His clammy hands grasped my neck, squeezing so hard that my airway was compressed. He was on top of me. His eyes as angry as the red shirt he wore gleamed into my soul. He pressed his thumbs into the soft spot in my neck, paralyzing me into the ground.
That was my very first memory. It’s where it all started. I was five years old when a boy of whom I thought I was friend’s with basically tried to kill me in my own backyard. I’ll never forget the determination in his bright blue eyes. It was probably over something silly, but the experience was scary, nonetheless. I instantly became afraid of this boy.
In middle school he was constantly telling people that we had sex. He consistently made fun of me on the bus for years over my appearance. He would talk about my hair and the way I dressed. He told people that I was gay all because I preferred the tomboy look. The torment was was never-ending, until high school. He had finally moved on. I however, did not. His words stuck with me. He destroyed my self-worth. From then on I became ashamed of the way I preferred to dress and act. I viewed myself as ugly, all because he said I was. He was where my hatred of myself began.
Years later this boy would have a sister who came along. She was the same age as me. She entered the third grade in my class. I was asked to give her a tour of the school. From that very moment I had a terrible feeling about this girl. She immediately requested that we be friends, a request I was reluctant to take. I wish I hadn’t have accepted.
She forced me against my will to live out her every request. No matter how crazy. We followed around boys on the playground and picked up fights with other, popular, girls. I played whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. If I protested she would immediately run up the playground aides and make up some ridiculous story to get me in trouble. The aides never believed me when I said it wasn’t true. But lucky for me my mom worked at the school so I never got in any real trouble, at school, anyway.
I was an unfortunate prisoner to her. There was no free time at recess to do what I wanted. I was always scared to disobey this girl, for she would also make up lies about me to her mother. Her mother believed her, of course. My mother was a good friend to her mother. And so I would ultimately get in trouble several times a week for things that I did not in fact do. I was not allowed to have friends other than her from elementary school throughout middle school, so I had nobody to confide in. This friendship was utterly exhausting. I came to hate coming to school all because I knew I would have to face yet another day with her. School became a place where I was afraid; afraid of her and what she would do or say, how she would manipulate me.
I had no genuine friends, no freedom. I was not happy. I was sad. More than sad, I was angry. I was angry with my parents for not believing me about anything that regarded her. But mostly I was angry with her for ruining 3rd-5th grade. Spending all day being manipulated and held captive made me so angry that I would come home and yell and scream and fight and argue. I would get in trouble almost every single day, rightfully so. I hated school. I hated home. I hated her. I hated my parents. I hated everything. This anger turned into sadness. I ultimately became depressed.
Middle school came and this girl, along with her brother, continued to make up lies and accusations and send them around school. I still hated coming to school and it still made me uncomfortable to be around her.
I continued to struggle with making friends. Not only was I afraid to make new friends, but I simply didn’t know how to anymore.
The sadness and loneliness led me to become an angry child. My anger was synonymous with sadness. They were one and the same. Anger is a symptom of depression in children, but neither my parents nor I knew that.
What I really wanted to do at recess was play basketball. If I would get out to recess before she would captivate me I would run straight to the empty hoop. There was always a game being played on the other side of the court. One day in third grade the boy of whom I had a major crush on, Amari, asked me to come join the game to make the teams even. I agreed in shock that a popular boy, let alone my crush, asked me to play basketball with him.
It turned out that I was pretty good. After the game Amari told me that he wanted to teach me how to play basketball, how to really play. He played basketball for the Groton Basketball Association and he mentioned that I should play, too. The next winter I signed up. I went to his games along with mine, and he went to my games along with his.
Little did he know how much I adored him. He was damn near perfect. All these years later, I still think he is.
We both loved to write. We’d read each other’s stories in all the time. I wrote a chapter book with a character named Monkey Man in fourth grade. He saved the world. But who I really wanted him to save was me. I wanted so bad to be saved from my unhappiness.
Amari was my Monkey Man. He saved me. He doesn’t know how much it meant to me to have a friend like him, nor that basketball in itself saved me and how truly thankful I am to have had it introduced into my life.
Not only that, but I am thankful to have had such a great person in my life as well. There was days that she would let me play basketball, just because she liked Amari, too. He would ask us to sit with him and his friends at lunch frequently, and that, along with basketball, made a world of difference. It meant everything to me to have those moments of pure joy in a place that sucked all the joy out of me. It was my Heaven in Hell and he was my Angel.
