The Anti-Bully Blog Series Edition #12 part 7

Logo Credit to Nate Williams

Paul’s girlfriend

All of seventh grade I had tried and failed miserably at finding a boyfriend. But that summer a strange and surprising thing happened, I found a boyfriend, a neighborhood boy, named Paul, who was two years my senior and fairly popular at school. Paul was tall and tan with short dark wavy hair. He was an absolute dreamboat in his blue Adidas shorts.

Paul and I passed the summer spending time with two other couples from the neighborhood. Paula and her beau were one of those couples. Paul and I used to hold hands and kiss when there were no adults around. Once or twice that summer he abandoned me for a visiting girl named Tara, but for the most part, he was my boyfriend all summer.

I was ecstatic. I felt like I was living in one of those teen romance novels. I finally felt like I was somebody and I was sure other girls at school would look up to me, considering who my boyfriend was. I was excited for school to start because I would start grade eight with a handsome ninth-grade boyfriend. Little did I know that Paul had other ideas. I started grade eight thinking this was the year I was going to fit in. Why shouldn’t I? I had a popular boyfriend! Before school even started, I had picked out all my new clothes for the year. I had adopted the preppy look, shirts with alligators, rugby pants, Adidas sneakers, loafers, and so on. How else would a girl with a popular boyfriend dress?! Little did the world and my poor parents know that this was the last time they would ever see that look on me.

I remember that first day of school, I told everyone about my summer and my great new boyfriend. The first break of the day I looked for Paul. I found him in his homeroom sharpening his pencil. I walked up to him and tried to kiss him. He moved his head away. He looked at me and said, “Look we are over. At school I don’t know you. Go away!” I ran away in tears. In my head, I fantasized that maybe he would come to his senses, like Danny in the movie “Grease”. After all Paul was a bit of a bad boy and I was a goody- goody. Maybe, he would miss me and when he did I would be all sexily made over like Sandy in “Grease”. This moment never happened.

Paul never talked to me in school, except to make fun of me. In fact he started to pick on me (see figure 2.12). When I walked to the bus stop in the morning, Paul and his friends would throw burrs at me and they would stick in my hair. On the bus ride home, he would spit at me. Sadly I accepted that there would be no magical “Grease- like” reunion. I nursed a broken heart. It was hard to forget because Paul was always in my face being mean. I couldn’t understand his behavior, when all I did was like him.

Well this was definitely is not the year I learned to fit in. This final heart-break made me stop caring about fitting in altogether. This is the year I learned to not fit in and

make a statement about it. My mother refers to this year as the year I completely changed, the year she lost her little girl. In grade eight I started to form my own identity.

I reflect on the absurdity of losing one’s identity, being known as someone’s girlfriend to obtain the identity of being popular. According to Griffith (1995), when we leave parts of ourselves behind to belong this leads to feeling of being inauthentic. When I chose to identify as an extension of someone else, I left Cathy behind. All these changes were my attempts at fitting in, at being like everybody else. I hated who I was and wanted to be anyone but me.

If part of oneself is left outside the circle when one joins a group, that part has been de-valued by the group. Further, if the person has to behave as if ashamed of parts of themselves, or to actively campaign against them, then the person is acting as though she agrees with the group’s evaluations. This is dangerous for self-esteem. (Griffiths, 1995, p.118).

As I grew older and was no longer peer rejected, I built a new and stronger image of myself. When I met new friends, I tried to hide my past from them. The new me seemed so different that I felt unconnected to my childhood self; in fact, I want to bury my childhood identity. Eventually I tried to hide the past even from myself. In the following essay I try to explain and resolve the conflict between the confident adult me and the rejected child I was.

What’s in a Name?

What does a name mean? It can mean who you legally are. I was born Katherine Joyce Miller. When my parent’s adopted me, I became Catherine Elizabeth Derry. When I was married I was Catherine Elizabeth Lynch. I divorced and became Catherine Elizabeth Derry once again. These are all very formal version of my name as it has changed over the years. When I hear someone’s full name it is always for a very formal reason. Signing legal papers, graduation, or when you’re in trouble with your Mom. This is not the use of one’s name that I am pondering.

What I am interested in is the name that those who know us well call us by: friends, family, teachers, coworkers and even enemies. What people call us can shape our identity, how we act, how we see ourselves, how we feel about ourselves Our everyday name holds behind it a lot of identity-forming and meaning-making. I have two names and might I say two identities or personas. There is Cathy and Catherine.

Catherine is my legal first name and the name I choose to go by now. Cathy is a shortened version of my name that my parents choose to give me the day I was put into their arms. A name that my family, old friends, former classmates and old acquaintances still call me. A name I have been trying to run away from for the last twelve years.

Why do I hate the name Cathy? It is not as simple as just not caring for the name. I feel like there are two of me (no I do not have a split personality). Cathy and Catherine are two basically different personas shaped by life experience. Cathy was shaped during all those awful years of schooling and Catherine is the adult I chose to be, unconnected to Cathy’s pain.

I should backtrack and start at the beginning. When my parents called me Cathy it was with love. My dad always dreamed of having a baby girl and calling her Cathy. My Mom wanted to call me Judy. My Dad won out. Judy did survive as the name of one of my first dolls. Of course my parents gave me the full name of Catherine Elizabeth, as all good Catholics had the habit of naming their children after saints. Before I entered the school system Cathy was the name I was affectionately called by my parents and my early playmates. To this day I let my family still call me Cathy because the love still rings true in their voice when they say it, just as my cousins still let family call them by ridiculous childhood nicknames.

I did not really find offense in hearing my name called until I started to school. Once I started school, my name started to get used in childhood taunts like “Ew you have Cathy germs”. It got used in negative ways on report cards such as this excerpt from my grade one report card “…Cathy still needs to take her time and take some pride in her work.” As I got older, it was some times heard in the laughing voice of a bully.

