Why couldn’t I have taken the blue pill…

Did you ever watch the Matrix? I did. Aged 11 and a half. At a friend’s house. I’d been invited to stay over with the promise of a takeaway and a movie. I remember running home to wash my hair and grab some clean clothes. I remember standing in Blockbuster in a small town near my friend’s dad’s house, staring at the Princess Diaries, which had just come out. I loved Barbies and dolls and princesses. I was that child who asked for a Baby Annabel for Christmas when I was 10. I was that child who invited friends round in the early 2000’s to play with dolls, not video games. I had a computer that had internet access and I used it to go on Neopets and Girland and listen to music for free. I’ll never forget the look on my friend’s dad’s face when he said I could choose the movie and I chose the Princess Diaries. The smirk. The deflection, “oh, well maybe next time, here, have you ever seen the Matrix?” he clearly had. He mentioned it a few times. His wife had smiled and said it was his favourite. This was before the days when people bought DVD’s themselves, when people would rent things more than once because it was still cheaper than buying the DVD. We played a game of monopoly at the same time, to “keep things light”. I remember the film. It was interesting. Scary, but interesting. It opened my eyes to ideas I hadn’t considered. My friend’s dad kept pausing the film, asking if we understood. My friend and her brother just shrugged and carried on with the game. But I was interested in the film. I wasn’t sure why he kept stopping it; it was obvious what was happening, did the rest of the family really not understand or care what the film was saying? How it mirrored real life?

As I’ve grown up, I’ve learned that lots of people don’t get things. They might understand the plot but not the message. They might hear the words but not the story. They might know that something happens but not the why.

Why did I know? Why did I care?

I didn’t. Until I was shown. I would have been happy playing Barbies. I wasn’t ready for the reality of the world. I wasn’t ready for senior school.

I looked ready. I was tall. I’d started Puberty. I got good grades. Could talk to adults. But I wasn’t ready to be one. Not even close.

I can’t even blame my parents. It wasn’t their fault. They couldn’t shelter me from reality. Once that hit me, it was all systems go. I was on a track journey of self discovery. I am only just getting to grips with it. Life is only just starting to slow down. I still would rather be sat in my bedroom playing dolls, listening to Enid Blyton books on tape, finishing a puzzle.

I may have gone to senior school. I may have passed the exams. But I was not ready.

I was an April baby, late April, the one who’s birthday always fell on the Easter holidays. My mum used to throw me parties as a little girl and invite the whole class. When I got old enough she waited to see who my friends would turn out to be. I didn’t have any close friends. I hardly ever went to anyone’s house. When it came to birthdays, I preferred it when it was just mum and me, or a family thing with the cousins. She never pushed it.

Then I started senior school. I met a girl in class the first day, she had a wandering eye and people were mean to her. I wasn’t mean to her. She lived out of town but her mum had walked to the same spot near the school that my mum had, just to make sure we got home safe. Nobody else had spoken to me properly in years. I invited her back to my house. Her mum said it was fine and to call when she wanted picking up. I remember imagining us braiding hair and showing her my books. She took one look at the computer and wanted to play. Less than an hour later, before my mum had even gotten off the phone let alone organised dinner, she went downstairs to call her mum to be picked up. She stayed one of my friends that first year, but other than a sleepover party, we never saw each other outside of school again.

I’ll never forget that first year of school. The teachers were not very nice. They shouted a lot. They made sarcastic comments at us that I didn’t understand. We had to go to different rooms for each subject and had a two week timetable with codes that meant nothing to me. I walked into the wrong class once, a class full of older children and walked away crying. I remember being found in the corridor by a girl with a green stripe on her blazer, she put her arms around me, looked at my timetable and walked me to where I was supposed to be. I was often in the wrong place. The toilets at break time were full of girls who stared at me. Girls who sat behind the mirror smoking. Girls who shouted at each other and said nasty things to you as you went past. The teachers didn’t like letting you out of lessons to go to the toilet, I dreaded asking, watching everyone stare at me as the teacher made some sarcastic remark about being unable to hold my bladder. So I went in between lessons. And because of that, I was often late.

I preferred the corridors like that. The emptiness. The gentle hum of activity behind closed doors.

