There has been one time in my life where I was legitimately suicidal. It happened when I was 16 years old and in the 11th grade. This wasn’t a hysterical, emotional contemplating of suicide (not that that makes it any better). Rather, it was a serious evaluation of suicide as a viable option. It started with an evaluation of method. Slit my wrists? No. Too painful. Pills? Maybe. But where would I get them? My parents didn’t have anything that would do the job — I had checked. Gunshot to the head? Bingo. My parents had a revolver and I knew where they kept it. Now that the subject of how was solved, my mind moved on to a contemplation of where. Blowing my brains out at home wasn’t an option — I didn’t want my parents to have to find me that way. So, obviously, I had to drive somewhere with the gun, some random parking lot somewhere, stick the gun in my mouth and pull the trigger. Someone else would find me, and I wouldn’t leave my parents with that indelible image. And — most importantly — my pain would be over.
The fact that I am sitting here preparing myself to tell the story that brought me to that point lets you know that I didn’t follow through with this. But I came very close. I teetered on the edge of that decision and to this day, it scares me how close I came, to know that I could have rationally decided that ending my life was the only viable option given the circumstances.
The video I linked in the caption to the picture above is Hillary Clinton’s ad “Mirrors”. I’m sure you’ve seen it. When I see it, it brings me to tears every time. So what follows is my story so that you have the proper context. It should explain why I cry when I hear that ad, and why it’s so deeply wrong when women are shamed and when the shamers are aided and abetted by others around them.
The scene: September 1980. I am 13 years old, and it is the morning of the first day of school. For me, this was also the first day of 7th grade — the first day of junior high. It was the day that I would meet all the kids from the other elementary schools for the first time, the day that I would take my first step into young adulthood and leave child-like things behind.
The week before this day, my mother took me back-to-school shopping, a ritual we had performed every school year prior. This shopping excursion was very important to me, because I knew in that innate way that a new teenager knows anything that my choice of outfit for that day — the day — was quintessentially important. Should a wear a dress? A skirt and top? Jeans?
At the time, there wasn’t a 13 year old on the planet who hadn’t seen the ads for Jordache jeans.
x YouTube VideoAs a young woman, what I saw in that ad was perfection. Slim, perfect hair, impeccable makeup = popular, attractive, and desirable. The girl everyone wanted to hang around. It had to be jeans for the first day. The fact that I didn't exactly have a "Jordache body" didn't diminish my longing — my need — to have these jeans. Now, my barely-post-adolescent physique was thick. Not fat necessarily — but thick. Not Jordache-thin.
Me, crouching, front center — thick, not fat.My mother wasn't into paying twice the price for a pair of jeans because they said Jordache on the back pocket. So I had to adjust my idea of perfection to include Jordache-like jeans. I wasn’t allowed yet to wear makeup, either, so I had to pilfer some from my mother’s makeup bag and hide it away. A pale-green frosted creme eye-shadow, an old tube of mascara, blush and lip gloss found their way into my underwear drawer ahead of The Day. The Jordache-like jeans would be capped off with one of those blouses with the gold threads woven throughout them that were so trendy and hot at the time.
The last thing — the most perfect thing — about this outfit was the purse. This was the first time I was allowed to have a purse. For me, it was the sole emblem that I had arrived. Purses carried adult things — like lunch money. And pilfered makeup. Purses were carried by women, not girls. My mother allowed me to choose the perfect purse. It was small, and made of that soft, supple leather that you just had to touch to reassure yourself that yes, it really is as soft as that. It was navy blue, and it dangled on a long, thin leather strap to just below my waist (very trendy at that time). I put my adult things in my adult purse, tortured and sprayed my perfectly flipped hair, donned my gold-thread blouse and Jordache-like jeans and was off to my New Life on The Day.
I put the makeup on while waiting for the bus (since I wasn’t allowed makeup, this had to be done in secret). Once I got to school, I was thrust into a room full of 500 other 7th graders emanating all the nervous energy that only a roomful of 13 years old can generate. I plunged into the fray in search of my locker — head up, navy blue leather purse swinging at my side.
That’s when it happened.
