When I turned ten, nothing much changed. I was still a happy and pretty well adjusted kid. I was in my last year of Primary School and I was officially one of the top dogs. We were the king and queens of Primary school, if only for a year as the next year we’d be rookies again at Intermediate School.

I remember one time we were doing some sort of kindness experiment at school and we had to put a note in the desk of the person sitting next to us. Later that day, the teacher pulled me aside to talk to me about the note I’d written. Apparently, my thoughtfully written note “you need to clean your desk” was not well received. I’m smiling to myself now, as I’m writing this but at the time it was yet another moment of self reflection. It was a little embarrassing and I wondered how a reasonably well rounded individual, how I missed the boat on learning how to make compliments. I’m pleased the teacher called me out on this as it’s good to learn from these moments. It’s so important to compliment people and I try to do it regularly, as you never know what challenges people might be facing behind close doors. I’ve seen a small compliment transform a persons face, so I know it can make a difference. I’ve got to say though, the compliment has to be genuine. I’ve met people who go a little overboard with their compliments and it’s hard to believe their comments are genuine, although well meaning.

I was still becoming aware of myself and my surroundings. I noticed the kids who came to school with no shoes and the ones with “flash clothes” and me and my family, well we fit somewhere in between. For the most part we got most of our new clothes for Christmas and birthdays. My birthday is five days before Christmas so my Christmases all came at once it seemed, although if new clothes were required for a special occasion mum and dad would make sure we weren’t without. Mum and dad always put us first and I hardly ever remember them buying themselves new clothes. Mum was always very resourceful, trying to make the buck go further. At that time I don’t think we shared her love of second hand clothes shopping (op shopping), as it wasn’t cool to wear second hand clothes then. I was never particularly fond of the local shop as it was a bit stinky. I’m sure I’m not the only person to think that but I’ve always found funny smells bother me. I know now this is an HSP thing. It’s hard to explain but some smells react with my skin and when I think about op shops I can almost smell the musty smell and my skin starting to prickle.

Nothing much exciting happened that year, although we did go on a family holiday to my nana and poppas house in the Coromandel and my sister and I were in a tent when Cyclone Bola hit. I remember having a pretty sleepless night from the tent blowing around and our new blow up beds (probably more suitable for swimming pool action) that we were sleeping on went down during the night. I guess not everybody you know can say they were sleeping in a tent when a cyclone hit. I’m pretty sure there was extensive flooding around the area and we were stuck there for a few more days than expected and if I’m not mistaken poppa was in one of his moods and my parents were less than excited by the extended stay.

Just before me and my mates signed off our primary school days and were ready for the Christmas summer holidays, the teacher went around the classroom to check our home addresses were correct. I assume they had to pass the details on to our new intermediate school. When the teacher asked me if I still lived at the Classic Motel, I laughed. We had lived there for a short time in 1983 when we first moved back to the Waikato and we were waiting to move into our new house. Clearly, record keeping was not a priority to the school as it was now nearing the end of 1988.

The school year ended and I turned the big eleven and as always I looked forward to the summer holidays. We were pretty lucky as at various times, both sets of grandparents had homes by the sea, so we almost always got to have a holiday at the beach during the holidays.

The next year, I started at Maeroa Intermediate. I was form one and back at the bottom of the food chain again. Everything was going pretty well, I was meeting new kids and settling into my new school. I was pretty happy with my new teacher, Mr MacDonald and he was the first person I’d met who was colour blind. Well, that’s the story he told us kids, perhaps he just had bad fashion sense.

Teachers at that stage were still pretty old school and I remember on one occasion that I had been caught blowing bubblegum bubbles in school assembly. Now, I have no idea how the deputy principal knew me by name as this was a pretty big school and apparently she took exception to me chewing bubble gum. At the end of her speech, she said “Nicola Pepper, you must come to my office immediately after assembly”. The entire school was abuzz and looking around to see who this kid was. Shit.. it was me! At the end of the assembly I went to her office and she berated me in no uncertain terms about my terrible behaviour. I had to write a letter of apology to her, Mr MacDonald and my parents which I did. When I got back to my classroom I had to give my letter to Mr MacDonald and he pulled out his jar of chillis and told me to pick one and he made me eat it in front of the whole classroom. I picked my chilli and starting eating it and part way through he asked me if I would like a drink of water. I had no experience with spicy food and accepted his offer without question. I had no idea that the water actually spread the heat through every corner of my mouth.

At the end of the day, I went home with my tail between my legs and sheepishly presented my apology letter to my mother. I disappeared pretty quickly after dropping off the letter and much to my surprise, I heard my mother laughing hysterically and it was at that time I realized how far things had been blown out of proportion. A few weeks later, a boy in my class was punished for something else and he had to eat two chillis. It sounds terrible, but I was so damn happy that somebody else had to go through that and that he had to have two (he had been a dickhead to me, so perhaps that’s why I was happy). Later in life, I would understand why I was never particularly fond of hot food, the irony has never escaped me given my surname is Pepper.

Things were still going pretty well until one day when I was over at my friends house, her mum asked me what all the spots were on my legs. I was a bit shocked, how come I didn’t notice I had these spots? It’s amazing that something can happen to you over a period of time and you don’t notice. I didn’t think too much about it, although I wondered how long I’d had the spots for. After a while, I seemed to have the spots on other parts of my body and it had spread to my face and arms.

