Punk

Looking back on my childhood, it’s hard to discern the memories that are true from the ones that I’ve created over time. After a while, the emotions start to direct how I remember something, until all I have left is a feeling and couple scattered images. Either way, there is something that every fat kid knows to be true; Children are monsters. 

         Like a lot of other kids, I dreamed of being normal. I was fat, so I was teased. I was socially awkward, so I was teased. I was quiet, so I was teased. In every classroom, there’s one child that loves nothing more than to remind everyone how powerfully normal they are by shaming someone that deviates from that homogeneousness. I, unfortunately, was that outlier. 

         During prepubescence, I was teased for being overweight. If someone had told me I was stupid, I wouldn’t have been happy about it, but I could have defended myself against it. The really insidious thing about being teased for my weight was that I agreed. I knew that the things they said about me were true. Forming an identity is like building a house. To be treated the way I was at that age, laid in my foundation was the belief that there was something inherently wrong about me. The way I was treated had nothing to do with what I had done; it was about my existence. For the first few years of this I was depressed. Then, to put it mildly, I became furious.

         Sometime around the age of twelve, I discovered punk rock. I can’t recall my first exposure, but punk was the solution to every problem I had. I had a studded leather jacket, a mohawk, I smoked cigarettes, drank, and regularly got into fights. For the first time in my life I felt that I had control. The constant teasing I endured in elementary school instilled in me a strong idea of how my life was supposed to be. Punk offered a formula that I could use to say “fuck you” to every aspect of the life I was supposed to be living. Oddly enough, I was rarely teased after my metamorphosis. Kids were scared of me. I loved every moment. 

            I’m amazed by the shift in opinion others had of me. Before I was socially awkward and aloof; after, I was stoic and contemplative. Before, I was weird; after, I was eccentric and expressive. Before, I was harmless; after, I was dangerous. One of the biggest ironies from all of this is that I wanted to be invisible. Punk kids are anything but. They’re loud, colorful, aggressive, opinionated, and will do just about anything to irritate anyone. Thinking back on it now, I understand why I adopted this lifestyle, despite its inherent ironies. People felt no less disdain for me after than they did before, but that judgment had changed. There was never a word said about my weight, or my demeanor. They talked about my hair, my clothes, or that I was a Marlboro-smoking 12 year old. What they didn’t understand (and neither did I) was that my lifestyle was chosen to be a decoy, and they aimed right for it. The focus was on me, but it wasn’t. I could rationalize their judgments of my choices (I invited it), but I couldn’t separate myself from judgments of my body. I realize now that Punk gave me a unique power: control of what people thought of me.