beauty of expression, he had the shit kicked out of him nearly every day by the in-crowd. It made them feel better about themselves, I suppose. "Why?" you ask me. No idea. But to my utter shame, for a little while, it made me feel better, too. At least no one kicked the shit out of me. Nobody knew I even existed, and I liked it that way. I dressed for this purpose. I arranged my hair accordingly. I acted so that nobody would notice me.

I told my very liberal parents about Henry and his struggles. They were outraged. "This is racially-motivated bullying," my mother cried. And my father added, "We are living in the 21st century, for crying out loud. Somebody should do something." Somebody should do something. Yeah.