That's right. In some way or other, they are all variations on that fundamental story that has shaped my life since the time I was a two-month-old baby in Mom's tummy carrier in the cinema. It was the first film I ever saw, and it was the first one I ever memorized. I can still play that movie in my head practically frame for frame, note for note, line for line because I watched it so many times when I was a child. In my head, I was Belle, beautiful, kind, smart, loving, outcast Belle with her nose in a book.
Coincidentally (or maybe not), I learned how to read when I was about three, maybe three-and-a-half years old. Even then, books were my favorite thing, my passion that could transcend and transport me beyond this realm into another, into millions of others for that matter. Even now when I'm finding it difficult to focus my attention long enough to sink my teeth into a new book, I still find other things to read and devour, all fantasy and fiction and mystery and science fiction. Anything that doesn't exactly have to do with dates and history and who did what where and when and with what. When I read, I want to go somewhere else, be someone else, even for a short while.
Seem like a strange thing to want? It's not, even though it feels like it might be from time to time. I could blame my parents for that particular sentiment because they were and are always the ones telling me not to get invested in things that aren't real, but how does an eight-year-old explain that she is being bullied and doesn't understand it and the only place she feels safe is off with a book? Escaping to a distant land where magic is clearly present and does exist? I didn't know how. I couldn't figure out the words required to do it. So, instead of forcing myself to face the bullies or deal with them or try to make things different or better, I closed up and turned to the written word that I trusted because it wasn't mine; it was someone else's.
I had a teacher that terrible year who didn't like what I wrote or how I wrote; I can remember my Halloween short story having heavy Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone influences since we had only finished it for the first time a week or two before. It's taken me until the past six months to rediscover a true love of writing and creating things through words in myself. I can speak just fine, construct arguments and such, but ask me to sit down and write out a paper or a speech and I'll dig in my heels and give many suffering sighs and fight every step of the way...remnants of the Monday evening vocabulary assignments in third grade. We all dreaded the Monday vocabulary paragraph; an assignment that could easily have taken ten minutes took me three hours of screaming and protesting and insisting that it was stupid and I shouldn't have to do it. I was rather petulant, but I couldn't tell them what was wrong. I perfected the art of faking the stomach ache instead, trying to skip school and avoid the torture of facing my tormentors, students and teachers alike. I got yelled at in art class because I colored the sky in two different directions, another time for wasting valuable class time; in my defense, I used the class time well as we were making clay pots and I spent the whole time working on mine, but more than halfway through the class, I collapsed my work and started over because I was dissatisfied with the product...apparently that meant, according to what I heard my art teacher saying to my head teacher, that I was wasting time and wasn't focusing or on task. I pulled a tooth in science class because we were learning something about the ocean or a marsh; all I remember was a bird in the book and I was bored, so bored, bored enough to pull my tooth and brave the physical pain I feared just to get out for a few minutes. I remember being put in GT (gifted and talented), but I don't remember much of what we did aside from learning about Hiroshima and reading "Stories with Holes" out loud. I read the Goosebumps books looking for a distraction but all I secured was a deep seated fear of dummies and masks and dark corners. When my parents finally wrested the truth from me about how miserable I was, they made arrangements and pulled me from school. I was home schooled from 2000-2003 when I decided to return to public school at the other elementary school in town. And even though I still had issues with bullies, I did make a few friends who helped me get through the year...even if I felt like more of an outsider than ever before.
Adults and educators and others always complain about the level of bullying that goes on in schools, but they never, ever seem to understand the issue beneath it. Children are petty and cruel and selfish and it shows. The decent ones have to work really hard to stay that way or they wind up eating lunch in the principal's office for kicking a boy in the jewels at recess or hitting another girl in the face with a chunk of ice because it slipped while they were playing catch or forgetting to come back to class because they went to the bathroom with a book under their shirt and read so long their bum went numb. All are true. And all have happened to me. The kids don't want to talk because they know for a fact that things will only get worse, the bullies will be more subtle, and they will know who ratted them out. I don't think people give children enough credit for their intelligence. Children are brilliant and see things far clearer than many adults.
The worst form of bullying is the verbal/emotional kind. Cuts and cruises and broken bones can heal, but other scars run far deeper. The worst kind I can remember were all of the taunts about just how "different" I was. According to them, my laugh was weird, it was wrong to read so much, I spelled my name wrong (that might have been me more than them as there was a girl in my class with my name spelled differently), I was friend with the wrong people, I wasn't cool in the slightest because my family didn't do Pokemon or watch Nickelodeon. You wouldn't believe the looks I get now from my peers when I say I didn't grow up on the Rugrats or the Wild Thornberries or even Barney because I was watching Lambchop, Mr. Rodgers (who I got to meet in person twice!), The Puzzle Place, Arthur, Winnie the Pooh, Thomas the Tank Engine, classic Disney Cartoons, Sesame Street, and others I probably can't even remember anymore. I believed in magic and tried my best to be nice and polite and kind, but they kept coming with the never ending whispers and glances and stares and smirks. They tried to mold me and shape me into their idea of who I should be. I told one girl to shove off because she wasn't the boss of me and I wasn't her clone and I made friends with another girl even though I had no less than six people telling me she was bad news and I should stay away from the new girl.Still others would come up to me and say, "You know so-and-so was saying this about you earlier" including my "best friend" because she said she was looking out for me. How does that make it better?! And there I was, a year younger than all my peers and hopelessly confused and scared and frustrated because I couldn't find anyone to really be a real friend except the new girl, and she transferred schools a few months before the end of the year. I sat in the same place in the cafeteria for the rest of the year, not caring that I sat alone. I got the "three heads stare" already and the fact that I went through a kick of eating cheese and ketchup sandwiches every day didn't help my reputation as the school freak in the slightest.
In terms of my life through literature, my one trustworthy friend through the hell and torment of trying to learn the ropes without getting cut or burned, the year I turned eight, my grandfather gave me the first Harry Potter book, a series which has since shaped me in more ways than I can count including being the subject of two Honors papers that I've presented through college. I read The American Girl and Little House books with my mom, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with my Dad. I snuck Captain Underpants books home and read them under my bed at night because for a short time they were banned in our house. Eventually I consumed the entire Series of Unfortunate Events, The Bartimaeus Trilogy, The House of Night Series, Abarat, and anything I could get my hands on by Gail Carson Levine, Eoin Colfer, Lois Lowry, Dr. Seuss, Michael Crichton, Susan Cooper, and many, many more books and authors that grace the shelves in my room and in the library and in my parent's office (and yes, I did go through a Twilight phase, don't judge me). Hundreds upon hundreds of paper-clad friends with adventures new and old to be had. And the library had even MORE! I can still remember the first book I consciously remember reading silently. I loved Jim Henson's Labyrinth as a child, and we had an illustrated book of the film. I was sitting on my bed and realized that I had been reading for at least ten minutes without speaking or moving my lips. It felt like the greatest discovery of my life.
So, here at the end of all of this, I'm sitting on my friend's couch falling in love with the song "The Beauty Underneath" from Love Never Dies, and it hits me. I love the stories because I wish I could be the girl, but I see myself as the villain, the twisted mockery of humanity in some cases who just wants to be loved. And someday I'll find it outside of my family and the few close friends I trust now and things will be different. But somewhere in this body, is a shunned eight-year-old who just wants one friend she can trust and talk to that isn't made of tree pulp.
"When the dark unfold its wings,/ Do you sense the strangest things?/ Things no one would ever guess,/ Things that words cannot express?"