I happened upon a group of 4 or 5 boys, also in the 7th grade, hanging together. Remember my un-Jordache-like thickness? Well, this apparently caused me to be the target of repeated and loud claims that I had “Earl Campbell thighs”. Earl Campbell was a running back who had been selected as a first-round draft pick in the NFL draft a few years before. As a powerful running back, the size of his thighs was always a positive thing — for him. For a 13 year old girl, not so much. As the taunting continued, I got more upset. It moved from discussion of my thighs to criticism of my overall appearance. I was fat. My hair was ridiculous. “Where did you get those jeans? K-Mart?” [peals of adolescent male laughter at this one] And yes, finally it centered on the subject of my purse. As I sought to reflexively protect that purse, one of the boys reached out to grab it and in so doing, broke the strap. The purse fell to the floor. The makeup spilled out of it. I burst into tears, bent down and collected my useless things and ran to the bathroom, hearing their laughter and shouts the whole way.
Remember that kid in junior high and high school who wasn’t just unpopular, but was actively unpopular? The one everyone, even the other picked-on kids picked on? From that moment forward, that was me.
“But RenaRF”, you say — “That was when you were 13 years old and you seriously considered suicide when you were 16 years old. What happened in between?”
Good question. And I’ll have to summarize the list — cherry-pick the high points as it were — to answer that question.
At the end of 8th grade, I decided to try out for Freshman cheerleading. Let me put this in context. By now, I had endured two school years being taunted for my weight and generally ostracized by my peers. Repeatedly. Persistently. My mother had been a cheerleader in high school, and her stories netted out — in my adolescent brain — as the key to popularity. All of the taunting and tormenting? Well, obviously, it would stop once I was a cheerleader. No one tortured cheerleaders for God’s sake. So I tried out — and I should note here that I really didn’t practice or do anything to prepare for the tryout — and I didn’t make it. I didn’t make it because frankly, I wasn’t good enough and I hadn’t put enough effort into being good enough. And, of course — everyone’s favorite target, I was taunted both before (“No one would make you a cheerleader.” “Fat girls can’t be cheerleaders.”) and after (“You were too fat to make the team.”).
Yet still, I wasn’t suicidal. I decided to spend my Freshman year doing the types of things that would make one prepared for a cheerleading tryout. In my basement, I practiced the cheers. Over and over. The hand movements, the routines, the shout. I practiced the jumps — the “hurky”, the “Russian”, the “C”. I practiced the splits. I did this every day for an entire school year. Mind you, the the verbal taunting continued throughout this whole year, largely centered around my “Earl Campbell thighs” and my weight. I ate alone at lunch. I wasn’t invited to any parties. The very few friends I had didn’t hang out with me publicly due to the stink of social stigma that clung to me. I was — pretty literally — alone. But I wasn’t suicidal. Yet.
And at the end of Freshman year, I did try out for Junior Varsity cheerleading. I vaguely remember being very, very nervous on the day of the tryouts. But my parents told me that I had put in the work and to go in there confident in the knowledge that I was going to have an excellent tryout. And so I did. I entered that gym and faced two tables of adult judges. Some of them teachers, others who were PTA types and very active in the extra-curricular programs. I went in with another girl (they had us try out in pairs). We were asked to do the school’s Fight Song cheer and one other cheer. We were asked to show our three required jumps. I did all of this — didn’t fall, stumble, or forget anything. I perfectly executed the cheers and smiled enthusiastically (maniacally?) throughout.
I left that tryout not knowing how — how possibly — I could survive practically an entire day until they announced who had made the squad. The results were due to be posted the following day by the 6th period (the second to last class of the day) in the Freshman locker-room. It was a Friday, and I do remember that day dragging on as though time had lengthened and been dipped in molasses. I couldn’t concentrate on my classes. I slogged from class to class listlessly. It was like a lost day for me, mentally, so focused was I on the paper flip chart in the Freshman locker room that would eventually hold the results of the cheerleading tryouts.
The sixth period bell rang and we had 10 minutes to get to our 7th and final class of the day. I tried not to RUN — to RACE — to the locker room. I tried to be nonchalant, at least outwardly. I do remember my heart pounding so hard that the sound of it in my head kind of drowned out anything else as I walked to the Freshman locker room. I was clammy, and felt vaguely nauseated as I pressed through the doors that would bring me to that flip chart. And then, there I was. In front of the flip chart, looking at the names.
And there it was. My name. I had made the Junior Varsity cheerleading squad. I had made it!!! I don’t even remember my last class of the day, obviously. What I do remember was a weekend spent thinking about how my life had just changed. How I wouldn’t be persecuted by the other kids any more, how I would be invited to parties and sit with the other cheerleaders at lunch, how I would proudly wear my cheerleading uniform in on game days, and how everyone would love me. Because I. Was. A. Cheerleader. I had earned that.
