I am staying in the
country this weekend. I am making podcasts and sitting in country pubs and
having a generally lovely time with a friend and her parents. I am working, I
am creating and it feels really good. However, yesterday, for a brief moment,
when I woke up from a heavily red wine-induced sleep I did not feel good. I
felt terrible.
Contrary to what you
may be thinking, this was not an effect of the delicious Rioja, but entirely to
do with Facebook. Upon waking, I rubbed my eyes and did what I always do first
thing in the morning. I looked at my phone. I noticed I had a few notifications
that had come through in the night from a woman I went to school with a
lifetime ago; someone I haven’t seen in person since 1992 and even then, we had
little to say to each other. This piqued my curiosity greatly. I was keen to
get into my account, but sadly, as I am vey much in the county, the wifi is
sporadic at best.
Once my friend and I
had eaten our yummy avocado breakfast and had begun to set up our makeshift studio
in one of her parents’ many rooms, this one filled with old books and a relic
of an exercise bike from the late 70’s, we managed to get a signal. I opened
the tagged post and saw a lovely group photo of my school class taken in 1992.
I searched the faces eagerly until I found my own, My mom had curled my hair
that day and I was smiling like an idiot. Something about seeing myself, so
small in my lace dress, amongst a sea of faces made my chest ache.
I saw I was tagged in
a further photo and opened that as well. This was a smaller photo of my class;
everyone’s image neatly contained in little boxes in little rows. Some were outlined
by hand in green and pink and some were left alone, but in the top right
corner, there was one person’s photo with a thick black X drawn through it.
Before I zoomed in on the photo I wondered fleetingly if anyone from my class
had died, as if that would be a logical reason for the X to be there. However,
upon closer inspection I saw that it was me. It was my 12-year-old face that
had been so viciously crossed out.
I stared at the image
for a moment trying to figure out what I was seeing. I looked at the other
faces too, smiling into the camera, oblivious that their neighbour had been
defaced. I noticed that there was a code for the colours around some of the
photos; green meant “best” and
pink meant “good.” This girl had very carefully selected those that were for
colour coding and although some were left unmarked, which I assume meant she
was ambivalent towards them, mine had earned its own, unique mark, which sadly,
was not indicated in the key.
I am 35-years-old. I
am successful and I am happy in my life. But seeing that X made me feel
incredibly insecure and as confused as that 12-year-old girl once did. Seeing
that photo made me incredibly sad. But not because someone drew an X over my
face, but because at that time in my life I’d done something to cause that X to
be drawn. I decided to comment on the photo, so as to acknowledge that I’d seen
it and to apologise for whatever I did to make her 12-year-old self do that.
She brushed it off and blamed herself for being “bitchy” as a child, which made
me feel better, because weren’t we all? However two other people chimed in and
labelled me as “terrifying” and “weird” and that’s really what I have the most
trouble understanding.
If we, as adults,
can’t look back on ourselves as children and forgive ourselves, what chance do
we have? The fact that other grown women couldn’t leave the poster’s initial
excuse alone is disturbing to me. Of course, I remember some of those pictured children
too. The ones that ate garbage, the ones that pushed other kids down the
stairs, the ones who threw metal garbage cans at teachers…But I would never, as
a grown-ass woman, recall those children as anything other than children. My
brain has developed since I was 12 and luckily, so has my capacity for
compassion.
I wonder now what was
going on for those kids at home and I know it couldn’t have been good. I know
it wasn’t for me back then. I hope that as adults they have been able to find
happiness and that they have forgiven themselves for being difficult children.
I hope no one ever tries to make them feel shitty about himself or herself as
an adult for being that damaged child. I hope that we can all just be a little
kinder to each other. Because we all made it. We all survived and are here,
with our scars from mean girls, with our memories of eating alone, with the
pain of going to school in the clothes that didn’t fit and the fact that we
made it is a miracle enough. So why try and make it harder? Let’s celebrate
each other instead.
I could never have
posted that picture on the Internet, not in the state it was published. Because
that girl with the X through her face might have been battling depression, or have
recently miscarried. She might be going though a divorce or having a hard time
with her own children. She may
even be struggling with a terminal illness the way my mother was when that
photo of me was taken. That woman, if it wasn’t me, might have seen that image
and seen the unkind comments other adults made and feel like she still is that hated
child and that she is alone. I could not take that chance just to share a
picture, which is much more than just a picture. It is a record of a part of
the woman’s life that posted it. It shows us who she was and it very much shows
me who she still is.
To you who posted that
picture, you have children and I hope you are raising them to be kind. I hope
that they never experience unkindness themselves and I hope they don’t see that
you’ve put that photo on the Internet in its current state, because that was
not a nice thing to do. To those who don’t have any fond memories of me at that
age, I’m sorry. I hope you are happy and that you have fulfilling lives that
allow you to see that there is more to the world than just what you know. That
there is more to everyone’s story, so please be more considered with your thoughts
and words and let’s try and understand that everyone has their own shit. To all
of you who ignored the fact that there was a giant X though my face, thank you.
That was nice and I’d have done the same for you. I might have even asked her
to take the photo down.
The Internet can be a
wonderful thing. It’s a place where you can access immeasurable information and
connect with people all over the world. But there is a dark side to it as well.
It’s a place where things can live on forever. Where people can be cruel and
people can be victimised. I’ve often been thankful that my childhood existed in
a realm before this was ever possible, but alas, it appears the Internet can
still expose my youthful vulnerabilities and exploit them long after childhood
has passed. I’d like to ask that we, as adults who know better, don’t do this. I
ask that we set a good example and that we behave better towards each other,
because we are not children and because our humanity is our greatest gift. Let’s
use it wisely and use it often.
