Adoption Week e-Magazine Article
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An Assorted Fairytale...VI
Linda Muzzin
At 13 years old, there were so many changes going on, I could hardly keep up. I was the only child sent home with a note to her single father, that it might be time for me to wear a bra. I nearly died when my dad showed me the note. I was slight in stature, about 4’7, 90 lbs, but I was all muscle. I figure skated, played soccer, basketball, and softball. I was what you may call a sports hound. I would play anything for hours on end. Needless to say I didn’t feel I needed to wear a bra. I stood tall and firm so what was the big deal?
My father was almost as mortified. He took me to the local department store and said out loud to the sales lady, “My daughter needs a bra and neither of us knows anything about it.”
I thought to myself, up until now I thought I had faced it all, but at that moment I not only wanted to be invisible, I wanted to disappear forever. Fortunately the woman was kind, but she had many questions. “Where is your mother?” Like a dagger though my soul, my very existence and self worth came down to this - a complete stranger helping find a bra and asking me about my mother.
I wanted to tell her I didn’t need this, and that my dad was helping out my mom, but I realize now I should have been wearing all along, my first bra was 32c. And as if this were not enough, she began asking me if I had begun to have my “friendly reminder.” I thought I’d play it off and tell her, of course I know all about that.
She looked shocked, and wondered how I would know about that and not understand I needed a bra, or if I had a mother why I wasn’t wearing one. Oh man, I am sweating just writing this. I cannot explain how deeply alone I felt at that moment. I felt like the only one in the world who could feel my embarrassment, my anguish, and my feelings of not being worthy of a mother to love me. I know it sounds silly now, but you can’t imagine how alone I was in that moment.
As if this were not bad enough, two weeks later, the friendly reminder, yea, it came. I had no idea what was happening to me. I was so humiliated to tell my father, that I wrote him a note. He read it, and although he wanted to be empathic it came out something like this, “Are you kidding? You don’t have anything for that? I don’t know what to buy.”
After crying my eyes out, he returned home to say he was sorry and asked if I needed anything. I need a new life, that is what I wanted to say, but instead I thanked him and sat in the bathroom for hours. He would make periodic checks to see if I was ok, but I always said yes, even though for the first time in my life I wished out loud I had never been born.
Now don’t get me wrong – I’m over that, and I love my dad more than ever for trying so hard. But at the time, having no one to ask, no mother to comfort, no woman in my life to help me understand, I somehow felt as if I were the only woman in the world whom had ever known these tortures. I felt completely useless, the only girl ever to have been told to wear a bra… the girl who pretended to know about the “reminder” then fell apart at the seams the day it happened. Yes, that was one of the many dark days to come.
Until next week
Have a blessed day.
To read last week's article, visit http://e- magazine.adoption.com/articles/490/an-assorted-fairytale-v.php.
