I started off going to school at Catherine Nichol’s & Gunn Elementary School in Calgary. There isn’t really much that I recall from this school, other than a scary incident involving a principal of which those details are sketchy at best. I remember I had issues getting to class on time. I found it more important to look at the beautiful fall trees and the little birds and squirrels in the trees, than it was to be punctual. Since it was the school’s policy that after three lates you had to go to the principal’s office, I found myself being sent there. I remember being scared, because I saw him yelling at older grade six boys and I was afraid he was going to yell at me as well. I remember bursting into tears when he asked me why I had a problem getting to school on time. I was sitting on his lap, as he was trying to console me. He put his hand on my knee and I noticed he was missing some fingers. That’s all I remember from the incident, but it sends chills down my spine when I recall it.

 

I had another painful memory at this time as well. My whole family went camping at Pine Lake, Alberta at around the time I was six or so years old. My brother and I had been given a lot of candy on this trip, from gummy bears, to Pop-Eye Bubblegum, to soda, you name it. One time, we all decided to go on a little hike through the woods. Since I was bringing up the rear, was covered in sugar, and apparently wasp nests were within the walking paths, I wound up getting attacked by over 80 wasps. I was so covered in them that I recall saying, “Mom, I can’t see...” It’s funny, because I don’t recall what happened after that, or feeling any pain, but my memory skips to when I was in the big, orange tent. My mother was applying some kind of ointment on me she got from the park attendant. I noticed there was a bee under my undershirt and tried to tell her that, but she thought it was in my head. But sure enough, she pulled up my undershirt and saw the bee, but not in enough time to keep it from stinging me. I became so traumatized by this entire event that, to this day, I am still scared of bees. All bees, wasps, etc, as when you are a kid you don’t know the difference between bees, wasps and such.

 

I was living in a townhouse complex with my parents, brother and uncle. We lived next door to a couple of boys, and we tended to play together a lot. One of the boys had a really impressive Star Wars action figure collection. We wound up having to move away because it was discovered by my parents that the people who were the property managers of the complex were sneaking into places through the attics and stealing booze, cigarettes, etc.

 

I then started going to school at Thorncliffe Elementary school. I don’t remember much about this school either, other than I had a problem with a teacher or something. I think it was also a fair distance away from where we were living, which was a beautiful grey house with purple lilac bushes in the front and a huge backyard with a swingset. When I reached grade four, I switched schools to Greenview Elementary as it was closer to where we lived, and my parents continued to have the same problems with the aforementioned teacher. Towards the end of that year, we wound up moving out to Strathmore, Alberta, and went to Brentwood Elementary school, which wound up being a pain for me.

 

Seeing as I moved to three different schools within a couple of months time, I ended up being really behind in school. As a result, I had to repeat the fourth grade. I think this incident is where all the trouble started for me in school. You will read a full detailed story about these events under the Mell’s Hell tab, for now I will summarize. I was treated as an outcast in school in this town. I was never really fully accepted into the student body.

 

Junior high school was particularly rough for me. Puberty hit my like a ton of bricks, causing my hair to thicken and curl like it never did before, and since then I might add. Also, acne was a huge problem for me as well. What people are now calling “bullying”, back in my day was called “teasing”. There wasn’t a day that went by where I wasn’t called ugly at least twenty times a day, sometimes by people I had no idea who they were. You see, in junior high school, they combined four or five different surrounding elementary schools into one. The people who were making fun of me in my elementary school passed on to the new people that it was fun to do that or something, so I found complete strangers coming up to me and saying, “Mellissa, you’re ugly!”

 

It hurt a lot. I hid the pain, though. I was told to ignore it and it will go away, but I learned that that was not the case. Again, I will go into it in much more detail with Mell’s Hell. Suffice it to say, I developed a severe depression, of which I am still trying to heal from today.

 

I found myself getting interested in things that could distract me from all of this pain I was going through. I would find things to get obsessed with. Comic books became a huge distraction for me. I think I started with the old Archie comics but branched out to superheroes later on. Also during junior high I developed epilepsy. During one of my hospital stays at the Children’s Hospital in Calgary, I was given a couple of comic book annuals, one for the New Teen Titans, the other Flash Annual #3.

 

This began my love-affair with comic books. They became my life. I would read a comic and try to imagine what would happen next. I also found myself fantasizing a lot about their lives and how wonderful they were, but all the while I was putting my own life on hold. It was pure escapism. I also found myself getting interested in whatever was not popular at school. If the vast majority of the people liked heavy metal, I hated it. If they hated boy bands, I loved it. I became infatuated with New Kids on the Block for a couple of years, mostly because all the “cool” kids hated them.

 

High school wasn’t as bad as junior high school, but the damage was already done at this point, and it was still rough. At that point, I was so depressed I could barely speak in a loud voice. To this day, I am now a quiet talker. I never used to be, but that’s what years of verbal abuse will do to a person. I tried to let on that it didn’t bother me whenever the class would turn on me, or whenever a friend would suddenly stop being a friend. But in all honesty, it hurt like Hell, which is why I refer to this time period of my life as Mell’s Hell. I wound up graduating from high school with no friends at all. It was very lonely.

 

When I turned 18 my parents tried to celebrate this with a little wine. I had decided when I was around nine years old that I would never drink, smoke, or do any drugs that weren’t medically prescribed. I didn’t like the wine, in fact I think it made me sick. I never drank a drop of alcohol since, mostly because I wanted to keep that oath I made true, and also because I was afraid I would get seriously addicted to it if I did. However, junk food became my way of dealing with the pains I was trying to escape from. In particular, I have a sweet tooth, and find myself struggling with soda even to this day, and also the need to get some candy or chocolate into my system. I often wish I had added junk food to that personal oath I made, as I have indeed gained weight since I left high school. Now on to the college years.