Sometimes when I do something embarrassing I have a powerful impulse to withdraw into the shadows and disappear. Sometimes I withdraw to a place of imagined safety until I remember that safety can be a death trap far more dangerous than exposure, criticism or ridicule.
Specifically I remember “Field Day” in the sixth grade. Some context: The sixth grade was the year I was bullied. The girl who led to bullying was wildly popular and conscripted her friends in her school-wide campaign of abuse.
During that year it seemed I could do nothing right. Everything I did was ridiculed; the way I talked and walked, the clothes I wore, and my shyness; when I did speak anything I said became fodder for group mockery. My bully and her cohorts would ask me questions just so that they could make fun of my answers, even if my only answer was only “hi.” I literally became afraid to exist.
Outwardly I shut down. I stopped talking even when spoken to, yet inwardly my thoughts remained vibrant. I wrote stories, and in the act of writing I found a way to exist beyond the reach of the bullies. My humor, my true thoughts, and my personality lived unselfconsciously in the words I wrote.
However, an incident occurred that sprang me from my sanctuary. In the spring of every school year, my elementary school held an event called Field Day, a series of relays and sports competitions like the 50-yard-dash and the three-legged race.
I had always hated Field Day. Particularly in the sixth grade, Field Day was daunting because it meant being on display. It meant having to physically act in front of others at a time that I could barely walk without unfavorable commentary.
However, there was one event, and only one, that I enjoyed: Tug of War. I was a kid. In general I liked games – as long as they did not carry the threat of humiliation. And I could see the fun in a competitive struggle in which the strength and will of one team was pitted against that of another.
A month before the event, my teacher Ms. Holland sat at her desk and called on each student to tell which two events we wanted to participate in. When she finally asked me I said without hesitating, “Tug of War.” The classroom roared with laughter. I am still not exactly sure why. Did they think I was incapable of fighting or doing anything remotely related to the word “war”?
Whatever the reason, the uproar was so disruptive that the teacher did not even ask me which other event I wanted to participate in but went on to the next student. At the time I was okay with not being forced to be in a second event.
When Field Day finally came, I mentally prepared myself for Tug of War which, being a group activity, provoked some anxiety. When at last the game was announced as the next event, I waited for my name to be called. But to my surprise, it never was.
I felt a sharp stab of disappointment that stunned me. I had thought I wanted to get past the unpleasant experience of Field Day with as little effort as possible – endure it at most, and then go home. But being omitted struck a nerve; with a flash of horror I realized I was finally getting what I had thought I wanted: I was disappearing.
For some mysterious reason I had been stricken from the Tug of War roster. And there was also something disturbing about the fact that my teacher had never asked me about my choice for the second event. I was about to disappear from the one event that I had thought would be enjoyable.
I was not relieved. I was caught in a limbo between panic and anger as I realized something powerful: I did not want to disappear. Not really. Not from the Tug of War roster, not from the classroom, and not from the world.
I went to the teacher and said, “Why did you not call my name? I was supposed to be on the list.”
With a look of mild surprise, she agreed to let me participate. I was not prepared for the firestorm of controversy I had ignited. Minutes later there was an uproar as, one by one, other students came up to me and angrily demanded that I withdraw lest the chances of winning at tug-of-war become nil.
Lucretia, my main bully, came up to me and screamed with her mouth close to my ear. “I am telling you, you had better withdraw right now. Because of you, the teacher struck Cindy from Tug of War! Because of you! There is no way we can win now, no way, not unless you go to the teacher right now and drop out!”
What Lucretia was saying was absurd. Cindy, the girl I had “replaced,” looked like she weighed half as much as the next skinniest girl in the class. Even if she pulled the rope with superhuman will, her contribution would have been inconsequential.
I walked away from Lucretia and headed for the rope where other participants had lined up, marveling at how little I cared what the others thought at that moment. Maybe there were things more important than being liked, or even more important than not being hated.
After the starting whistle blew, the tussle began. I pulled extra hard because I did not want our team to lose. I did not want to prove my critics right. I remember how the rough rope fibers burned the skin of my palms. I could feel the spirited, opposing force from the other team, and the backward-leaning slant of my body, and the dirt sliding beneath my feet, until at last cheers erupted all around me as the rope gave way and the other team crossed the critical line, leading my team to victory. There was wild applause and self-congratulation. We had won. My classmates had been wrong. They had been wrong about a lot of things – especially about me. For me Tug of War had felt like a literal war in which my very existence was at stake.
I do not mean to say that not asserting my right to participate in Tug-of-War would have meant I did not exist. In my mind I existed vibrantly. But being driven into a corner by my fears constrained my existence. It limited my fun and my freedom.
Despite the lessons of that day, there have been many times during my life that I have found myself being driven by fear into a sliding path toward oblivion – moments of teetering under-confidence when I wanted to disappear. But I now recognize that impulse as being toxic.
My life has had an oscillating pattern. Too often I have responded to a perceived threat by backing away toward safety until I realize with sudden horror that safety is a kind of hell, a prison far more dangerous to my existence than the danger I had originally feared.
One reason I love writing is that when I write, I feel most like myself – that is, I feel like I fully exist. When I write, I write with my whole self – even the parts of me that are not flattering. I can be needy, scared, and absurdly sentimental as well as independent, courageous, and sincerely passionate.
It is better to be any of those things than to be nothing at all, better to be a mess, better to be annoying, better to be confused, better to be irrationally angry than to fade away. When, while writing, I find myself beginning to become too self-critical, when I make embarrassing mistakes, when a troll ridicules my typos, I remember that day long ago in the sixth grade, and how the sliding rope fibers burned my skin, and its powerful tug against my wrists, and the stretch of tendons – that moment of struggle somehow more important than winning, more important than anything, that moment of raw, unbridled resistance a victory in itself.
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