Cheated

The first time I felt cheated was when I was only five years old. My cousin had temporarily came to stay with us after she had been severely abused by her mother.

She enrolled in school with me; she was my age;  therefore she was in my class because we were in a small school. I do not remember feeling cheated, angry or upset because she was at our house; but something about her being at school with me made me feel extremely cheated out of my opportunity at school. 

I was not a very gracious host during that time frame, and I let my jealousy get the best of me. It is a regret that I have lived with for a really long time - the way I treated my cousin. At five years old, I really couldn't understand what she needed.

I felt cheated out of the attention that I got from my teachers and my classmates. I felt cheated because school was my opportunity to shine, to be the smartest, the best in kindergarten. I could already read, knew how to color within the lines very well, and I could already do basic math.

My cousin being there took the attention away from my abilities because she was getting attention for what had happened to her. It was not something that I was willing to lose.

This same feeling of being cheated out of the attention at school would come again in third grade when my stepsister moved into our lives because of the death of her mother. She had failed a year in school and ended up in the same grade with me. She was a pixie, naturally blonde hair, quiet and inquisitive in certain ways that I was not, and she drew all the attention of the teachers and my classmates.

As I pondered the writing prompt "when was the first time you feel cheated" I didn't know what I wanted to select. And as I thought about this more and these two situations came to mind, I realized that many of the problems I have with trust stems back to those very first memories of someone, specifically a female,  taking something away from me.  At 46 years of age, I still have trust issues with females.  So, why go through life feeling cheated?  It truly does make you bitter, and it robs you of opportunities to love and be loved.

What I hoped my students would gain from this prompt was an insight into their own hurts and to realize that we all have these hurts.  Identifying the hurts is the first step in making positive change.  It is advice I hope I can take for myself because I feel an emptiness I have known for a really long time.