“Life is merely terrible. I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.” – Franz Kafka, a lying bastard.

He had it all wrong. Metamorphosis doesn’t happen overnight, even though I wish it did. And it isn’t easy or painless. And he got it the wrong way around. I should know, I was born a beetle.

My parents were so pleased to have a little baby bug. My dad’s an entomologist, so I was his trophy child. Something he could show off at work.

My mom really did love me. I remember how she used to sit me on her lap and tickle my underbelly. I would gurgle happily (beetles don’t have vocal cords or tongues) and she would sing, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray. You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you...”

I always scuttled away before the final line, “So please don’t take my sunshine away.” It made me too sad. I don’t know why.

School was tough for a little beetle like me. Apparently, on my first day, I crawled onto the roof and refused to come down. My dad had to hose me off.

As the only bug, I never quite fit in. I couldn’t play with the other kids at recess, because birds were always trying to carry me off. Not that the other kids wanted to play with me, anyway. They were disgusted by me. Rightly so, bugs are disgusting. Horrible little creepy-crawlies with blinky, black, soulless eyes, who eat rotting food and speak in gurgles and squeaks.

I always hoped that I was secretly a caterpillar. That one day I would hide away in a little cocoon and reemerge beautiful. Then the other kids would like me. Until then, I could pretend to be the monstrous freakshow they wanted to see.

I climbed the walls to make them gasp. I let them tip me over and watch me struggle on my back. I played Beast in the school’s play (to rave reviews, I’m told). Like every good cockroach, I found a way to survive. I even started to like feeling special.

I could make the audience squeal with a clack of my mandibles and a wiggle of my antennae, and at least I was in control. The other children would laugh. I would gurgle along with them, as if I was in on the joke.

The only part that never got easier was that the school didn’t know if I was a boy bug or a ladybug. As an entomologist, my father knew I was female. But the school couldn’t imagine allowing an enormous insect, with jagged mandibles and eight ever-squirming legs, in with their little girls.

So, I was thrown to the boys, and had to watch from a distance as the girls braided their hair and made daisy chains. When I tried to play with them, they screamed and fled, so I stuck to digging for worms in the dirt.

While the boys were teasing the girls they liked, they were using me as a soccer ball. Even though I was part of a number of key goals, it was the kind of attention I wanted. The kind a little girl dreams of.

My first crush was Jason Donovan: a sweet, sensitive boy in the year above. I’d watch The Princess and the Frog and imagine that, if only Jason would kiss me, I could turn into a real girl, too.

Then, one day, he threw a baseball at me so hard that it shattered my carapace. He got detention and I spent a week recovering in the kennels at the local vets (I’m not complaining. The other animals were very friendly, and the food was top-notch).

After that, the fantasy seemed too unrealistic for even a child’s imagination.

I could live with this absent, uncertain sadness until puberty rolled around. Then, suddenly, something felt really wrong. While other girls were having periods, I started laying eggs.

My parents told me I should be proud, that I was blossoming into a beautiful adult beetle. But I found it disgusting and humiliating, no matter how many David Attenborough documentaries they showed me.

While the other girls grew breasts and attracted the attention of the boys, I simply grew bigger and more cumbersome. By sixteen, I was wider than the largest teacher and struggled to fit through classroom doors.

By now, the bullying had been replaced with disinterest. Most kids just didn’t want to know me.

My parents did try to make prom special. They gave me a specially tailored eight-legged dress, made from an old bedsheet. A kind group of girls even invited me to prom with them, but I couldn’t fit in the limo. While other kids had their first kisses and drinks, I went home early and alone. I couldn’t even drown my sorrow, because the punch bowl wasn’t suitable for bugs.

That night, I climbed into the garden. I found the vegetables covered in pesticides and started eating. It seemed like the only way to ever be free. Fortunately, domestic bug-killer isn’t strong enough for a beetle of my size.

An eager gardener found me in the early hours of the morning, vomiting up lettuce and sprouts into the compost heap, and drove me home in the back of his pickup.