So here’s a summary of what happened after that:
The following Monday I came to school and found that the entire football team had signed a petition to get me off the squad. They had posted it under my name on the flip chart in the Freshman locker room. Over the summer between 9th and 10th grade, my house was spray painted. On the garage door, they wrote “Rena gives good head”. I had to ask my father what that meant. My parents’ 3rd car (the car I would eventually drive) was spray painted as well. My parents’ flowerbeds were dug up and the flowers thrown all over the yard. At the very first pep rally of my sophomore year (my JV cheerleading year), I was booed. In my face, up front, the entire time. More times than I could count, I found my locker filled with cafeteria garbage and dip spit. More times than I could count, I was verbally harassed. Again. Because “fat”. My house and car were spray painted again. I still sat alone at lunch. I still had no friends. I was still not invited to parties. The other cheerleaders pretty much shunned me.That said, I didn’t quit the squad. I don’t know if I sensed that it would somehow make things worse or if my pride didn’t allow me to quit or what, but I didn’t quit. I suffered the booing and the taunting at every pep rally, at every game.
At the start of my Junior year, not a cheerleader any longer, the taunts reverted to type — locker room and hallway declamations of my “fatness”, continued episodes of vandalism of my locker, car and house. A persistent, unrelenting drone of abuse.
But still — I wasn’t suicidal. Yet.
Instead, to cope, I just stopped going to school. I stole a prescription pad from the family doctor before the school year began and diagnosed myself with mono. In that diagnosis, I let the school administration know that my attendance would be spotty. I expertly forged my mother’s signature to excuse absences. I left the house in the morning at the appointed school-going time, and I went down into Georgetown (DC) and hung out at Commander Salamander’s and other places until it was safe for me to go home (both my parents worked, so I could cautiously go home during school hours, but only if I parked my car on the street behind and cut through the woods to the back door so the neighbors wouldn’t see me).
And so, sometime in November of that year — 1983 — I got my interim report card. I was failing every class. So let me digress here for a moment: my parents expected me to get good grades. Period. Getting a “C” (this in the day where we were graded on a 4.0 scale) was grounds for privileges being withdrawn and being grounded. Getting a “B” was grounds for privilege-rescission dangling, pending improvement of the grade. Getting a “D” or an “F”? Unthinkable the consequences of that. So there I was with an interim report card that had to be signed by my parents and that required a parental visit. They were going to call my parents to schedule the conference after I brought the signed interim report back, and that was due by Monday of the following week (this was on a Friday).
So there I was — no friends, persecuted at school, and about to be disavowed by my own parents (at least, that’s what I thought anyway).
That was when I became suicidal. That is when I visited the gun in my parents’ bedroom (because remember — the gun was my chosen method). I sat there and looked at it, a pearl-handled .22. I looked at the box of bullets. I pictured myself loading it. I tried out putting it in my mouth (unloaded) to see how it would feel — how that shiny, cold chrome would feel — against my lips. Against my teeth. I tried to envision putting it in my mouth and pulling the trigger, and how that would feel. Would I feel anything? Would I hear the shot, or would I already be gone? Given that I knew I wasn’t going to do it at home, would I do it in the car or would I get out of the car and do it next to the car? Stuff like that. Risky stuff — borderline stuff. Teetering between living and dying.
In the end, I chose differently. I stole my parents credit cards and cash, took the car, and I ran away. I was heading to Florida, where I would live on the beach, homeless, but not that bad because it didn’t get cold there (at least that’s what I was thinking). I only made it as far as Roanoke VA, where relatives of ours lived. I only knew it was Roanoke because I could see the famous star on the mountain, and I stopped at a pay phone and called them and they came down and met me and led me back up to them. They called my parents — who were frantic (I had been gone for like 6 hours when I was told not to leave the house). I spent the night there and drove myself home the next day.
When I sat down with my parents, after they vented the frustration that developed through an accumulation of fear for my whereabouts and my safety, I answered their questions with only one statement:
“If you make me go back there, I will kill myself.”
And I meant it. And they saw that I meant it. They felt how honestly I meant that statement, and they were afraid — for me, for themselves — and then they closed ranks around me and told me I didn’t have to go back there. They met with the school’s administrators in the following days and negotiated with them to get all of the assignments that I’d missed and secured an agreement to allow me to catch up, submit them for evaluation, and take my final exams separate from the other student. I went with my parents to look at boarding schools — all girls boarding schools (my choice) and we found one and they paid the ungodly sum of money required for tuition to keep me safe, so that I didn’t kill myself.
