I Am Fifteen, and Have Nothing Figured Out

MAUDE APATOW

I often wonder why I am so full of rage. I like to blame it on my boobs. I have always been mad at my boobs. When I was ten my aunt had just finished chemotherapy and my grandmother was dying of cancer. I didn’t have boobs then, but I already hated them because all I knew about them was that they fed babies and hurt people.

When I got boobs, I was ashamed of them and hid them. They also kind of grossed me out and I thought they made me look deformed. The first memories I have about my boobs are how I would constantly run into things and how it would hurt so badly that I would cry. I would also cry because it was like life was never going to be the same. In fourth grade, I was very nostalgic and emotional.

I used to think if I lay down on the marble floor, face down, maybe they would go away. I also liked the pain. I made myself cry, but I didn’t get up. I was so confused, I decided to torture myself. After doing that a few times, I was afraid they would pop or crack open (a horrifying thought) and stopped. That was when I first started getting nervous. I wish I could say that I’m over this and laugh at how at how neurotic and strange I was, but I am not any less confused now.

I feel like by sixth grade, mostly everyone had boobs, but it was hard to tell because a majority of my friends would hide them with baggy T-shirts. I invited four girls to sleep over at my house at the end of sixth grade. They were a lot more mature and comfortable with themselves than I was (and still am). I like to have more than one person at my house because I’m easily overwhelmed and offended, and so I could leave if I wanted to and it wouldn’t be as weird (still a little weird though). We watched the film Cabaret, which, I think, is what inspired the events that followed. I had only met these girls a couple of months prior to this night, so I was not comfortable with them at all (that has not changed). After the movie ended we were all in the room and a few minutes later, everyone was topless. I was not. They all started to yell at me to take off my shirt, but I said no. Then they cornered me and locked me in the bathroom with them. I closed my eyes because I didn’t need to see that. I felt their boobs touching my face and shoulders. They laughed and thought it was hilarious. It scarred me.

In middle school my friend had a crush on her neighbor. She kept track of the days he would go on jogs and on those days she would stand by her window and flash him. The details are sketchy and we aren’t sure if he ever even saw. I remember this enraged me. I told my parents right away because no one in my grade thought there was anything wrong with it.

There was a Bar or Bat Mitzvah almost every weekend in seventh grade. Thirteen-year-old girls would wear super-tight black dresses and five-inch heels and that appalled me. This is probably when I separated from my friends and became more like a mom. I would yell at everyone to stop texting during the services, because I didn’t understand how someone could do something so disrespectful. I think I did this because it gave me something to do (not sure why that was fun for me, it only caused pain). I remember sitting behind a group of girls, so I could get a good look to see if they were on their phones or not, and noticing that they had their bras tightened all the way. The clasp was all the way up their backs. I later noticed that they were pushing their tween boobs up so high, it looked painful. I used to think that I was the strange one for not wanting to do that to myself, but now I know I wasn’t.

I’m afraid to show people my boobs. There is a chance they look really weird and I don’t know it – or no one has told me before. I’m pretty sure they’re normal but I don’t want to risk it. I am so charged with hormones, I can’t handle any type of comment that would make me feel bad.

My mom always tells me to show my boobs off now, because they will never look this good again. That makes me feel terrible and sad because thinking about aging makes me feel depressed.

My best friend is a 34DD, so it is hard to avoid the boob topic.

I’m fifteen and I am still trying to understand why people my age do certain things, like why a girl would send a picture of their boobs to a boy and not expect everyone in the school to see it. Is she really that confused and careless or is it a cry for help and attention? I feel alone in the sense that not many people my age care about people as deeply as I do. I get worked up and upset about things that other people don’t even think about. I didn’t think about why girls were wearing such padded bras at twelve and thirteen and how it says something about who you are. Right now I am trying to figure out what that is. Experimenting comes with getting older. I know that there is nothing I can do to stop my friends from trying things like drinking or drugs, but it is really hard to accept that. I have always been anxious and have felt like I need to control what everyone around me is doing. I figured out that the reason I try to protect people is because I am trying to protect myself. I don’t want to help my friends through things I feel like I could have prevented. I know that I don’t have control and that I really can’t prevent bad things from happening, but I still feel worried. My friends have isolated me because I don’t support them and it feels terrible. As soon as boobs come, everyone wants to grow up. To me, boobs symbolize change, growth, puberty, and the reason all of my friends and I all went crazy. Maybe if my grandma didn’t die so young, I wouldn’t be so freaked out that bad things would happen to everyone all of the time. I haven’t had a baby or a boyfriend yet, so I don’t know any of the positive reasons to have boobs. All I know is I hit them on doorways sometimes and it really hurts.