When you don’t fit

Banged my head again.

I wouldn’t mind so much but it was on the exact same spot on my head that I did it last time, and the time before that. I’m currently taping a wadded up towel round the sharp wooden edge of the entrance so I don’t do it again. Stupid walk-in cupboard.

I should really just empty it out, not that there is much in it but it’s handy, or at least it would be if the entrance was a little bigger.

It’s not that I’m not used to ducking to go through doors, I mean it’s an everyday habit for me. I remember one time visiting a museum, and old building that was no doubt built hundreds of years ago, all stone and wood it was, and I guess there were more people like me around then because the doors were massive! Really tall! I could barely touch the top of them even if I stood on my tippy toes.

Maybe I should buy a house like that, a house built for someone my size, instead of squashing myself into these tiny boxes that everyone else seems to fit in. But if I buy a house that fits me, it only goes to show how much I stand out.

That’s always been my problem, I don’t fit in. I can remember the kids at school teasing me like, somehow, it was my fault I was taller than all of them and the tallest teacher already? I learned back then how to stoop and make myself small, make myself fit. Kids can be so cruel. So brutally heartless. I’d practice making myself small as I lay in bed, sobbing myself to sleep.

Not that things were any different when I went to college. Despite all the supposedly liberal minded people there were still quips about my size, ‘how is the weather up there?’ they ask. Day after day. I didn’t have many friends, and sure, I was popular if they were playing basketball but they soon bored of that – having someone my size who can look down at the basket… well it wasn’t fair on anyone else I guess. So the names and insults would flow, all aimed at making me less than I am, taking me down a peg or two because, somehow, it was perceived that that is what I deserved.

Do they think I choose to be this way? Do they think I want to stand out the way I do? Can’t they tell how much I yearn to fit in?

It’s probably telling that the few friends I have are all women. I learned from them how to make myself insignificant so I didn’t attract attention, learned to be smaller than I am so I don’t rub people the wrong way, watched as they shrunk away from men on the street and in bars. I learned a lot of things from them, things I didn’t want to know, things that they shouldn’t have to do, but I copied them all the same.

These days I’m oblivious to the stares, to the gawkers, the whispered commentary about the ‘freak’ as they walk past me in the street. It still hurts though. People can be so cruel. So heartless. I do my best to ignore them, after all what’s the point of getting angry, that’d only make me more of an outcast, although I’m not sure that’s possible any more.

Sometimes I wonder if there are others out there like me but then, if there were, surely I’d know about them already? Seems weird that I’m the only one like this. But maybe I am. I wish I wasn’t. I was I was smaller.

OK, I’ve finished taping the towel to the door frame, hopefully that’ll stop me banging my damn head on it.

I really should think about emptying it. Or maybe I’ll just moving, leave this tiny place behind… but where would I go?

I mean, I know I’m a giant, but why shouldn’t I be able to live somewhere that fits me properly?