When I was young, I was really very smart. When my parents enrolled me in school, they placed me in the higher grade by accident, and only when my birthday came around and I insisted I was turning 4 and not 5 did the school realise the mistake, and then they sent me back to junior kindergarten, where I technically belonged, although I was keeping along fine with the older kids. For years my classmates believed I had failed kindergarten.

I loved to read. LOVED to read. You couldn’t keep a book out of my hands, at night I would get a flashlight and read a book under the covers until the batteries died. I adored Belle from Beauty & The Beast and  I love the scene where she walks around her quaint French village with a book in her hands the whole time – I’m pretty sure I relived that scene in my dreams many times.

I was in the second grade, my teacher had a Geraldo-like mustache, and he centered me out in the library as I was grabbing a Babysitters Club book, and he made me read a whole chapter just to prove I could. I was embarassed, I’m sure, but I read it all and I proved him wrong.

In the third grade I remember sitting at my desk in my room, and I wrote a silly little four lined poem about sounds in the night. I showed it to my mom and she didn’t believe that I wrote it.

In the fifth grade I had an amazing teacher. She was one of those teachers you’ll remember forever, her name was Mrs Matotek, and she believed in me, allowed me to write whatever I wanted – I’m sure most of the stories were about unicorns and such. Half way through the year she was diagnosed with eye cancer and we had a substitute teacher who despised me. I was a kid who finished her work early, “bothered” the other kids, basically because I was bored. The mean substitute teacher actually told my mother that I wasn’t being raised religious enough and that I have the devil in me. Great. My mother hated her too.

I was also one of those kids that would remember everything. Literally, I remembered silly little things that would happen when hanging out with friends. I hated recalling a memory with a friend who had no idea what I was talking about – it made me feel weird, like why was it so important to me and not to them?

I moved in the seventh grade, switching schools and my persona. I was no longer “Maggie”, my nickname growing up in elementary school. I would no longer be a geek, people wouldn’t know me, I could start all over.

I listened to a lot of music. I would look for meanings in songs, writing out lyrics, reciting them, singing along. My parents finally grabbed a bunch of my ‘demonic’ music and taped over it with classical music. Bye bye Marilyn Manson and NIN and Korn. I turned to rap music the next year and played it full blast much to the chagrin of my father.

I stopped reading as much.

I stopped ‘remembering’ as much. I wouldn’t put as much of myself out there. I was protecting myself. I knew if I put all of me out there in the world, in whatever situation I was in, it was just ME that it mattered to, and no one else remembered things like that weird dog we saw, or that funny thing that happened. Nope.

I started hating school. Nothing mattered to my dad other than grades. If nothing was of importance other than to me, what was the point – who cared if I did well or not. I always did well, even if I didn’t apply myself – so instead of really trying hard and getting the highest mark, I just did what I could without trying and got high 80s marks, I didn’t care enough to get better marks. What did it matter?

Do you know what’s happening now? I can almost remember nothing.

I made nothing matter to me, I brushed it all off because I was an overemotional person that picked apart everything anybody did to see why they did it. So I stopped doing it, and now I feel like I’ve lost it all sometimes. I tried to become normal, and in doing so, I lost it all.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to her, and say, it’s alright to not conform to everyone else – it’s boring anyway, it’s so much better to be interesting in bright. I know all this now. I do.

How do I get it back?