My Body as Narrative: Fact is Stranger Than Fiction

At ten years old I was already six feet tall. I was a freak; a beautiful, elongated abnormality. My body was the focus of others. I had no choice but to dodge bullets and bullying yet I was also aware that others watched me with intrigue. I hated my body. It was a lonely place. I was stuck in a small country town in New Zealand; stuck in a community of ordinariness; stuck in a home with short parents and shorter siblings; stuck in a body that, I felt, betrayed who I really was. I wished I was invisible.

I had thought to throw myself on the train lines so a passing train could chop off my legs and I could have them replaced with shorter wooden ones. Then I might be accepted like Jenny Tyler, a girl from my school who had cancer. People felt sorry for her, but me they teased and leered at and humiliated, especially the boys. Then one day the world caught up with me; it grew taller too. I became an object of desire. I had transformed, despite myself, into a woman whose looks gave me power, a dangerous weapon, a tradable commodity in a hungry world.