I was thirteen years old. I was an 8th grader at a great high school in Bucharest. I loved learning, I was popular among my classmates, and I respected my teachers. But I had a terrible homeroom teacher, who seemed to make my life miserable at every turn, just for existing (and maybe because I didn’t enjoy math, though I tried my best).
Behind me were seven years of my mother’s cancer. She was at home, in the final stage, more dead than alive.
I wished I could talk to someone — my friends from the neighborhood, my school friends, my teachers, anyone. I wanted to say that I was scared, that I felt like I was going to faint. But I was ashamed. I thought I was crazy for feeling all of that and for living through it.
I could only go to school for about a month, and then I stayed home with my dying mother. In February, my dad called my homeroom teacher to tell her that my mom had passed away and that I would need more time. All my other teachers said they would pass me for the year, even if I only came in to take a few tests (I was still studying at home alone from textbooks).
The homeroom teacher opposed this. She said she would request my expulsion if I didn’t get a medical extension. But I didn’t have a medical problem. I had an emotional one, and I wanted at least an adult to reach out to me.
So I postponed the school year. In a few months, I lost my classmates, my school, and my mother. I was alone, with a dad who was lost alongside me. The shame was enormous.
I started 8th grade again in the fall at a remote school. I took the national exam with my dad in the backyard, next to the fence, opposite the classroom I would have been in, because I was scared of the older boys among whom I had ended up. Men in their mid-twenties made disgusting comments. I sat next to one of them for the exam. I felt sick to my stomach.
I didn’t tell anyone where I was going to school, why, or that I had lost a year. Because it was shameful to be held back, even if the reason was life itself. No one talked to me about it. I existed among them, but I was like a shadow.
I returned to the same high school in the new grade and graduated successfully. I met everyone who knew me as “the orphan girl,” and it hurt every day. My former classmates were in other classes. My old teachers welcomed me with open arms. The former homeroom teacher was still bitter, as if she was jealous that I was still breathing.
I never greeted her — except on the day of the end-of-year awards. Then I gave her a bitter smile and looked her in the eyes for the first time, carrying all the pain I had collected over the years — years in which an adult treated a suffering child horribly. That was my greeting, because it was all I knew to do.
Do not be ashamed of anything you go through. It is not your fault if others push you to the margins, as I felt. Even if you cannot ask for help, it does not mean the world is blind or that anyone has an excuse.