Moody

I get told I am moody. I also get told that is typical for a teenager. I get told both of those things a lot, amongst a few other things that I do not want to hear.

It was not always like this. Adults used to always be in a good mood around me. Whether they were holding me, or looking into my pram or cot, they would always have enormous smiles on their face. The tone of their voice was always upbeat, sometimes even melodic. Even the most uptight ones did not seem to mind pulling strange faces and making funny noises to get me to smile and laugh.

As time went on, they would encourage me to play with things and seemed genuinely amazed by the simplest of occurrences. Rolling a ball, throwing a soft toy or banging a drum were amongst things that apparently deserved a huge round of applause and a cheer. Next came the encouragement to walk. I fell so many times, but none of them ever criticised me or even had a negative facial expression. The celebrations that accompanied my first proper steps made it appear to be something unheralded in human history.

Once I could walk the next thing was to talk. The positivity continued as every time someone spoke to me, they left a polite pause to give me chance to say something back. Desperately wanting to listen to me. Any time I made a sound that was anything close to a word those celebrations were there again, the ones that used to accompany the rolled ball, thrown toy or beaten drum.

When my first word came there was another celebration to match the one that followed the first tentative steps. I was asked and encouraged to say the word again. Word spread quickly of my first word and people came round to witness the miracle in person. That first word was why.

Once I got that first word, I got on a bit of a roll. I was able to start repeating words that were said to me. Words like Mum, Dad, ball, bear, dog came soon and people loved listening to me saying them. They loved listening to me even though I was only saying a word that they had said a few seconds earlier. Whichever adult was around they always gave me their full attention and they hung on my every word and action.

A little while after that I started spending time with other little people. We would play together and there were some new adults that were overseeing this play time and making sure we were doing it right. The most important word those adults taught me was share. It must have been the most important because they said it all lot. It was no longer all about me, I could only spend time playing with a toy if none of the other little people wanted to play with it. If they did then I had to let them play too.

Back at home I was still getting all of the attention at this stage. The praise kept coming too. In particular I was clever and so big. I started to share my toys and games with any adult who came to see me, that was worthy of laughter and a round of applause.

Next up was big school, which I thought made sense because I was so big. We continued to play games and sharing was even more important. It was not all games though, we started to learn things. We all sat and faced one adult who we learned was a teacher and we called them Miss. The teacher had a helper who would move around the room, and she sometimes sat next to me, but she usually sat with some of the other little people. We learnt how to stand up in a line, both side by side and one behind the other. When we were supposed to be quiet we learned that we needed to put a finger on our lip to show people that we were not going to make any noise. We also learned about cool things like animals, colours, trees, flowers, numbers and words. Most of all I learned that there were so many things to learn.

With the teacher showing me all these new things, I wanted to learn all about things that I did not already know. My first word became my favourite word. At first it became the latest thing that adults liked about me and another reason to call me clever. After a while they did not seem to be so impressed by it. They would either not answer my question at all or they would say something like ‘because it is’. Their facial expression would change too. Gone were the dramatic smiles. Instead, they would raise their eyebrows and their eyes would roll, often followed by a big sigh. It took me a little while to realise that was their way of telling me to shut the hell up.

It was confusing because the more words I learned the more I was supposed to be quiet. At school the teacher was talking, and we were supposed to be quiet and listen to them. I had so many things that I wanted to know, but it appeared that the school had already decided what they were going to tell us, rather than finding out what we wanted to know. Back home I was given things to watch or play with so that I would not talk so much.

At some point learning became important as well as fun. We would do tests in class, at first they were just for fun like a quiz. Then when I was six, we had our first proper tests. I could tell they were important because of how stressed the teacher got and how much we practiced them. My parents started testing me at home too. They still were not asking about what I wanted to learn, but wanted to check that I had learnt what the school had decided I should know.

