Seventh Heaven? More Like Hell

There's an interesting review in today's The New York Times Book Review. The book is Bound, and it's by Antonya Nelson. I've never read anything by Ms. Nelson but it sounds like she's on my wavelength.

The reviewer writes about the novel's protagonist: "Although she's in her early 40s and long married, Catherine still feels 'nagged by teenage unease' when she looks in a mirror." She goes on to compare Catherine to another character in a previous work by Ms. Nelson. Like this other character who thinks, "Now that he's become one it surprised McBride how few adults were grown-ups," Catherine feels stuck in seventh grade.

I can totally relate. Whenever I feel insecure and self-conscious, seventh grade is always the year I'm transported back to. I was never so awkward and hopelessly uncool as I was that year. In sixth grade, I didn't yet care that I wasn't popular, and by the time high school rolled around, I'd begun the process of coming into my own and finding an acceptable place in the social hierarchy. I would never achieve uber-popularity (and oh, I craved it) but I wasn't a dork either.

In seventh and eighth grade, however, I was afraid I'd be invisible and unpopular forever. Sure, I had friends, but those friends were just as uncool as I was. They didn't exactly drag me down; rather our little group was mired in social mediocrity. We were outsiders, only ever hearing about the parties, romances, and adventures of the popular set, but never able to participate.

So, yes, when I was living in the city after my first child was born, not working, alone all day with the baby, no mommy friends close by, I would enviously watch other mothers hanging out together at the playground and feel twelve again. So insecure. I'd eavesdrop on their conversations about feedings, play groups, and sleep, and wish they were my friends.

It happened again when we moved to the suburbs. I had no friends or family nearby (neither did my husband) and my child was still too young for school. Each and every day we had nowhere to go, no one to see, nothing to do. I'd take the baby for walks around the neighborhood in the lovely autumn afternoons and say shy hellos to all the moms waiting for the school bus to come and deliver their children home. They'd be talking and laughing, so engrossed in their parents-of-school-age-kids-world that they hardly even noticed the new mom pushing her baby around in the stroller day after day, sneaking furtive looks their way, hoping to make a friend. Again, I was back in seventh grade, overhearing kids raving about the most popular boy in school's Bar Mitzvah and so desperately wishing I'd been invited.

I've found my place here now, and have made some wonderful new friends. Luckily, times when I feel self-conscious and insecure are fewer and farther between. But I know that the next time it happens, I'll be twelve once again.