What was my 'Ladybird Year'?

This is the promised post explaining what the song Ladybird Year means to me. This my personal interpretation, and deals with how it related to my experiences, so I can't say it's exactly what the writer intended, only that this is what I got from it.

First up: I can't swear to the accuracy of the age: although it must have been at some time around 11 years old, and certainly that period of my life is what I'm thinking about when I listen to the rest of the song. The pictures in the video range from around 10-14 years old. The "went to camp..." event that I chose for the lyrics alteration was actually when I was about 16, but the same principles apply. Except, I don't recall whether or not there were ladybirds "everywhere". There were plenty of other summers like it though, even though they didn't involve a camp with friends from school (or indeed, with the Girl Guide pack, as the original lyrics say!)

So, "that was the year/ they cut my hair" - In the picture of my 10-year-old self you can clearly see that I had my hair grown long, at least long enough to flop around my shoulders. I've written on the Informed Consent BDSM web community about growing up with unusual gender presentation, and I'll just repost the relevant passage here:

The first definite gender identity question in my past was when at age 7 or 8, I decided I wanted to grow my hair long. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that my parents let me, but they were and are fairly liberal-minded people, so maybe it is not that big a surprise after all. Certainly, it is an unusual decision for a boy of that age to take.

I didn't consciously want to look more feminine by doing it, issues of gender identity as such didn't enter my young mind at that stage; I just knew that long hair was something I felt was important to me.

However, gender identity was unmistakably an issue to everyone I met during that period. The number of times my parents would be asked, "And what's your little girl's name?" or by shopkeepers or stallholders, "What would your little girl like?" was amazing to me, because I didn't for one moment think I looked or was female. At that age, I simply hadn't thought to challenge the gender identity thrust on me since birth, except by the remarkable decision to grow my hair, which was what prompted everyone else's problem. That decision felt right, and was, as far as I can recall from this far in time, an instinctive thing. As noted above, it didn't come from any conscious awareness of being "not-male".

However, I was obviously aware of the effect it had on other people, because of how they reacted to my hair being long. Again, it is hard to be sure since it is so long ago now, but I must have felt that long hair was more important than being seen to be a boy.

I've said that my parents were fairly liberal-minded, and they were. However, I was a little too far outside the norm for them really. I was under constant pressure, both from them and from society at large, to revert to the "natural" form of a boy, and have my hair cut short. Of course, my peers, the 7-8 year olds around me at school, were easily the cruellest in their pressure. Even so, I held out for at least a year, I don't remember for sure if I made it to two years, before finally capitulating. Once more, I conformed to what I was "supposed" to be, and got on with being a boy.

It's evident from the pictures that I did last at least 2 years, going by my estimate of when I started growing my hair. But gender conformity was definitely introduced by the time of the school photo aged 11. So it must roughly have been "that was the year they cut my hair".

As explained in that passage, I felt very strongly about having long hair - strongly enough that it was worth fighting to be allowed to grow it, and to resist for as long as I could the pressure to have it short again. But I succumbed to that pressure (as the photos in the video clip I made prove), and so the line "that was the year they cut my hair" holds a particular sense of bitterness for me because of that. I don't know why I felt that way - still don't if I'm honest - but it was (and remains) a key part of my self-identity and self-presentation in the world. Having my hair cut felt wrong.

The song moves on: "The funny thing is, when I see me then, that I look quite sweet to my grown-up eyes". In the second verse, Talis (and when I perform it, I) sings "And to think that I/ was pretty that year/ It's kind of a shame I never even knew".

Talis and I emailed each other and agreed that we both were cute, but nobody told us. We literally never knew we had it. Now, I have to be fair about this. My parents did tell me, of course they did. But I was a bright kid, and I had worked out already that parents are supposed to encourage their children, supposed to tell them wonderful happy little lies to cheer them up. I didn't believe my parents. Nobody else - nobody whose opinion could be considered impartial - seemed to think I was pretty, or handsome, or beautiful, or attractive - and a couple or so years on, when it started to matter - nobody seemed to think I was attractive or desirable. (It didn't help me that that was complicated by feelings of self-loathing because my sadist sexuality was emerging.)

