I struggle with promoting myself as a writer. From the articles I’m reading, this is a common problem in just about every field. The internet is loaded with tips about the struggle of people who feel like assholes when they say something good about themselves. I don’t know about you guys, but whenever I post a link to my blog or talk about something I’ve published or (in the good old days before the plague) said, “Come see me tell a story tonight,” I have felt a mix of two things: one is “I am letting people know what I’m doing so they can read my work and/or see me tell a story. That’s good,” and two, “Who the hell do I think I am?” Am I going to become a person who hands out business cards to people in elevators? Are my only social media posts going to be about me? When did I become such a narcissist?

Which is why no one knows me yet.

There’s a part of me that’s okay with no one knowing me. Beyond a local scene, anyway. When I was really little, before the shame kicked in, I was gregarious and introduced myself to everyone. If I had been a novelist at the age of four, EVERYONE would know me. I would have met other toddlers digging in the sandpit and said, “Hello, my name is Genevieve. Have you read my work?” and given them a bumper sticker with my website on it.

But I wasn’t a writer then. I became a writer in middle school when I was a tall, quiet, weird girl.

To understand the extent to which I avoided people in the 8th grade, you must know about the makeup test I took in the bathroom. I chose the location. It wasn’t necessary; the test wasn’t on hygiene or the excretory system. I think it was a math exam that I’d missed because I was sick earlier in the week. At J.B. Martin Middle School in 1989, if you had make up work you were sent to another classroom with another teacher so that you couldn’t ask any of the kids around you the answers.

What my math teacher didn’t understand is that I was in no danger whatsoever of talking to other students. I was thirteen years old, 5’11”, I wore all the wrong clothes, was helplessly tomboyish, and terrified to talk to most people. I got made fun of a lot at the time and didn’t know how to respond to it. As an adult I know you’re supposed to ignore it or play along with it. My wife, who was also an 80’s tall tomboy in a small town, dealt with it by punching kids in the face. That worked for her. I did none of the things that would work. Mostly I would cry. Bullies love it when you cry. It’s like chum to sharks.

To give you a visual, my bullies in 1989 in Luling, Louisiana looked like this:

This is just a random photo, this kid wasn’t in my class. But I swear she looks just like this girl Cammie who used to give me hell.

I, however, looked more like this:

This grungy, somber look would become popular in the early 90’s, but that hadn’t happened yet, and also I think that Luling stayed in the 1980’s until 2010.

So picture a Kurt Cobain-looking girl wandering the halls of classrooms filled with Poodle Hair Girls and these guys:

and she’s trying to find a place to sit at the back of class where she will go unnoticed.

I looked through the window of one class in particular where there was another shy kid named Kerrie. Kerrie and I didn’t hang out after school or anything but sometimes we sat next to each other at lunch because it was safer to travels in packs. The problem was, though, there were no extra seats at the front of the class where she was. The only available spots were at the back of the class where this one guy saw me, nudged the girl next to him and they both looked at me and laughed.

I was supposed to go in and ask the teacher if I could make up the test in her room, but I didn’t. I walked on. I didn’t know where I was walking. Every class was going to be like this. The school wasn’t that big and everyone knew everyone. I tried the library, hoping I could work at one of the desks in there, but it was dark and the door was locked.

I don’t remember when I decided to go into the bathroom. The next thing I remember is sitting on a toilet in one of the stalls, trying to hold the test packet with one hand and bubble in a scantron sheet on my leg.

[Lifehack: you can use your blue jeans as a table top to fill in scantrons successfully as long as the pencil is sharp and you don’t press down hard. When it loses its sharpness, angle the pencil so that you’re shading with the side of the lead. Shade circles completely. ]

Since this was during class time not many kids came in to use the restroom. Even when they did, the occasional flush of the toilets and turns of the faucet didn’t distract me nearly as much as kids pelting little pieces of paper at the back of my head. I completed the test and went back to class.

This is the same girl who wants to promote herself? Sure, most of us suffer from imposter syndrome and a lot of us who were bullied when we were young have never forgotten that wounded kid who felt lonely and disliked. And come on, admit it, most of us have hidden in the bathroom to take a makeup exam….right? Guys?

Just add that baggage from 1989 on top of the fact now, as we speak, in 2020, people are still mean. ESPECIALLY on the internet. I don’t know how kids survive cyber bullying these days. I’m not sure that I could have. Putting myself out there would let more people see what I write, but it would also open me up to bullies who are way older than 13 and way, way meaner. Poet Kate Baer, who I follow on Instagram, just got trolled by some guy who told her she was “a fat, dumb girl from Pennsylvania.” She handled it in a very cool Kate Baer way, with a poem about love. But still. What the hell?

I have worked hard to keep from getting bullied and harassed in my adult life. But I’m also a storyteller. I do and do not want to be in the spotlight. I only really want to be in the spotlight as long as people love me completely and have nothing but nice things to say.

Unfortunately, that’s not how these things work. I don’t get to choose how people feel. But I do get to choose to let bullies scare me into silence, to let every word I write vanish like disappearing ink.

It’s time to come out of the bathroom stall. Metaphorically. I’m not currently writing this in the bathroom. For those of you who are also shy about promoting yourself, no matter what it is, I’m with you. Let’s take that step out into the hallway, and walk in front of that class and say, “Hi. I’m Genevieve Rheams from Mrs. Blanchard’s class. I’m here to take a makeup test,” and we will sit at a desktop that will allow us to fill in our scantrons as hard as we want to (within reason) even while jackasses are laughing and throwing things at us. We will finish our test, stand in front of the class, recite a poem about love Kate Baer-style and take a bow.

Because we are artists. Because we are strong. And because we’re not really 13, we’re grown ups being heckled by other grownups, and I take back what I said about them being much worse. No one is meaner than an 8th grader.