And I excelled at school, graduated with honors, went on to college and graduated with honors and went on to a career and many accomplishments of which I am proud.
But I am a loner — I don’t rely on other people because they showed me early on in life that they will abuse if given the opportunity — and I don’t cry in front of other people, ever, unless it’s in front of the very, very small circle of people whom I trust. And sometimes not even then. I don’t show my weaknesses. I actively work to hide them in a bluster of brashness and bravado.
The events of junior high and high school have profoundly shaped and affected the adult that I am. And that’s why I cry when I see that Hillary Clinton ad, why I can’t get through writing this without crying (by myself, of course) from the sheer level of stress that its telling engenders. After ballooning from “thick” to “fat” in late high school and early college, I got my weight under control in my early 20s. I’d like to say that it’s solely because I know intellectually that maintaining a healthy body weight is better for overall health — but if I’m being honest, I’ll admit that my obsessive calorie counting to this day stems from the fat-shaming I experienced in high school so acutely that it nearly it cost me my life, and the certain knowledge that it would start again if I let my weight get out of my control.
If you’ve read my cathartic screed up to this point, I thank you. I’ll try to wrap it up here with relevance to the current Presidential contest.
I was listening to AM Joy this morning on satellite radio as I ran mundane errands. One of her guests this morning was Illeana Garcia, founder of Latinas for Trump. Of course, on the heels of the whole Alicia Machado fat-shaming and Trump’s despicable late-night (early morning?) rage tweeting about here, I was curious what Garcia, who at least sounds rational, would say. She didn’t cast off the seriousness of the fat-shaming per se; she acknowledged it, acknowledged that it shouldn’t have happened. But she went on to say that she was willing to set aside the Machado events because Trump would benefit her economically and, by extraction, her 19-year old son.
That’s pretty much when I lost it. I wondered — if she had had a daughter who had been fat-shamed to within an inch of her very life, would she feel differently? Would her perceived economic well-being (don’t even get me started on how flawed that assessment is on her part; I know) take a back seat in that case? What if her 19-year old son was visibly physically disabled? Would the mockery of the disabled by Trump matter more then? What if she was a Muslim? Would Trump’s vile insinuation that Gazhala Khan wasn’t permitted to speak for herself carry some import? Or even more apt: how does Trump’s assertions that Mexicans are “rapists” (and all the other hideous things he has said about Latinos) not reflect back on her own son?
When these types of “shaming” events are brushed off, they are normalized. They are permissible. They are put forward as funny. While we still had a long way to go in eradicating these particularly hurtful types of ridicule, Trump’s invocations have dragged us inexorably backward. It’s ok now to openly shame people for their weight, for their heritage, for their disabilities, for their religion. It has become less disgusting, less ostracizing to do these types of things because of this man, and a certain percentage of the population condones and validated — echoes these things — proudly and publicly.
So would Illeana Garcia change her mind about how serious this is if she came home one day to find her son hanging in his closet, unable to deal with the persistent, hateful invective against Latinos?
This is more than just rage-tweeting against an allegedly “fat” Miss Universe title holder. It’s about normalizing that type of ridicule as expected, as justifiable. It will seep its way insidiously into corners people can’t imagine — and in that corner, it may find your own child and hand them a terrible decision of his or her own.
It’s not ok. Nothing about this man is ok or recoverable. If you vote for him, you condone this abuse. I hope many will slowly come to see that — but it is a hope without much basis.
UPDATED, October 1 2016 5:52pm ET
First — thank you all. It’s both horrifying and comforting to hear so many other similar stories.
Second — Dogs are Fuzzy has posted an important comment directing those who need help when contemplating suicide:
You will never know whether you saved a life by talking about your experience.
In the US, probably Canada as well, 1-800-273-8255 is a 24/7 suicide prevention hotline,
List of other hotlines by country. For US active duty military and veterans: Veteran's Crisis Line: 1800-273-8255 Press 1 or text 838255 confidential chat available at: www.veteranscrisisline.net Specifically for support of trans people, www.translifeline.org has a US hotline number +18775658860 and a Canadian toll-free number +18773306366. For LGBT teenagers and young adults, www.thetrevorproject.org/.... They also have a hotline number, 866-488-7386.
2nd Update, 10/1/2016 7:00pm ET
I think I have to add this video. It was added in a comment from DarkPhoenix. I will warn you in advance: if this diary spoke to you emotionally, the video will bring you to your knees. I can’t explain it — you have to watch it. All of it.
x YouTube Video