"I wasn't as fat as I thought I was/ or my best friend was/ Now there's a surprise"

I was rubbish at sports. I was (or so I thought) ugly, and unattractive. It could mean only one thing (ran the emotional logic in my head): I was fat. I was fat, unfit, useless, no point even trying to be thin or athletic. Oddly enough, I did have a best friend, who was fatter than me, but he has over the years become slimmer and slimmer, and is now very athletic. But I never knew I had it in me to be like that, until it was too late. When I started refereeing about 6 years ago, it was already too late but that was the time I started feeling like "I want to do sports, I want to be able to do sports." I was already meeting the clinical definition of obese then. If I had known that I could do it, I would have started so much sooner. But I thought I was fat. I thought there was no point in even trying, because it was beyond my reach.

For as long as I can remember, I failed at Sports Day at school (the one chance I had to win something, I missed when my heat was called and forgot to line up - and my chance was because I was good at thinking, not because I was good at running or anything). For as long as I can remember, I was the one who was picked last (or more often, second-to-last) for teams in Games lessons - again, I was unpopular, unattractive, ugly, and clearly deemed by everyone else to be too fat to play sports. Needless to say, I did not get very involved in sports. With one exception - I played goalie in (field) hockey lessons. I was quite good at it, but it was also a position that required not much activity (just the ability to take a lot of pain!) Anyway, point being: again, all the messages I was receiving said I was fat. And eventually I believed it long enough for it to come true.

I still dream of what might have been if I had had games teachers who actually cared about coaching kids to do well at sports, instead of just overseeing the required activities and giving us the basics (and, for example, explaining how not to impale ourselves on the javelins!) What if someone had taught me enough that I could have felt good at something? I kind of think that if we'd had American football in our schools, I might actually have found a role that suited me (maybe tight-end or even running-back, with the right coaching) but who knows?

So again, "I wasn't as fat as I thought I was" - a very potent phrase for me, with my history.

"Kind of a shame I never even knew/ Because I wasn't as brave as I tried to seem". The subtle corrosion, and the less-subtle bullying, need such bravery to survive. Hard work for anyone, but for an 11-year-old kid? Devastating. Look again at the music video I did for this song, and the photos. I have a very serious face in most of them, but in the group class photo, you can see it most clearly: I didn't want to be there, I was not happy in that group. I put a brave face on for so much of my school years (and more detail than that is off-limits for what i will talk about online).

"When the house caught fire/ and singed my wings/ I couldn't fly away home/ in my ladybird year". I think this is a reference to the childhood rhyme:

Ladybird ladybird fly away home,
Your house is on fire and your children are gone

This ties in (for me at least) with the symbolism of the next stanza: "My pockets were filled, even that far back/ With not enough white stones/ for when the path home lies/ and the path home lies". This is a reference to the story of Hansel and Gretel, and is (for me anyway) heartbreaking when understood that way. Because for me, even acknowledging and being thankful for the support that I did have from my parents, going to school, going to that camp, trying to function on my own when I was a kid, was a lot like being led into the dark forests and left, abandoned and without support. A path when I needed to find my way back from the places described above (feeling fat, unattractive, undesirable, taunted for not conforming to gender) - and the "path home" lied to me. I didn't have the white stones to find my way back safely.

I found a way out eventually. I'm here, aren't I? But I think of the cruelty of the other kids. I think of the blindness that adults seemed to have to it. I think of the social pressure to conform. And that's why I chose to create my screaming electric guitar version of "Ladybird Year" - as I am sure anyone who's read though the above can imagine, there is bitterness. There is anger. There is aching at what might have been. There is suffering, wrapped up in that version.

Be clear: this is as in-depth as I will ever get about my childhood, and having scraped the surface, I hope you can understand why what lies deeper might be something I prefer not to air in a public web space.