The following true story is not for the purposes of garnering sympathy or pity. Because I don't really like either. It's just one of those character building/crushing stories.

In grade 8 I joined the girls' volleyball Team. We were the Trojans. I was terrible. Absolutely terrible. I had no friends on the team. In fact, we used to do partner stretching, where you would pair up and help your partner stretch out her grade 8 hamstrings, lats, etc. My teammates would go in groups of three just so they wouldn't have to go with me. I would stretch my hamstrings by myself in the locker room, pretending it was taking me a really long time to get changed just to avoid the humiliation. No one would sit beside me on the bench. I would start off sitting in the middle of the bench, and eventually I would be on the end of the bench by myself. You see, back then I had no verbal skills whatsoever, and was completely unable to defend myself, be assertive... nothing. And it would eat away at me, like a psychological game. I would realize I was a terrible player with no hand-eye coordination and therefore no skills, which would mean that I played even worse. I showed up to every game and every practice, and there was no skill development at all. And I knew that I wasn't liked. I knew that my teammates thought of me as the girl who lost the games. And don't give me that, one player can't lose an entire game, crap, cuz, yes, I in fact lost entire games for us. And I knew that all the other girls thought that, psychologically, I knew. Until this one day where I actually found out that, yes, the entire team thought I sucked and that I lost our games for us. We were at our school for a tournament and we had a bye. I had nothing to do, so I was reading a book in the locker room, and I decided to run to my locker to grab a snack. I walked down the school hallway towards my locker and I saw my entire team sitting in a circle eating their lunches. My locker was located very close to where they were sitting. So, I walked to my locker, opened it and proceeded to rifle through my belongings to find my apple and granola bar. While doing so, I overheard one teammate say, "toni sucks so bad. How can we all work together to get her kicked off the team? Or at least make her quit". In her defense, she had her back turned to me and couldn't see me at the time. I did and said nothing but continued to silently rifle around in my locker, at this time completely forgetting what I was after in the first place. I swallowed the lump that was welling up as best I could. I was and always will be a crier. You see, now I just mask it with anger. Anyway, I digress. Another of the girls sitting in such a position in the circle that she could see me completely, stated loudly, "toni's right there behind you!'. At this point the entire circle began laughing hysterically. All of them. The girl who owned the original remark attempted to stifle her laughter with her arms and hid her head in her lap - which I remember seeing out of the corner of my eye. Let me tell you, it is by some miracle that I was able to close my locker, and proceed to walk down the hallway (walk, not run) all the while hiding the tears that are now streaming down my face. I made my way to the girls washroom and locked myself in the stall for nearly 30 minutes. When I was able to control myself, I found a way to sneak outside I and located a small corner on the outside of the building where I could sit, catch my breath, and breathe in some fresh air. My house was a 2 minute walk away, and I contemplated just going home. I have absolutely no idea why I didn't . But I stuck around and proceeded to 'lose' another game for us. There were no apologies, there were no attempts to check to make sure I was ok. We had a team of 11 girls. All of them laughed at me, and none of them seemed to show any regard for my feelings. You'd think that there would be some sort of lesson learned for me... some sort of life altering moment I could attribute this to. But instead from then on, and even now, whenever something happens wehre I feel like I'm in junior high again... you know, where you feel like people are scoffing at a mistake you made, or smirking behind your back, or secretly plotting against you... whenever that happens I think back at this moment, like it was yesterday, and I'm overcome with tremendous sadness. Powerlessness. A loss of self. Like every ounce of confidence that I ever had is drained from my body in one fell swoop.

Anyway, this blog is for sharing, so I just shared.
Toni