and the universe said i love you...

And it not being socially acceptable to talk about your own childhood is super alienating. Sometimes people want to know why, and any answer you can give them is going to be off putting.

It was PE class, and the teacher said we were going to play dodgeball. She said the winning team would get some candy- something us children wouldn’t get for months to years at a time- and if the losing team did poorly enough they would earn a Punishment (an excuse to abuse us) ((this was never explicitly said, but it happened enough to me to know the threat was there, and so did everyone else))

2 boys were picked as team leaders, and the rest of us were set in a line, and those two boys would pick from the line which people he wanted on his team.

One boy goes first and of course he picks an athletic person. Then it’s the second boy’s turn, and he picks me.

I’ve never been athletic. I’ve been physically disabled my whole life (thought I didn’t know this at the time) and even just standing was painful. Running and throwing and moving was simply not something I was capable of, let alone something I could do Well. I had never been picked first for sports in my entire life before, and I was happy, confused for sure, but happy.

Then it was the first boy’s turn and he picked yet another athletic person of course.

And it was my team, and once again this boy picked someone not athletic, someone who was always in the last 5 to be picked. This continued the whole time until everyone was teamed up.

And of course, our team did horribly. We lost every single round of dodgeball. But that boy didn’t care. He encouraged us, motivated us to keep playing- to aim to have Fun instead of just Win.

This kid was sacrificing a reward that he may not get another chance of for over a year- risking getting even further abused- to make sure that us weak and disabled kids had a fun game of dodge ball. So that we could be chosen first, and have what could be our first ever positive experience with PE class in our lives.

I think about him a lot. For him this was such a small thing, just an hour of his life, but for me? It was community, it was an event that kept me going through all the abuse, it was knowing there were still people out there that cared about my joy even as every adult in my life was doing everything they could to tear mine down.