12th Grade

I’m staring at my blank paper, struggling to write the first words. I know I have plenty of stories I could tell. I just can’t get past my name. I write Emma. I struggle to type the first R of my last name. Invisible strings pull my fingers away from the keyboard so that I can’t finish the word. Reidinger. Even writing it now feels wrong and when I read this paper aloud to myself in the future, I know I’ll be able to whisper the name. This name connects me to the part of my story that holds all my disappointments. This name is not how I want my peers or my teachers to know me. This name doesn’t connect me to my pride in my culture that I was raised in. I delete the R. I type May, my middle name, instead, and hope the teacher is understanding.

 

9th Grade

My project partner tells me I shouldn’t have left her alone to do the presentation. I tell her that I’m sure she did great on her own. What I couldn’t tell her was that by changing our project topic to politics the night before and tricking me into wearing an outfit representing a political party, she was forcing me to renounce the religion I grew up with all at once. Politics are a strict “no” to Jehovah’s Witnesses. I was still taking baby steps away from the religion that had excommunicated my mother and whose pity drowned me because I was the child of an unmarried “worldly” couple. I couldn’t talk politics when it had been instilled in me that voting for a leader was disrespectful to the true ruler, Jehovah. I wanted to tell her I wasn’t ready to challenge these views yet, but I looked in her eyes and I knew she felt I owed it to her to be at the presentation with her that day. After all, she had so generously pushed my wheelchair even when I insisted I could handle it myself.

 

7th Grade

Walking laps while everyone runs past me time and time again should be considered a form of public humiliation. “Just try running,” the P.E. coach had told me, disregarding my doctor’s note that explicitly said she will never be a runner. Still, I tried to run for brief periods so that my classmates wouldn’t pass me as frequently. It was in those moments that I felt the most aware of my disability and the most alone. People would finish their mile, lay down on the grass with their friends, and I would still be walking alone. Sometimes they would sit on the side of the field and watch me. It was embarrassing. I felt like a sea lion at the circus. They’d cheer each time I’d pass, but it sounded more like jeering to me. 

 

6th Grade

“Can you stand at least?” my teacher asked. She had come over to me in the middle of the pledge to finally tell me that my sitting during the pledge “wouldn’t be tolerated”. I tried to make her understand that it wasn’t laziness or a practical joke, and I was too young to know it might’ve come off as a political statement. God simply wouldn’t want me to praise a country, because countries go to war and war means humans dictating when others die. Still, she felt my stillness was a distraction, and my silence was loud. She pulled my chair from my desk, directed me to stand and requested I mouth the pledge from then on. Even after leaving the religion, I never did become comfortable with saying the pledge, but I’ve stood and mouthed it so that I wouldn’t make myself stand out since that day.

 

2nd Grade

It was my first time in a wheelchair. I had gotten pretty good at keeping up pace over the summer, but I would never be able to keep up with the rush of kids running out the door for lunch. I parked myself at the end of a table and prepared to sit alone.  Someone just as lonely came to join me. They were new, and kind of weird. We didn’t seem to have a lot in common. They liked unicorns. I liked mermaids. We were different, but I didn’t want competition when it came to deciding who got to be the mermaid. After all, mermaids couldn’t walk, and I couldn’t either, so it made more sense for me to be the one with a tail. I couldn’t tell if their energetic personality was just who they were or if they were being powered by their chocolate banana sandwich and matching chocolate cupcake. For someone who was looking for a friend, they sure didn’t let me get a lot of words in. Luckily, I was a quiet kid and not interested in leading the conversation. I appreciated their company. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to run away.

 

Kindergarten

The next letter was M. I was waiting to be able to say “mermaid”. I had come to this school just in time for D. Dolphin. And now I was leaving before I could say mermaid. I wouldn’t even have a chance to return my disney princess book I had borrowed from the library. My mother had called the LA school to tell me it was my last day at this school. My father had been threatening to take us to court if we didn't move back to Orange County, and so my mother had secretly packed our things to keep me from worrying. By tomorrow we would be back. I didn’t want to go back. In LA we had a home provided by the company she worked for. In Laguna Hills, we secretly shared a small apartment with my grandmother in an elderly retirement center. I couldn’t invite anyone over and I only saw my mother twice a week as she continued to work in LA. I didn’t want to wake up early to make the drive from Laguna Hills to Top of the World five days a week either. I walked up to my teacher, returned all the supplies I had been given and said goodbye to everyone. Secretly though, I already knew I wouldn’t miss anyone I had met. I had already been practically waiting for my father to steal me away from my safe space once again, so I hadn’t bothered to learn any of my classmates' names.