WHEN LOVE BIND

It was January 10th 2005.

A whole new year, and the first day back to school after Christmas break.

And I was nervous – so nervous, in fact, that I had thrown up no less than three times this morning.

My pulse was beating at a concerning rate; my anxiety the culprit for my erratic heartbeat, not to mention the cause of my upchuck reflex abandoning me.

Smoothing down my new school uniform, I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror and hardly recognized myself.

Navy jumper with the Tommen College crest on the breast with a white shirt and red tie. Grey skirt that stopped at the knee, revealing two scrawny, underdeveloped legs, and finishing with tan tights, navy socks, and two- inch, black court shoes.

I looked like an implant. I felt like one, too.

My only consolation was the shoes that Mam bought me brought me up to the five feet two mark. I was ridiculously small for my age in every way.

I was thin on the extreme, under developed with fried eggs for breasts, clearly untouched by the puberty boom that had hit every other girl my age.

My long, brown hair was loose and flowing down the middle of my back, pushed back from my face with a plain red hairband. My face was free of makeup, making me look every bit as young and small as I felt. My eyes were too big for my face and a shocking shade of blue to boot.

I tried squinting, seeing if that made my eyes look any more human, and made a conscious effort to thin my swollen lips by pulling them into my mouth.

Nope.

The squinting only made me look disabled – and a little constipated.

Exhaling a frustrated sigh, I touched my cheeks with my fingertips and exhaled a ragged breath.

What I lacked in the height and breast departments, I liked to think I made up for in maturity. I was level-headed and an old soul.

Nanny Murphy always said that I was born with an old head on my shoulders.

It was true to an extent.

I had never been one to be fazed by boys or fads. It just wasn't in me.

I once read somewhere that we mature with damage, not with age. If that's the case, I was an old age pensioner in the emotional stakes.

A lot of the time I worried that I didn't work like other girls. I didn't have the same urges or interest in the opposite sex. I didn't have an interest in anyone; boys, girls, famous actors, hot models, clowns, puppies... Well, okay so I had an interest in cute puppies and big, fluffy dogs, but the rest of it, I could give or take.

I had no interest in kissing, touching, or fondling of any sort. I couldn't bear the thought of it. I suppose watching the shitstorm that was my parents' relationship unravel had put me off the prospect of teaming up with another human for life. If my parents' relationship was a representation of love, then I wanted no part of it.

I would rather be alone.

Shaking my head to clear my thunderous thoughts before they darkened to the point of no return, I stared at my reflection in the mirror and forced myself to practice something I rarely did these days: smile.

Deep breaths, I told myself. This is your fresh start.

Turning on the tap, I washed my hands and splashed some water on my face, desperate to cool the heated anxiety burning inside of my body, the prospect of my first day at a new school a daunting notion.

Any school had to be better than the one I was leaving behind. The thought entered my mind and I flinched in shame. Schools, I thought dejectedly, plural.

I'd suffered relentless bullying in both primary and secondary school.

For some unknown, cruel reason, I had been the target of every child's frustrations from the tender age of four.

Most of the girls in my class decided on day one in junior infants that they didn't like me and I wasn't to be associated with. And the boys, while not as sadistic in their attacks, weren't much better.

It didn't make sense because I got along just fine with the other children on our street and never had any altercations with anyone on the estate we lived in.

But School?

School was like the seventh circle of hell for me, all nine – instead of the regular eight –years of primary had been torture.

Junior Infants was so distressing for me that both my mother and teacher decided it would be best to hold me back so I could repeat Juniors with a new class. Even though I was just as miserable in my new class, I made a couple of close friends, Claire and Lizzie, whose friendship had made school bearable for me.

When it came time to choose a secondary school in our final year of primary, I had realized I was very different from my friends.

Claire and Lizzie were to attend Tommen College the following September; a lavish, elite private school, with massive funding and top of the range facilities – coming from the brown envelopes of wealthy parents who were hellbent on making sure their children received the best education money could buy.

Meanwhile, I had been enrolled at the local, overcrowded, public school in the center of town.

I still remembered the horrifying feeling of being separated from my friends.

I'd been so desperate to get away from the bullies that I'd even begged Mam to send me to Beara to live with her sister, Aunty Alice, and her family so I could finish my studies.

There were no words to describe the devastated feeling that had overtaken me when my father put his foot down on moving in with Aunty Alice.

Mam loved me, but she was weak and weary and didn't put up a fight when Dad insisted I attend Ballylaggin Community School.

After that, it got worse. More vicious.

More violent.

More physical.

For the first month of first year, I was hounded by several groups of boys all demanding things from me that I was unwilling to give them.

After that, I was labelled a frigit because I wouldn't get off with the very boys that had made my life a living hell for years.

The meaner ones labelled me a tranny, suggesting that the reason I was such a frigit was because I had boy parts under my skirt.

No matter how cruel the boys were, the girls were far more inventive.

And so much worse.

They spread vicious rumors about me, suggesting that I was anorexic and threw my lunch up in the toilets after lunch every day.

I wasn't anorexic – or bulimic, for that matter.

I was petrified when I was at school and couldn't bear to eat a thing because when I did vomit, and it was a frequent event, it was a direct response to the unbearable weight of the stress I was under. I was also small for my age; short, undeveloped, and skinny, which didn't help my cause to ward off the rumors.

When I turned fifteen and still hadn't gotten my first period, my mother made an appointment with our local GP. Several blood tests and exams later, and our family doctor had assured both my mother and me that I was healthy, and that it was common for some girls to develop later than others.

Almost a year had passed since then and, aside from one irregular cycle in the summer that had lasted less than half a day, I was yet to have a proper period.

To be honest, I had given up on my body working like a normal girl when I clearly wasn't.

My doctor had also encouraged my mother to assess my schooling arrangement, suggesting that the stress I was under at school could be a contributing factor to my obvious physical stunt in development.

After a heated discussion between my parents where Mam had pled my case, I was sent back to school, where I was subjected to unrelenting torment.