From age 4 to age 12 I was a little boy in primary school. Here in the Netherlands we call it basisschool, and from age 7 onward going there wasn’t as pleasant as I had wished for myself. The first year of basisschool was in a little village, but short before my 5th birthday we moved to a town 25 kilometers east, to a slightly more urbanized region at German border.
There, like in that little village, I went to catholic primary school together with my brother who was one class above me. It was not like the school was led by nuns or something like that, but simply that there was a morning prayer in the lowest classes and from third year on all would get weekly lessons in catechism. So that much about the school’s background.
My first 3 years on primary school were quite okay, being able to be the unspoiled kid one expects from 4 and 5 year olds to be. This didn’t mean I was doing well in every aspect, I wasn’t that talkative being quite the shy kid in class, though I was quite the busy bee when I got to play in the playcorner. So already then I was more in my element when able to enjoy myself in a small group on one hand and being on the background in big groups of kids on the other hand. After what you could call pre-school, the first two years of primary school, the oppurtunity to have fun in the play corner was gone and all creative and playful activities were done with whole the class participating at once. This in fact made me vulnerable, because I wasn’t the kid who’d stand up for itself and I was thus an easy target. This started taking its toll at age 6, the year I did the holy communion, not only was that a bore, but already then I felt uncomfortable looking the neat boy I was supposed to look at the ceremony.
So that year the hardship started, I was most vulnerable because I couldn’t defend myself. As long as I can remember I was a kid that started crying when others would get angry, the first time I stood up for myself was in grade 7, at age 10. Not that I didn’t cry because of the insult, but still I think it was cowardess to hit that boy. Most interesting about the incident is that it was one of my best friends whom had insulted me behind my back and I overheard that. I think I only pushed him and gave him some weak slaps on the chest, and then ran away. I apologized two days later, didn’t want to lose a friend, and I knew it was wrong to hit someone.
That was the only event in which I stood up for myself in the 5 years of hardship on primary school and it wasn’t even against the kids that were the meanest to me. More importantly to know, something my gender therapist was interested in when we spoke about my early youth was to know how I acted as a boy. As mentioned in other posts, it wasn’t until about age 10 that I came aware of what bugged me, my gender dysphoria. As a boy, I was as mentioned shy, quiet, introverted. I tried to get along with the boys but never got the hang of it, even with being the fanatic kid in gym-class I was also fine to play along with girls which was much less of a hassle the first years until the age that girls interest in playing with boys became ‘not done‘ for most girls. There were two boys whom were friends of mine all through primary school, and only one girl, and sometimes especially the earlier years I played along with different boys and girls. The interesting thing is that I never opposed playing girl things with those girls, I willingly played with barbies, not only together with my little sister. On the other hand, I could be fiersome when playing with LEGO or Playmobil. And I also loved to draw, make puzzles, and play dress up. In watching TV I also watched all kind of kids TV-shows, as violent as The A-team and Transformers, to as lovely as the Carebears. So my youth with all its unpleasant experiences on school wasn’t one significantly showing my gender dysphoria. I certainly believe that it has been present all along, thus being partly the cause of my behaviour in those years before I came aware of what this feeling was. To anyone around me when I was in primary school I was simply a shy and vulnerable little boy, whom they in fact never really understood. Would it have helped if someone would’ve really attempted to get through to me, hard to say, but it wouldn’t have hurt if someone at primary school had done that. The most awkward thing was that my teacher in final grade of primary school gave me the role of mustache wearing swimmingpool superintendent in the primary school partition musical. Not only was the mustache super icky, I had never felt more out of place in any school performance I had been in. Despite the good intentions of the teacher, he had better given me a girls role, though I might have felt too ashamed to take it…. ah well it’s all in the past now. No hard feelings against all those people who wronged me back then, in all honesty.
So in the end aware of of my feelings I went to secondary school even more introvert then I started primary school, with only one physical assault on me and only one incident in which I stood up for myself. It could have been worse. Still I hoped things would only get better when I left that primary school, but I’d be in for a more difficult time, because I still was that vulnerable kid when I started secondary school.