In junior high my named got used in a new taunt. “Cathy Lizzy Derry”, implying that I was a lesbian. Barely grasping what the term meant, the adolescent Cathy started to chase boys like mad. I also figured out that the key to popularity was getting a boy to like you. Cathy tried this and failed. I remember hearing boys saying “Gross, Cathy likes you”. How did Cathy feel? She felt ugly and unattractive and pined for a real boyfriend.

When Cathy was fourteen, Cathy changed her look in hopes of acceptance. She became a New Wave, alternative girl. This just made the kids at school make fun of her with taunts like “Cathy is a freak. Is it Halloween already Cathy?” But Cathy discovered in the next few years that this look made her attractive to some boys, older boys, most of whom were not in school. I found that these boys would be really nice to you if you did what they said. But not for long. Pretty soon these boys and their friends start calling Cathy a slut and “easy” and many other horrible names. How did Cathy feel about herself? She felt she was too easy, unloved, and ugly. Maybe if she was nicer, prettier, a boy would actually fall in love with her. She felt she was no good and didn’t deserve love. She knew the only way she would find some acceptance was by pleasing whatever guy she liked at the time.

Not liking who I was at eighteen, I tried to make people call me Catherine. This worked when I lived in a different city. I remember the year I was nineteen, going to college in Ontario, and newly single. I had asked my friends, classmates and teachers to call me Catherine. How do I remember that year? I remember Catherine did well at school, had a lot of friends, had a few boyfriends (even one who claimed to love her) and went to lots of great parties. I remember at the end of that year being sad I had to go back to Saint John and be Cathy again. In the years I lived in Saint John after that, I would live in fear that new friends would find out who Cathy really was from people who had known me in school. Sometimes new friends would hear stories, but it never deterred them from liking me as I feared it would. In the Fall of 1996 I moved to Halifax, determined once again to start my life over as Catherine. This time the name stuck. I was very happy with my social life there. The same was true when I moved to Montreal as Catherine, not Cathy.

How would I describe these two personas? Cathy is ugly, careless, and stupid. She doesn’t have many friends. It is probably because she’s a crybaby. She is too sensitive for her own good. This is what makes her a target for ridicule. She tries too hard to make people like her. Everyone laughs at her. Boys think she’s ugly and do not want to go out with her, but she sleeps with boys in hope of achieving validation and acceptance. It never works. She does what people want so people will like her. This only makes them think less of her. She is a coward and never stands up for herself or others. She is everyone’s doormat. She has no friends and never will. She will never amount to anything. Nobody will ever fall in love with her. She will become a crazy old cat lady, and die sad and lonely.

Catherine is fairly attractive and has a great sense of fashion. She has many friends, new and old, that find her amusing, supportive and loyal. She is very intelligent and excels at school. She will make an excellent therapist or professor someday. Catherine likes herself and does not need to sexually please men. She is a proud confident lesbian. She is capable of love and has been loved by men and women. She will probably make a great partner and will someday make a great parent. She will spend her life surrounded by friends and family, very much loved.

This is why I chose to be Catherine. She is who I strive to be and am proud to be every day. Even though I choose to be Catherine, there are times when I feel like Cathy. I have started to accept this. I can’t be this idealized Catherine all the time. I am starting to love the Cathy in me because she needs love and acceptance. It’s time I give her what she needs to heal. I can’t heal Cathy until I accept that she’s a part of me. But I still prefer to be Catherine, unless I know you really care about me unconditionally. Then calling me Cathy is fine because she needs unconditional acceptance.

My essay illustrates the power a name can hold and its relationship to identity and self-image. After hearing your name used in so many negative ways, it becomes another enemy for you to escape from. Before I started school, I did not hate my name of Cathy. It was only once I associated it with the negative traits bestowed on me by my peers that I began to hate it. Each slur they labeled me, like ugly, gross, stupid, slut, was layered on me like too many winter clothes until I couldn’t breathe. I had to escape and recreate my identity. Today I realize my identity is multiple and complex and includes all of the parts of Catherine and Cathy, from the sensitive little girl to the take charge-of-her-life woman

This brings back the question of whether the self is a unified ‘I’ or fragmented selves. To me it depends on where one is in one’s life. As a child, I saw my identity as a unified ‘I’ and I kept trying on different identities, hoping one would make me like myself. As a young adult, I saw my identity as fragmented: the Cathy I despised and the Catherine I was trying to be. Today, I see myself as an ‘I’, but not an unified ‘I’. It is a multiple ‘I’ in which all my selves are allowed to exist together as a whole. I think that just as identity changes over ones life, so does ones conception of identity and self.

When I was thirteen, I once again changed my look. This time it was not about being popular at school, in fact it was for the opposite reason. Slowly, over the next few years I did a hundred and eighty degree change: I went from a sad little girl who wanted to fit in to an angry adolescent who thrived on being different and not fitting in. I became part of the New Wave/ Punk Rock subculture. According to Griffiths (1995), when girls are rejected, they sometimes stop wanting to be part of that in-group, and create a new identity within a new group. “This is a process born of rejection and not to be confused with freely choosing such a group because she feels at home in it, however happy she feels later with the new group” (Griffiths, 1995, p.91). I gave up on being a popular kid and became a teen-age rebel and joined with others like me who rejected the values of the dominant culture. How did all this start for me?

Another Big Thank you to Catherine for sharing her story with us. I'll be posting the next part tomorrow. I'm kind of sad to say this week will be close to the end of the mini series, it's been incredible and I'm worried to see how long my follow up will be on this one. Remember if you have something you feel you can contribute to the series fb me or e-mail me nancy.wood@mbsradio.com