Sixth Grade
Middle school was the worst, am i right?
Sixth grade started with a day at the lake. It was August, the kind of sun-scorched day that’s already too hot early in the morning.
When my parents and brother and I got in paddle boats, it was over, sweat beading our foreheads as we tried to make the most of the last drops of summer before I became a middle schooler.
“My legs ache,” I complained, paddling my boat.
My complaints were met with pleas to stop complaining.
Time still came, as it comes for us all, and I started sixth grade at my school for children with “Very Special Needs” which was an odd way of saying we were deemed gifted.
Brilliant. Prodigies. None of which I felt to be true of me. However, the idea of not being special was too painful, and the idea of leaving my comfortable social bubble wasn’t welcoming either.
So I made the trip to my school every day, comforted by the presence of the other special children, determined to be more special than they were. And I was. I spent most of the first semester of my sixth grade at home, making up assignments, giving days my best just to give in early, and at the hospital.
I was special in all of the ways I had not imagined.
My legs aching in that paddle boat had not been stress, or the unbearable icky heat coating my body, which didn’t seem to fit me quite right at 11.
A rheumatologist and his very eager team of residents, of whom there could have been anywhere from 2-15, each of whom took turns doing neuromuscular tests on me, finally figured it out.
Lupus, they declared.
Brought on by one of the drugs I was taking for epilepsy. Really a very rare side effect.
Instead of nights doing homework, I had nights protesting the need to take a shower. The air on my skin was unbearably cold, due to — what else? — anemia.
Instead of the companionship of classmates, I had the companionship of my family. I didn’t pass notes in class; I short-sheeted my parents’ bed with my aunt.
I didn’t eat with everyone else; I ate pizza at my aunt’s house during a sleepover. I know that there were good days. We went to a play as a class.
I worked on a project with classmates and felt like I belonged. I worked on a project for a science fair involving building a fake house that was architecturally stable with a friend.
Materials allowed for use: cardboard sticks and other craft supplies. Needless to say, ours did not survive the test of a simulated earthquake, but we had fun until my mother ended the day by screaming, “not everything is about you!”
I’m sure I said something to deserve this.
I wished not everything was about me. My sickness.
I think there might have been enough at my school to salvage. Tentative friendship bonds, schoolwork that could be caught up on in time, a 5.04 in place, good teachers. I got better. “Why don’t you move schools?” my parents said.
There were murmurs of agreement from aunts and uncles and teachers that maybe this was not the right place for me anymore after a semester of falling behind.
So I began again. New school. The middle of 6th grade.
Sixth grade did not have stability for me. It did not have friends. It did not have the security of knowing where I was going to sit every day at lunch. I was always the kid that had an empty seat across from them in the cafeteria when there was an odd-number of people in the class.
It did not have self-confidence or pride. I did not have Uggs, or Sperrys, or Hollister at my new school, and I no longer had the false sense of academic prowess I had had at my old school.
I was not smart. I was not cool. I was not pretty.
I was afraid.
What was 6th grade like for you? What memories stand out?