By that stage I knew I was not at big school, or at least that there was a bigger school to go to. Despite not learning all the things I wanted to learn, and not getting listened to much anymore I did enjoy the rest of primary school. I liked most of the kids in my class and had some excellent friends. We could play games at break times, in class we sometimes read stories, drew pictures and even got to have a little sleep. At the end of primary school we had some more of those proper tests. Apparently these ones were even more proper than the earlier ones. They were important for our future. At eleven years old, we knew what important meant, but did not know enough to know why people were telling us how important they were. Crucially we did not know enough to be able to dismiss the anxiety created by the word important and be able to chill out and enjoy being eleven years old.

Just when I thought those tests would be the biggest event I would have to deal with for some time, I had to move to bigger school. Seven years of being in the same group of people, only changing room at the start of each year and having the same teacher every day for a year. Then one September that all came to an earth-shattering end. We were in a much bigger building, in a different room every hour, with different classmates and a different teacher. We were expected to find these rooms ourselves without ever getting lost or being late. I had to do all of this without several of my excellent friends who had gone to different bigger schools. It seemed that during that six-week summer holiday we were supposed to have grown up a lot. Now we were expected to behave like adults. Which was odd because we were still getting treated like children. As our knowledge and subsequent curiosity grew, we were expected to talk less and listen more. We were still told to line up or sit down, both in silence. All classes now were dedicated to a particular subject, some of them sounded new and exciting on the face of it. Still though we were told what we would be learning rather than asked what we wanted to know.

We were expected to act like adults, but nobody was teaching us how to be one. I never saw an adult being told to line up or sit in silence. Or get shouted at for saying a few words to their best friend. Suddenly there were so many other people in our peer group. After years of there being thirty in my class at school, there were now over two hundred and fifty in my year group. None of us knew what we were doing or knew how to act as the adults we were meant to be. That caused some of us to go quiet, some to go loud, some to go on the attack and become bullies to try to make sure they were not bullied themselves.

Going to bed later and wanting to get up later was not something that I consciously decided on, like it was a well thought out plan. It just kind of happened to me. That became another reason for adults to shake their head at me and talk to me as if I was stupid. I had to get up early in order to get to school, so rather than getting the sleep I needed I became crankier, especially in the mornings.

Each year was the most important year of our life. They had a different reason each year, but we had heard the message before, we had never truly believed it but as the years went by we believed it less, when we could have done with believing it more.

Still no one was teaching us how to be an adult, or how to best survive life. They taught us how to pass exams to make them look good. Even the subjects I was interested in bored me in school. I learned more from you tube, books and documentaries.

I was constantly being mocked for my inability to listen and getting told to listen more. Yet all I had done for years was get talked at, listening was all I had been allowed to do. I used to get so much attention, now I am told I am attention seeking.

Rolling a ball or throwing a stuffed animal used to get me a cheer and a big round of applause. When I was dealing with a load of new emotions that I did not understand, whilst getting bullied and still managed to get good grades at school, I did not even a ‘well done’ from anyone.

As I was sitting my GCSE exams I had some horribly dark thoughts, an evil mix of anxiety and depression was filling my head. I still managed to turn up for every single exam, but nobody was applauding me then.

Now I am half-way through some A-Levels that I did not want to take. I took them because that was what I was supposed to do. It was my attempt at being a grown up. I am supposed to know what I want to do with the rest of my life. I did not know when I was eleven, thirteen or sixteen, I still do not know now. Not only do I not know what I want to be, I do not even know who I am. Some help working that out would be much more appreciated then telling me how to work out Pythagoras, to memorise the periodic table or be able to spot a split infinitive. As would some help with dealing with toxic people, understanding my emotions, how to surround myself with positive people and how to deal with the anxiety of not having a clue how I am going to survive adulthood.

I had all the attention I could ever want, and people only ever said positive things to me and heaped praise on me with never the merest hint of criticism. Since those all too brief years at the start, I have been talked at, told to listen whilst never being listened to, and told to grow up since I was eleven without ever being told how to. I have been criticised for sleeping too much, not paying attention, my inability to listen and even for my outfits and hair. I have kept myself together when I have felt my own mind was crumbling, passed exams in subjects I did not enjoy or want to study, been respectful to adults even when they have shown me none and yet there has been no praise heaped on me anymore.

I am not sure if moody is a strong enough word for what I am.