I experienced my first panic attack when I was twelve years old; that was the same year my mom convinced me into wearing a scarf on my head, called a hijab. Before leaving for my first day of seventh grade, I remember my mom telling me, “Don’t worry about it. You’re still the same old you.” But I wasn’t the “same old me”; by changing my appearance from wearing this foreign piece of cloth on my head, I became different, and different was bad.
On the agonizingly long walk to school, which usually felt like a sweet and short walk with happy exchanges of “hellos” and “how are things” with my local crossing guard, Mike, I noticed two things: the first, my oldest friend, at the time, who would meet up with me after I crossed the street, Madison, saw me and immediately started walking to school without giving me a second glance; and second, Mike wasn’t there. I tried making conversation with my new crossing guard, somehow convincing myself that if someone would talk to me without looking at me like I was a freak, everything would be okay, but she just gave me one cold “hello,” and that was that; I never tried talking to her again. I found out later that her name was Laura.
Getting to school was when I started to notice all the staring. Every unwanted glance in my direction felt painful, in an indescribable way. I knew Madison had already told all of our friends about my new look, because as I was approaching the line to get into class, they avoided eye contact with me and turned around to admire a “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” poster; suddenly, the three R’s had become all too consuming.
When I got inside the classroom, I started looking for my name taped on a desk. In my old school, the teachers would pick names at random from the attendance list and have a seating plan arranged when the class walked in, it was a way to “start your new school year off with new friends”; it was how I met Madison. I found my seat at the very front row of the class next to a new boy named Kevin. As we settled in and quieted down, I heard murmurs behind me. “Why is she wearing that?” one boy asked, “I don’t know, but it’s weird” I heard Madison reply. Soon, murmurs became into, what teachers like to call “outdoor voice” conversations, and they were all about me. When our teacher walked in, everyone’s chatters quieted down to whispers, but they still continued. I realized, then, that I had gone from the least noticed girl in my grade to the most talked about, and I crashed.
School was getting more miserable day after day. I didn’t have a single friend; even Kevin, the new boy, who was friendly to me when the year started, had become distant. I didn’t let my parents see through me, though. I was good at masking my emotions. At home, I was still the cheerful little girl who told her parents about all the new things she’d learned, and how much fun she had during recess. As pathetic as it was, it made me feel better about life. As I was lying to my parents about how everything was still okay, a part of me believed myself.
One day, Madison found me in the park which was once our hiding place. We used to go there to hide whenever we played manhunt with our friends; we always won because everyone was too scared to break the rules to come and catch us. “Hey,” she said to me. I hated myself for getting excited. “Hi,” I replied. I noticed that she was studying my scarf with a peculiar look on her face. It looked, for a very brief moment, that she felt sorry for me, but she quickly replaced it with a more neutral expression. “I was just wondering if you had the earrings I gave you,” she said. On my tenth birthday, she had given me a pair of earrings shaped like cats, I loved them. “Why?” I asked, I felt awkward talking to her again. It was as if a stranger had come up to me; the Madison I remembered acted and dressed differently than the Madison that stood in front of me. “Because no one can see your ears now anyway, so what’s the point?” I was shocked, I just shrugged my shoulders and walked away. She was yelling something as I left, but I didn’t bother to pay attention. I had to hide somewhere as fast as I could because I knew I was about to crash again. Reality had finally hit me, hard. The lies I kept telling myself about a “happy life” weren’t good enough anymore; and all the emotions I’d bottled in, were spilling out.
Everyday I grew more and more depressed. I’d only managed to get around two hours of sleep every night because I was scared what the next day of school might bring. My grades had never been worse, and I lost my appetite. I was told immigrant and terrorist “jokes,” as my peers liked to called them, everyday. The bullying got worse, and things got physical, and that was when I couldn’t find the energy to continue to bottle up my feelings, even at home.
“I’m not feeling too well,” I would say to my parents every day. They’d let me stay home in the beginning, but after a couple of days, they’d had enough. “Is everything okay with you?” my mom asked, I just nodded my head and pretended to be interested in a home decor magazine. “I know you’re not okay, you’re my daughter; you haven’t wanted a day off from school, well, ever,” she continued. She knew I never liked talking about my problems, so she didn’t push it. “Anyway,” she said, “how do you feel about moving?”
In a matter of days I had changed schools and houses, and I couldn’t have been more excited and terrified in my entire life. Excited because I could start fresh, and terrified because I didn’t want to live through the same thing, just with different people, again. But that wasn’t the case this time. And I couldn’t have been more grateful to my parents for taking action.
I wish I could say that I had enough courage to stand up for myself when things got too hard. I wish I could say that I had told someone, instead of waiting for my parents to finally connect the dots. I wish I could say that my old friends understood my decision, and accepted me for who I was. But I cannot. Instead, I had to learn how to get out of my comfort zone and stand up for myself. Instead, I had to learn to not hide my problems from people who could help me, because it only left more room for damage. Because how else would I have learned that the world isn’t just filled with closed-minded jerks? How else would I have met the people who have impacted my life so positively?
I realized that life was too short to let people break you down to the point where you feel you’re not worth it. I also realized, why, after all I’d been through, I hadn’t taken my hijab off. It wasn’t just a foreign piece of cloth on my head, it was a way of life, my life, and I was proud to wear it. Different isn’t always bad.