I was in 7th grade when a nickname changed how I saw myself.
It happened on the handball court during recess. I had just won a game against one of the boys in my class. He didn’t like that. Angry and embarrassed, he threw the ball across the yard and turned to his friends. “Lurch,” he said.
Then louder, and with more laughter behind, “Lurch, Lurch, Lurch.”
The chant took off and a few boys joined in. I heard them, but mostly I heard the laughter. I didn’t know how to respond. I stood there, frozen and angry.
If you don’t know who Lurch is, he was a character from The Addams Family—tall, stiff, awkward, and compared to the rest of the cast, frightening. I had loved that show. But not like this.
At the time, I was taller than most of the boys. That never bothered me before. I just wanted to play. I loved handball and tetherball, and I was good at both. But after that day, I stopped feeling like myself on the court. I became someone who had to brace for humiliation before recess even started.
That moment stuck. Not just the name, but the feeling of being exposed. Of being laughed at and not knowing how to make it stop. I told myself it didn’t matter. I told myself I was tough. But at night, I cried quietly. I didn’t tell my parents. I didn’t tell my siblings. I didn’t tell anyone.
That nickname lingered through the rest of 7th grade. By 8th, the boys were taller, and their attention had shifted. But it was too late. The damage was done. I had already internalized it. I believed I was ugly. I believed I deserved it.
At home, there was already a mix of love, fear, and unpredictability. My self-esteem was fragile. That single moment at school didn’t create all my self-doubt, but it gave it a name. One that echoed in my head for a long time.
Years later, I brought it up to a friend from that same class. I asked her if she remembered the Lurch thing. She laughed a little at first, until she saw my face. Then she stopped. Her voice softened. “I remember,” she said. And then she told me something I’ll never forget. “I looked up to you. You’d tell them to shut up. You didn’t seem bothered.” But I was bothered. I had just learned how to hide it.
When I told her how much it hurt me, how long I had carried it, she cried. She hugged me. And she shared something of her own. A moment from her past, buried in the same kind of silence. That conversation shifted something. I didn’t feel alone. My self-esteem moved up one notch that day.
As I got older, other names, other insults, and other silences found me. But I also started reading. Listening. Writing. Speaking. Slowly, I started to understand what shame was, and how it operates, not loudly, but quietly, in the spaces where no one is looking.
Shame feeds on isolation. And it loses power when we name it out loud.
What I Know Now
That seventh-grade nickname was never about me. It came from someone else’s insecurity, someone else’s need to feel big by making someone else feel small. But I didn’t know that then. I thought it was truth.
Now, I understand that people speak from their pain. And sometimes, their pain lands on you. But you don’t have to carry it forever.
If a moment like this has stayed with you, something said in front of others, something that quietly rewrote how you saw yourself, know that you’re not alone.
I explore stories like these on my podcast Growing Older Together. If this one resonates with you, I’d love to hear from you. Visit me on Instagram [CLICK HERE] or reach out through the contact form here on this site.