Maybe 7? 8? 9? I'm not sure any more. I wasn't in middle school yet but I was definitely bigger, at least starting to top 70 lbs, when I finally got out of the crib and into a normal bed. I had forgotten and it came up as an aside in therapy today. Not even sure how I got to that point in the conversation. Talking about clothes... I didn't pick out my own clothes for school because I got ready in the living room because I shared a bedroom with my brother...and while I was in that room I still slept in a crib.
A crib?
A crib.
How did it end up like that? I'm sure there were plans for some other arrangement for all of these bodies of children. For a long time I heard plans of the two oldest moving into the basement, me moving into the pink room with the other sister, and my brother having his own room ('cause he was a boy). But the good idea and its implementation stretched further and further apart. Through Kindergarden, first grade, second...? I heard it so long that it took on the quality of fantasy, like the vacation we never took. Inertia creeps up on you. The next thing you know you're repairing a crib meant to hold up to 30 lbs of baby because the mattress supports break regularly. 70+ lbs of child drop with alarm to the floor under the bed in the middle of the night. She cries with alarm. Hilarity ensues.
Hence flew the meanest arrow in brother's arsenal. Available for humiliation at any moment's notice. In the middle of being tormented by children on the school bus he would come out with "she still sleeps in a crib". Bringing his friends over to play, a show of my crib was a humorous aside. It made him cool.
Who even cares any more which dust speck started the storm cloud, which was the first hair in the ball or which flake inspired the rolling set of poor ideas and bad decisions. Does it matter what little thing inspired the years of self negation? Did the crib make me into an alcoholic or was it the carelessness of the parents who, night after night, put me in there, to squeeze myself in, curl up into smallness and pretend not to be a growing person? At 12 i was throwing a party of one before the glass cabinet where all the liquor was kept.
I've never come close to crying in therapy until today. Because there it was, written in the shock of a doctor's face, that leaving a growing child to sleep in a crib has an unmistakable strangeness about it. That's all I see, for now.
Sitting at home with a plate full of healthy dinner and the feeling. Negation. Here, finally, is that mysterious essence of "what's wrong with you" that has so violently isolated me from all of those other people I see living lives with a sense of purpose. It's called "not a person" and its raw. It tastes like cheap girl scout cookies coming back up your throat. It feels like an ill fitted polyester dress on a hot day. It looks like the one kid in the group photo who is most likely to have a sad look on her face. Why can't I wear jeans like the other girls? Why can't I be treated like a normal person? Why isn't anyone listening to me? We can keep that self-pity helmet encased around our head, lost to the thoughts of the past for days...years. Or not. It's on me whether I want to finish the job they started...or not.
It was a crib in the one bedroom with only 1 exterior wall. The warmest place in the house. It's love, dear, but not as we know it.
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