I get gut-aches when I’m stressed.

I’ve endured a lot of stress, but still, when it is extra bad, I get gut aches. This didn’t start suddenly. I think that this first started when I was about 10 or 11.

Stress starts at home – The parent child struggles

I may have started getting stress like this when I was a kid – maybe I did have those things that I just couldn’t sort out, those conundrums of the day to day, where sometimes my mom tried to help, but when she did – telling me that everything would be alright, most of the time it didn’t turn out that way, and it was the same shit show, different day, every day.

The issue, I’ve since realized, is that my Mom had a very limited concept of my reality. Her oversight and her policies did not fit – like they were created in another decade, more likely to have worked in a small town 15 years prior (or more). We lived in a big city. I would say that it being in the early-1960’s, and being where we lived, the culture was quite different from where my Mom had grown up, with the exception of when she was at university – but she was older then. I think that she should have known better, but, I’m not sure.

Her understanding of my day to day was very limited to the point that sometimes, her rules made my life even more difficult. They got me bullied. Big time.

Because of this situation, I went to extremes, at an early age, to both escape the ridicule that following her rules would bring me, and learning to shape-shift back to appearing to follow her rules by the time I got off the bus each afternoon. This was tricky, as some of the ridicule was dished out by the kids on the bus… to the last minute before I got to my stop. I look back on those days and shiver… Truly.

This was the beginning of the time of my life that I would never want to repeat – grades 6-12. Ok, maybe grade 12, things changed somewhat, but certainly through grade 11. Total living hell.

Back then the policy created by my Mom, that dictated my dress code was: “not allowed to wear make-up” “must wear socks” “not allowed to shave legs, or armpits”.

OK, the situation was that I was well into puberty. I had dark brown hair. My mom tried to dress me like I was in 3rd grade. Even in 3rd grade I didn’t want to wear what she put out for me to wear each day. I became very rebellious. This got me into trouble. Let’s say that we spent a lot of time struggling, but to no avail.

In retrospect, I suspect that these were the seeds of my learning to troubleshoot problems, and build solutions! Put a difficult problem in front of me – given enough time, I’ll figure out the solution!

The daily living hell

As you could imagine, the kids at school made fun of my “hairy legs”, told me I looked ugly (no make-up), called me names that I can’t remember as I have blocked them out of my memory, and of course, wearing the white socks didn’t help with the vision of my hairy legs – complete with the dorky shoes (my Mom insisted I wear “tie up shoes” aka “Oxfords” vs. the ever popular penny-loafers, because they gave me “more arch support”. This was Texas, honey, not Boston! Let’s say that her ideas about fashion for a junior high aged girl were not aligned with reality.

This was the age of the rock and roll emerging from England! Twiggy! Eye-lashes! Mini-skirts! Revlon “Frosted Malt” and “Sugar and Ice” lipstick. Carnaby Street! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Hey you, get off of my cloud! You get the picture.

White socks, dorky shoes, hairy legs, no make-up, along with home-made clothes – in a school where how you looked was a top thing of importance – and there was a merciless “in crowd” that relished giving people that didn’t fit their “criteria of looks for acceptance” a cruelty filled hard time.

I’m surprised I didn’t jump out a window or slit my wrists – oh right… we had a one-story house, and I had no access to razors (not allowed to shave my legs or armpits, remember?).

Oh yeah, one last thing – I had achieved the puberty level, and I hadn’t been allowed to wear a bra. That was the icing on the cake.

I walked around thinking, “kill me now.”

Oh, and did I mention that my chunky figure didn’t help? Back then I was also taller than most of the boys, and had my paternal family’s genetics that trended heavy to extremely heavy. Thankfully, mostly, I was just heavy. Chunky, as they called it.

The plan

OK, so what I decided to do, with the aid of some close friends, was to figure out how to (1) buy some lipstick and eyeliner, at least, (2) try to talk my mom into the loafers or at least Keds sneakers, and (3) devise a plan to put on make-up, off load the socks, and get myself together for facing the tough crowd, then (4) unroll all of that at the end of the bus ride home at the last possible moment so that I could blitz off the bus with little attention.

This is what you call, “classic sneaking”. That was the solution that I put into practice and did so for the better part of the last semester of sixth grade. I figured that as long as I didn’t get caught, I could work on my Mom over the summer months to get her to allow me to do those things, and to continue to work on her (badger), enduring the fights that we would have, until I wore her down and got my way.

The Summer Break

Let’s say that this was interesting, and as it turned out, in her counsel with my Dad’s boss’s wife, who had three older teenage girls, the advice to my Mom was, “pick your battles…the ones ahead are going to be much more difficult, and these things you’re insisting on are not helping, and trivial by comparison.”

So, in her fashion of listening to older women, who were financially better off and a member of the right clubs, and whose husband was her husband’s boss, she issued the revised policies for my dress code – finally – before the school session resumed.

Oh, and also, while I was attending church camp. the girls there, “helped” me shave my hairy pits and legs! I got home and synchronicity happened! The rule change + I had already had my first shaving session.

School again

So it went. That part improved, but in seventh grade, more stress emerged. I got gut aches. I got head aches. I had my “monthly” to deal with, that caused more “gut aches”. I was in a swirl. Eventually, I did get used to this – these never went away. My Dad told me about “Tums”. Those helped. But at the end of the day, stress management wasn’t a thing back then. It was just “deal with it the best that you can” oh… and take Tums for the tummy!