A woman holding a stack of dresses and jeans enters the fitting room and asks if I’m helping out my mom. It’s 1995 and I’m eighteen years old.
I’ve been a sales associate at this department store for over a year. I point to my blue name tag, say, “No, I work here.” She smiles and remains by the entrance.
I ask if I can help her. She says no, that she’s waiting on a sales associate to get her a fitting room.
“I’m a sales associate. I work here,” I repeat, tapping my name tag again.
She rolls her eyes and dumps the stack of clothes on my desk. “Well, it’s sweet of whoever to let you help out.”
I know why she’s saying this. I’ve heard variations of this throughout my life and now, at forty-seven, still hear them from time to time. I have a rare syndrome called Russell-Silver Syndrome, which affects one out of every 100,000 live births in the United States.
My syndrome is a growth disorder. I stopped growing around age eleven or twelve and, as an adult, stand four feet, nine inches. RSS is categorized as a type of dwarfism, but is not easily recognizable like other dwarfisms, such as Achondroplasia, which affects 1 in 25,000. I am generally proportional, though small. I have a small chin, asymmetrical hands and feet, Clinodactyly of the pinkies (small, incurved pinkies), and had numerous feeding problems as a child, resulting in a series of NG and G-tubes until I was ten. I also have extremely small sinuses, which causes frequent infections.
It’s a struggle to be taken seriously in the workplace. Due to my stature, hiring officers often speak to me as though I was a child, even though I have a master’s degree with honors, awards, have never been fired from a previous job. I’ve had my ability to perform physical tasks questioned on interviews, have been patronized, treated as though somehow my stature prevents me from doing even normal tasks.
When my (now) husband and I became engaged, I quit my job and moved an hour away to live with him. I needed a part time job while I finished college, so I applied at a local bookstore. I worked at a bookstore as an assistant manager a few years prior, so I applied to the same chain.
I received a call about week later inviting me to an interview. I put on my best outfit, gathered a copy of my resume, slid on low heels, drove to the shop. I was met by the manager, an unkempt woman with wild hair, who wore glasses on a chain. We exchanged introductions and pleasantries as she led me to a bench right outside the front doors.
The manager gave a cursory glance at my application and resume, then turned to me. She looked me up and down, and then again.
“This job requires some heavy work. Can you push a book cart from one side of the store to the other?” she asked.
I assured her that I could and referred her to my work history, where I had worked at the same bookstore, albeit a different branch, for two years.
“Well, you’re just little. I’m not sure you can push that heavy cart. What if we walk into the store right now and see if you can push it across the store?”
I was stunned, mouth open. “Are you serious?” I asked. She stood up, flipped over the name tag on her lanyard.
“Absolutely not.” I said. There was no way that I was going to push a book cart across the store in front of shoppers and actual employees as part of my interview.
She shrugged. I left, furious.
You’re small, you’re different, prove yourself is what I heard whenever I filled out an application, stood in front of an audience, taught a class.
I began my teaching career as a substitute teacher in my early twenties as a means to get experience in the classroom while I was in college. The public school classes were large — twenty-five to thirty students packed into a stuffy room. I primarily taught high school and middle school students. Teaching twelve to eighteen year-old students posed the expected problems of whispering and cracking jokes about my size, but what was not expected was that the other teachers and administrators often stopped me in the hallways and coming into the teacher’s lounge thinking I was a student. More often than not, I had to exhibit my badge, my credentials, explain that yes, I was teaching, yes, I was old enough, yes, I had enough college credits to qualify, yes, I was certified, yes, the principal or headmaster knew.
When I graduated with my master’s degree and began teaching college, I internalized the ableism, the misogyny, and the bigotry. I had panic attacks in my car before classes, was hyper aware of eyes on me as I climbed the stairs, pushed an elevator button, stood in front of the white board. My male boss reminded me that I had to be tough because of my size and gender.
I taught for ten years before the anxiety was too much and I needed an extended break. My blood pressure was constantly elevated, my sleep schedule was horrible, and I had perpetual headaches. Something had to give, and I didn’t want to let my work further affect my body more than it already had.
I turned in grades, attendance, my badge, and quit. I didn’t say goodbye, and wasn’t sad. I walked out the double glass doors into the sunshine, got into my car, and drove away.
There was work to do to undo the years of emotional trauma, of self-hatred, of fear. At first, I became worse. I was agoraphobic, and didn’t leave my house for months at a time. I imagined the eyes on me, the jeers. I could no longer go to grocery store, the bank, church. It got to the point where I couldn’t even walk to the end of the driveway to check the mail. A car would drive by and all I would think was that they were looking at me, laughing, saying midget, midget, midget.
I lived like this for almost a decade. I sought therapy, medication, yoga, but was still unable to go outside. I bought tickets to plays and ballets I wanted to see, but never went. I even avoided Zoom calls and gatherings. My friends stopped asking me to join them for movies, sushi. My friends stopped calling altogether.
I began to write, again. Writing was the only method of communication to the outside world I could manage. I was visible in words, but no one could see my size, my face, my irregular body. The act of writing became my freedom, my breath, my way out of myself. I was not abnormally small, asymmetrical, always sick. I was instead defined by the words I wrote. The people who read my poems, essays, and reviews never thought freak.
This was a new freedom, a new way of being in a world so often fraught with judgement, whether walking down the street or online. I embraced this freedom and gradually found myself again. This self was stronger, more honest about who I was, my disabilities, my fears, my failures and successes.
When I first came out online about my dwarfism, I feared people would either ignore me altogether or make fun of me. But neither happened. Instead, I found a community of support from other people like me. I discovered and joined a Facebook group of other adults with RSS from across the world. Other writers and editors cheered me on, encouraged me to keep writing my truth.
Over time, my fears and agoraphobia began to abate. I visited family, went to the doctor’s office, the drive through at Starbucks, and yes, a bookshop. I learned the outside world is so big, so busy, that most of the time, people don’t even pay attention to each other, even to me, even to my differences. I still have difficult days and sometimes require someone to accompany me on a task that is outside my house. It’s a start, however. I can open the front door, enjoy the garden, get the mail out of the letterbox, get a coffee, take a breath. I’m learning how to turn off the internal voice that replays the jeers, the long ago scenes. I’m learning how to live, to stand not taller, but just my perfect height.
