Stories of recovery - The tallest girl in the class

On Sunday afternoon, I find myself looking at my childhood photographs, having long forgotten that I am cleaning. I'm sitting cross-legged on the floor in my study, the photos spread out in front of me. The sun in the window is the color of Matisse's lemons. And I suddenly feel like that little girl again.

I hold a photograph between my hands. Schoolyard, early summer, elementary school play. The year 1992, maybe. A group of little girls in pink tutus. They are wearing bunny ears. They are doing ballet in the garden, under the bright sun, in front of the parents who are watching them with pride and a little bit of boredom.

I'm there too, but I'm not smiling, I'm the only one not smiling. Because, as usual, I'm at the back. I've been thrown to the back because I'm tall. I was always thrown to the back because I was tall. I hated it, I was so ashamed. I was the tallest girl in the class for as long as I can remember.

A bitter smile appears on my face as I look at the photo. I look at that little girl with compassion and I feel I would do anything to heal her wounds. But I can't turn back time. I can't hold her hands, I can't tell her that everything will be okay. It's too late for that now. There is something I can do, though. Right now, I can teach myself to own my story.

I close my eyes and as the sunlight warms my face, I remember everything. Yes, when I was a child I was very ashamed of being the tallest girl in my class. And I was taller than most of the boys, maybe even all of them. Well, I guess all of them...

It meant the end of the world. The boys I was in love with always came to my shoulder and never spoke to me. I knew they hated me because they pulled other girls' hair, but never mine. Or maybe they were afraid of me because I was tall.

In class, I would reluctantly sit in the back. I wanted to sit in the front, to listen to the lecture from the front, but that luxury belonged to other girls. Petite girls. Small girls. Girls of average height. But never tall girls. When I think about it, maybe the whole world belonged to these girls. I was just a figurehead among them.

That's how I learned to slouch. Sitting bent double, walking bent double to minimize my height. That's how I learned to make myself smaller. And it never even crossed my mind that being tall could be a good thing until that magical and strange day when I met a girl who was taller than me.

One day a new student came to class. This girl was at least a foot taller than me, but strangely enough, she didn't seem to mind it at all. In fact, she seemed proud of being tall. Her chin was always high, and her hair was stubbornly fluffy. In short, she was cool when she stood up and looked down on everyone.

I was no longer the tallest girl in class, she was the tallest girl in class. And she loved it! I was dumbfounded when I saw her behavior. And what shocked me even more was the admiration the other kids had for her. They had circled around her from the very first day. They loved him so much.

As for that girl! Unlike me, he never hid himself around the other children. He embraced being tall and didn't try to be someone else. I was witnessing something like this for the first time in my life. No one had ever told me that I could be myself around others.

Sometimes I would watch him from afar. I would feel a deep regret for being ashamed of myself all this time. Then I would realize that being tall is actually not a bad thing. And that if I own my story, if I accept myself as I am, others will eventually respect that.

I open my eyes slowly. I look at the photo again, at that sad, bunny-eared, tutu-clad girl. If I could, I would tell her to never be ashamed of being herself. That she should never hide herself from others. That being different is not a bad thing. That the best gift she can give herself is to own her own story.

I slowly place the photo back in the album, then close the album lid and put it in the closet. That's enough time travel for today. I don't want to teleport to the past anymore. I won't look at these photos for a long time. Besides, I have to clean before it gets dark, so I have to get to work as soon as possible.

And now, these days, when I am dealing with problems completely different from being tall, realizing that the root of these problems lies in the same state of self-concealment, I say the same thing to myself softly: "Never be ashamed of being yourself!"