At some stage, mum took me to the doctor and I was diagnosed as having eczema. The doctor sent me off for allergy testing and to a dermatologist. None of these provided any results and the dermatologist said I was allergic to cat hair and that if we got rid of the cat I’d be fine. Mum argued with him and said we’d had a cat all my life, so his diagnosis didn’t make sense, but he didn’t care. That was his professional opinion and he was not prepared to explore any other avenues. He was done. Here’s your steroid cream, special moisturizer and different bits and pieces to put in the bath etc. and off you go. The reality was, that none of these creams actually did anything and least of all did they provide any answers as to why the eczema had occurred. Perhaps they helped with the itchiness and the flare ups but nothing actually cleared it up to a degree which was acceptable.

This would be the beginning of my distrust of the health system. Conventional medicine had nothing to offer me, I was an enigma. Just like when all of a sudden, I developed white moons on my irises and nobody knew why a kid my age had them. Usually it was something that surfaces in middle aged people with high lipids (to do cholesterol), yet I was a thin active child. At any rate, I was highly pissed off about being put in the “too hard basket” by the doctor and dermatologist. Looking back, some of these people had no bed side manners either, no empathy and this is something that would be an ongoing issue for me.

My mother had become more interested in “alternative” health options and she started to take me all over the show. She took me to have colour therapy treatment, to herbalists, naturopaths, you name it she took me there, alas nothing was working for me and nothing seemed to provide any respite. There was one thing which stopped the itching and that was hot water. I would often have a scorching hot shower at all hours of the night to try and stop the itching but the relief was generally only temporary. There would be other treatments, but I’ll talk more about that in the next blog.

I’m not exactly sure how soon things changed, but I would say it was within six months, because when kids started to notice the spots, they were starting to give me a lot of grief. Kids were calling me things like “aids baby” and “scabby baby”. Some kids didn’t want to be close to me and others didn’t want to touch me. Kids can be so damn cruel and once they realize the best way to avoid being picked on is to be part of a group picking on someone else, watch out! It ain’t fun being the picked on one, that’s for sure.

I started to feel like a leper and I started to lose sleep and suffer from anxiety. I would wake up in the night worrying about what might happen at school the next day. I was starting to have more and more time off school. I couldn’t handle the constant bullying and I was suffering from chronic insomnia. I was tired all of the time and I have no doubt that affected my mood and anxiety levels. I was becoming pretty miserable and looking back, my coping mechanism was definitely an avoidance style. I suspect some of that also has to do with my HSP traits as the intensity and depth of feelings can be overwhelming.

At the time though, mental health wasn’t something people were as aware of and I was really suffering. My self confidence was taking a huge knock and my enjoyment of life was impacted. I couldn’t go swimming anymore as the chlorine stung my wounds so badly and I didn’t want people to see me in togs anyway. It would be a sad reality, that I would never wear proper togs again after this time.

While things were super challenging, I know there were still good times. I was very lucky to have some great mates and they never distanced themselves from me. They always had my back. I am forever grateful for those relationships as it was pretty isolating going through this. I can honestly say that I wouldn’t be here today if I didn’t have those mates. It’s pretty humbling to me now to think that my friends looked past what I was going through physically and were still by my side, especially at the impressionable age we were at, where image is becoming a part of your psyche.

I had turned twelve by now and was in form two. My last year of intermediate. I loved my new teacher, he was different to others and we all thought Mr Sharples’ tie dyed work shirts were pretty cool. We thought we’d hit the jackpot being in this class. We were “cool” by association and once again we were the top dogs.

The girls uniform was pretty archaic and we had these stupid shorts (rompers) we had to wear for physical education (PE), they looked a bit like nappy covers and we usually wore them under our uniform dresses on days we had PE. I remember one day I was sitting outside the classroom and I must not of been sitting particularly lady like (probably because I had shorts on) and one of the boys said to me, how come you don’t have any spots up there? I felt quite normal for just a second that a boy had looked up my skirt, but I was quite shocked, how come I didn’t have spots “up there”? I realized at that stage, that my eczema was only on parts of my body that you could see, on my face, on my arms (elbows down) and my legs (knees down). Seems like a cruel irony if you ask me.

By now, I had had eczema for about eighteen months and at this stage I felt like I might have it forever. It was pretty tough going and next year we were off to High School. We were going to be third formers also known as “turd formers”. I remember being hold that turd formers were the lowest of low and that I should be worried as I was in for some tough times. I remember finishing off form two and being absolutely terrified of what high school might bring. I was imagining all of the movies on tv, where kids would get chucked in the bin or rubbish tipped on them or being locked in lockers and god knows what else.

As I slid into my thirteenth birthday, the school holidays had started. Bring on the sunshine and beach holidays. I’d worry about being a turd former next year and whatever challenges my situation might bring.

I don’t have many photographs from this time in my life as I didn’t go out of my way to be photographed but I found this beaut school photo. I’m the blondie in the middle row among the vertically challenged kids (I’m two kids away from the ever cool Mr Sharples).