Seven Years
Clare just brought her seventh-grade brother to VisComm. I sat next to him and slept on the wall while he doodled. About halfway through the class I started thinking about where he was an what it must be like for him. And then I wondered what I would have thought about this class, were I in seventh grade. I probably would have been nothing but bored... bored and that's it. Bored and waiting to get back to my life. I thought, seventh grade was seven years ago. I was only twelve.

The flood of memories this brought back was completely unexpected.

Seven years ago. Seven years ago I was in seventh grade. I was one year from being a teenager. I had never kissed a boy. My best friend and I played hide-and-go seek on the summer streets until twilight and the fireflies came out. I had yet to bleed.

In seventh grade, I met Lesley. I dated Nathan, my first "boyfriend," for five months, kissed him once, and was dumped. The only time I've ever let that happen.
In seventh grade, my youngest sister was born. Eleanor, the one who became the mascot for my family's dysfunctionality and my mother's stress. Things began to crack at the seams.

Middle school was not a gentle coming of age. In fact, I think we all hated it. I hated the lies, the superficiality, the expectations, the unwanted discoveries. I began to hate my mother.

Seven years ago, I became a woman. I began to hate my body. I was completely uncomfortable cocooned in my flesh. I wore stirrup pants and turtlenecks. I was too uncool to realize that people laughed at me when I wore my band sweater. Growing pain, acne, self-consciousness... I smelled bad, I grew a lot, and the world was a wonderful place.

In seventh grade, I was afraid of growing up. I watched in horror as the games of magik we played in elementary school began to fade into dust and memories. I saw heirarchical and social power for the first time. This was the world becoming real.

My best friend was Sian. We saw each other every day. At lunch we played black-jack and snorted milk out our noses. Sometimes, we stayed after school and played with the gerbils in the science classroom. So many of those little buggers came and went. We buried several of one litter in the woods behind the school. We never could find the gravesite again. Sian and I had a club. It was... somewhat exclusive. We called it KOSCC, or the Kathryn Ortland Sian Chivers Club, after ourselves. We even had a "radio station" that consisted of me recording every stupid thing we said and did with a Talkboy. I still have these tapes and our "poster." I pull them out from time to time and laugh till I cry. Or I just cry. Occasionally, we got my sisters to join the club even though we hated them. Mostly, it was because we wanted their money for "dues" but sometimes we felt sorry for ourselves only having two members. In my back yard in Michigan there were two pine trees and we had our fort under them. Once, we built a forrt in Sian's yard out of plywood and carpet tacks. It eventually molded and fell down. We made potions and planned amushes on "the boys." We hoarded every dirty cent we could because ten dollars was a fortune that could buy pizza and junk food enough to feed a small army. We had sleepovers practically every weekend. Sometimes we would hide in her room until late, playing with her keyboard and making stupid songs. Sometimes we were exiled to the basement if we were too loud. I didn't like sleeping down there. Everything stupid, classic, pre-pubescent comment we made went onto tapes. I am so embarrassed now to see the way I felt about the world. It's wonderful, it's dirty, and I miss it because it's gone.

Seventh grade was before I started focusing on boys, before my life revolved around an individual mate, and when I started to form my first and only real circle of friends. It was the year I met Lesley, oneesama. Maybe it was eight grade, I'm not sure. Anyhow, it was before she plucked her eyebrows and wore clothes from the Limited. Her hair was so dark she looked like she had a moustache. I'm pretty sure she bleaches that, now. I knew Mags, she lived down the street from me and I met Emilio. It was the first year in choir.

My biggest dramas we worrying about who had a crush on me. I felt ashamed a lot of the time... I thought I thought about sex a lot. I was wrong. That came two years later.

This was before Lesley and I split over Emilio and then split again over bigger, more unmendable things. I haven't spoken to her in almost a year. The distance does that.

This was before I worried about homosexuality, about what people said about Sian's moms. I'm not sure I even knew she had two moms. This was before I started having to defend her daily, before my mother forbade me to be friends with her because she was Wiccan, before I became Born Again Christian and learned what the anger of a flock of "sheep" feels like and how to reject my own closed-mindedness. This was before we split for nine months because I thought she wasn't "cool enough." I lost her because I was wrong. Sian and I are neutral now. We haven't spoke in just as long. The distance does that.

Seveth grade was life when we started to think clearly but were sheltered from the pressures of the world. Now life moves a million miles per hour more.

I sat next to Clare's brother and planning my day, my week, my life. My mind was about twenty places at once. I can't stop myself. I can't go back. I want those simple pleasures but life just moves too fast.

Sometimes I pause to breathe, but if I stop too long, the world moves on without me.

I'm afraid. I'm afraid of growing up. In the same way I was losing Magik seven years ago, I am losing it now.

I cling to what I have and, in the moments I step back, moments like these, I know that I have a lot. In moments like these, I cry for my nostalgia, I love my past, I weep for what is lost and I hold on to what it has given me. Time is a funny thing.

Seven years lost, seven years found. Seven years of change.

Soon, it will be seven years hence and I will look back on today in wonder. In seven years, I will probably be married- I may have my first child. I will live somewhere, with some job, with someone(?) and I will, in all likelihood, be a completely different person.

If these seven years are any indicator of what the change in the next seven will be like, I'd better buckle down. It's going to be one long, lonely, and fucking incredible ride.

It's that simple.

It's that obscene.

Seven years.