People in lessons weren’t nice. They were rude. They made jokes. The teachers joined in sometimes. Most of my lessons that first year were with my tutor group: a random mix of us. I made friends with some people in my tutor group but the lessons were a disaster. I preferred maths and literacy, because we were in sets for those. The other children in the top set were interested in their learning, like me. But I found it hard to talk to people I didn’t know.

I couldn’t cope with the canteen so I took a packed lunch. I ate it up the back near the courts on my own, whilst older kids did disgusting things like snort thick liquid out of their noses and onto the floor. Other kids my age sat on the benches outside the school, with their sandwiches wrapped in foil but every time I sat there, they made fun of me with my insulated lunch box with groovy chick on the outside and a space for a cooler pack on the bottom. I remember eyeing it up in Marks and Spencer before school had started. I always enjoyed preparing for the new year at primary school. Nobody told me senior school would be different.

That was why I jumped at the chance to sleep over at this new friend’s house. She wasn’t in my tutor group, or any of my lessons. My mum had met her mum, walking the dog. We became friends quickly. Had sleep overs and went trick or treating. We walked to school together until she stopped being friends with one of the other girls who walked with us. A nice girl. A quiet girl. She said I could come round, but I had to hide in her room with her when this girl called for us; her mum would answer the door and tell her we’d left already. I remember wondering why she did that. What sort of person was this woman, who lied to this 12 year old girl? It wasn’t long before she did the same to me.

I made other friends. Nice friends. But I never understood what they talked about. I never understood why they lied to each other. To themselves. I had one friend I hung about with a lot. She went to the same youth club. She was in my tutor group. She went to a few of the same activities as me. A few years later I stopped being friends with that girl. I had started to recognize her as a bully. Maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t. She had her own problems. But she liked telling me what to do. And one day I’d had enough. I made some different friends. Girly friends. Girls with big bottoms and big smiles. Girls who introduced me to msn and chatting with people I didn’t know. Then, one day, the friend I stopped hanging out with, joined in. A few weeks later they decided they liked her better and they didn’t want to hang out with me so much. They still invited me to parties, chatted with me online. But they wouldn’t hang out with me in school anymore.

In school, I wasn’t alone. There were other kids that people didn’t speak to much. A new girl had started and then another one. Both were a bit strange. They were good friends with each other and I was friends with the both of them. They smoked. And drank. And knew boys. But at home, it was just me. The people I spoke to at school, the ones who were nice to me, didn’t have computers at home. Phones were still basic back then, and texting cost money. But I had internet friends.

My internet friends were interested in sex and alcohol and aggressive things. The people who spoke to me at school were interested in the same things.

I never wanted to do these things. I never wanted to watch films about social issues and war. I just wanted to play with my Barbie doll house and my Barbie horses. But I also knew I was different from the people I called friends.

One day, I walked out of the toilets during lesson, into the calm of the corridor. I walked down the corridor and out of the school. Nobody stopped me. It didn’t stop there. There were phone calls home, sometimes. I was booked in to see a councilor. Spoke to a doctor. The words depression were thrown about over my ears. My mum refused to accept there was anything wrong with me. I was just a bit shy, she said. It was just the hormones, she said. She wasn’t wrong, but she wasn’t right either. I didn’t have the words, I just thought it was me; people didn’t like me.

It didn’t stop. Into my twenties, friendships didn’t become easier. I made it easier for myself by creating a persona. Based upon the ideals that my friends had projected onto me. I was good at masking. I was pretty as well. I became exactly what they wanted to be. But because I was prettier and smarter, I was better. And year after year, friends didn’t like that. They stopped being my friend. I would carry on the charade at the new party or new place and make new friends. Even into my late twenties, the friends I made, made fun of me. Were cruel to me in small ways I didn’t like. I don’t know why I wanted their friendship so much. Why I wasn’t content being alone.

I’m not sure exactly what moment it happened. What moment I swallowed the red pill and started to wake up to the horrors of reality.

What would life have been like for me, if I had been allowed to grow up later?

Would I still have gone to university? Ploughed my head into something for the sake of it rather than what I actually wanted to do?

Would I still have become a teacher, destined to support the next generation of frustration?

Maybe If I’d been allowed to develop at my own pace, I would have learned to trust the good people, learned to ignore the bad.

Maybe I’d still be sat on the floor playing with Barbies.