Watch Me

 

When I was nine years old, I was given a drawing at school of a scary picture.  Our task, given that Halloween was right around the corner, was to write a scary story to go along with the picture we were assigned.  I was given a drawing of a window with the glass smashed open, as if someone had thrown a rock through it.  The story was about a young girl who was home with her father, both in their own rooms quietly working and studying. 

In the story, the girl hears a window break open, and due to the thunderstorm outside, thinks nothing of it.  A few moments later she hears someone downstairs, knowing that her dad has not left his room across the hall, and no one else is expected to be home for another few hours, the girl runs to her father.  She tells him someone is downstairs and asks him to check.  As expected in most horror stories, the first victim is taken in a brutal struggle while the petrified main character sits in silence unable to move from fear.  At this point I was running out of room on the lined paper we were given so I ended the story with the masked intruder running up the stairs, the young girl summoning the strength and anger from knowing her father had just died fights back.  She struggles against the force of who might soon be her murderer, and finally escapes from his grasp in just enough time turns around and kicks him down the stairs.  The story ends with our heroine looking down at the crumpled mass of the man who murdered her father and that she had just escaped from.  Knowing that the man has died, she goes into her room to call the police, but after she returns to the top of the stairs, the man is gone and she is no longer safe.

I know in hindsight, the story was fairly illogical and poorly written but I remember being terribly excited to write it, and at the end of the class, I was so proud of my story.  I brought it up to my teacher and asked her to read it.  I stood there patiently waiting for her to tell me it was simply terrifying, but as she finished reading, she set down the paper face-down on her desk and told me it was fairly graphic for my age-group and that I was not old enough to be writing about such violence.  I should have been devastated by her blatant dislike of my story, but I ignored her and took it home, very sure that my family would enjoy it much more.  I read the story to my sister and her friend around a campfire that night.  I fully expected my cliffhanger ending to give them goose-bumps and want to go inside to watch a happy movie to distract from the fear, but they simply laughed at me.  Offended as I was, I was and continue to be proud of the first scary story I ever wrote.  So, now that I have grown, I’ve known so much more failure but whenever anyone tells me that I’m too young, I don’t know enough, or am incapable of doing something, I remember back to that story and think, watch me.

I have come to know that these lessons of life that you learn do not have to be a horrific tale that scarred you for life.  I learned to persevere, to never let anyone make you feel worthless, and defy the boundaries that others expect of you.  Although I could not have told you then that that was what I was doing, I knew in my heart never to accept anything less than what I was worth.  I am ever thankful to my nine-year-old self for keeping her chin up and ignoring all who doubted me, and continuing to do so now that I am much older.  It has kept me firmly on my feet and allowed me to stand right back up broken and bruised when the world decides to see how far it can push me.  Every time the world throws me to the ground it is like being asked “can you handle this?!” and I get right back up and say “watch me.”