I Won't Forgive What You Did by Faith Scott Page B

reaction would be outside my control. I therefore just accepted it, and tried not to panic. Instead, I’d walk around school with a permanent pain in my tummy, and a tightness in my throat that wouldn’t go away.
    I was also becoming aware of my body. All the younger girls in school were expected to do PE wearing nothing but a T-shirt and pants. Stripping down to these – dissent was not permitted – made me feel terribly uneasy. It was made worse by the fact no one else seemed to care. They were all laughing and joking, and seemed completely at ease with their bodies, while I was almost paralysed with fear. What if someone looked at me, or peered in through the window? Or walked into the changing room and saw me? I was so anxious about my body – how it looked, how much I hated it – I thought I’d die of embarrassment.
    I was not only concerned about my appearance, however. I was also extremely uncoordinated. I was, almost literally, crippled by my lack of confidence. Who knows what I might have achieved in different circumstances? As it was, I’d spent all my life being told I was stupid and silly by my mother, and now I believed that. I felt ungainly and hopeless, and doing sport – especially team sports – just reminded me I wasn’t up to scratch, and I would let everyone else on the team down, look completely ridiculous and be hated.
    I desperately wished I could be good at PE and gym and swimming, because if I was, perhaps the other girls would like me. As it was, I soon noticed I kept getting a rash, that seemed to get worse whenever I had to run. It wasn’t a big deal, apparently; something inherited from my father, and the doctor, when my mother finally took me to see him, was very relaxed about it. My mother, on the other hand, probably sick of me begging her to do it, wrote to the PE department informing them I must take no further part in sport from then on.
    Initially, this felt like a massive relief, but, ultimately, it made things worse. Already socially isolated, due to my feelings of low self-worth, I was now physically isolated too, standing in corners of the gym and on the touchlines, just watching, feeling useless, underlining my difference in the most obvious way.
    By the time I’d completed my first year in secondary school, I was despondent, disheartened and miserable. Even before we broke up for summer, I was already worrying and anxious about having to go back in the autumn. I’d developed a strong sense of being on my own in the world, without the confidence or know-how to deal with it. I couldn’t wait for the holidays to begin. Though home was a place of confusion and loneliness, where I felt powerless, bullied and totally without control, at least I wouldn’t have to face the schoolgirls who bullied me as well. I was no safer at home, in reality, of course, but at least home felt familiar.
    Plus there was also Phillip.
    In a world where almost every male I encountered made me feel bad, my older brother Phillip always made me feel better. I felt closer to him than anyone else I’d ever known – young or old, male or female; he made me feel grounded, somehow. He had his own difficulties with life, just as I did, and part of my love for him was bound up with pity. He always seemed vulnerable and self-conscious about his looks. He had teenage spots, greasy hair, glasses, and was a little awkward, something I could easily relate to. I felt so bad in myself – both on the outside and inside – that I felt a strong connection when around him. He had the same challenges to deal with as I did, but he seemed so much stronger than me, with so much less self-loathing, and much more able to deal with things. He was quietly spoken and sensitive, and I admired him enormously. Where I’d become resigned to all the bad things that had been done being my fault – this being the only way I could process them; why else would they have happened? – Phillip seemed to have a determination about