I am 15 and in music class. The teacher is deaf. His eyes are lidded with sleep, enlarged in owly-y glasses, ears grown over with cotton-fuzz.
Crystal is assigned to sit beside me. “Eat it” she said, pushing a spitball toward my face. “No” I breathed, a thing flying in my chest. The class rippled. The teacher sat at the desk, his cotton-head fallen against his palm.
She said it louder this time; “Eat It.” Melodie Holloway was beside me, her eyes darted, focusing on the wall. Dirk Hendrick looked at me, a cheek bloated against his hand. He looked away.
“What do you feel towards her” my therapist might ask, of my 15-year-old self. My 25-year-old-self might fumble. For a long time, I think I felt indifference or anger. Shame. It wasn’t something I looked at. It was something I buried. Over and over.
I polled twitter and facebook about bullying. No one said “it made me stronger” or “it made me who I am today.” Instead I heard “It gave me a complex about my weight that I carry to this day. “It gave my social anxiety”. “It made it so hard to trust people.”
When a friend of mine was in a fight, she would come to me for help– I knew about these things. Over MSN Messenger, we’d send threats in hot pink over-sized text. We might call the girl a “skank” or a “bitch.” I didn’t know these girls. I didn’t intuitively know what scabs to pick. I was hurling things I thought would hurt, things that would hurt me.
Psychology has focused on bullying recently. According to a study, most kids (60-70%) are never involved in bullying, neither as targets or bullies. The markers for being a target, they say, are passivity, non-violence. It’s also thought that bullying is formed early into the bully’s personality, marked by anxiety and early aggression. And bullying parents.
“What do you feel towards your 15 year old self now” my therapist might ask. And– I feel empathy. I feel for her, for the hurt that weighs in her body, a shadow balled up inside of her.
“Eat it” Crystal says. I am shaking my head, my face hot, the room still.
This 15 year old is a part still inside of me. In this room, still stuck. Inside of me is the house I went home to and the Mother who I couldn’t tell, out of fear, out of shame, out of not knowing whose side she was even on.
“And what do you feel toward the house? Toward your Mother. Toward Crystal?” I would breathe in–out. “I empathize with them” I could now say. Knowing, that they were wrong. That the initiation of violence is always wrong. But also knowing they are not unlike an animal, snapping their jaws at threats which aren’t real. Trying, they way they’ve been taught, to survive.
The next day I am at my locker, for a moment staring, in thought. Suddenly a great force is against my cheek. Hot and stinging, knocked into the side of my face. I am dizzied with ache, the sound of my heart-beat. The air around me is cool and floaty.
It takes 10 seconds to catch my breath, to regain sight. People are milling to class but no one is looking at me. No one is there. I realize, someone has punched me. They must’ve ran, hit and kept running.
I see my 15 year-old self at her locker. I can look at her, where no one else did, and she can see me. My empathy grows, huge from the compacted place of self-love inside– I am not passive in this. And in processing, it is safe.
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I wish I could hug your fifteen year old self! Currently in my last year of high school, I’ve seen loads of bullying. Looking back on it now, it has taught me a lot about who I am, they way I react to things and how some people who I think are cool or that I’m friends with really treat others who aren’t in their “circle”.
Growing up and going to a predominantly white school, I was the only black girl in my class. That, plus being of a darker complexion and not having a perm made me the focal point for taunts. Quite frankly, it made me question why I was so different, why kids my own age who once upon a time I was eating cookies with and resting besides at night time could be so vicious.
It made me really bitter and sarcastic I find, something that I still have problems with today. Because I was too scared to fight with my fists ( because kids always tease in groups ) for worry that I’d get my backside handed to me on a silver plate, I used words to cut others out, to kind of throw something back at those who were hurting me; emotional rattling for emotional rattling if it were.
Some of my issues with myself are probably linked to the things people said to taunt me when I was little, but I never really thought about it. For sure though, if the bullying taught me something, it taught me how not to be. Bullying, to me, is built either upon uncontrolled anger that people just can’t keep to themselves and feel as if they have the right to spew it onto other people or on ignorance/intolerance of others viewpoints/mannerisms/cultures/appearances/thoughts/feelings.
( phew, sorry so long, end essay, lol. )
leslie nikole,
this is the second time this week I have heard someone being singled out for bullying because of their race. *shakes head in disbelief* i think adults forget how fucking vicious high school is.
i thought about weighing this chicken-egg thing stronger in this article, the one you bring up: did it give me complexes, or did they somehow know those were things i would bruise about.
like anything, i guess it is a little of both… but i think “complexes” can be addressed by just looking at them and empathizing with your past self.
My Papa (grandfather) was a cop for over 40 years and dealt with many hardened criminals in his life, yet he always say kids were the cruelest people he knew. I am not innocent. I was hurtful to others because I was hurting myself. Why do we perpetuate the cycle? Things that were said to me by my peers haunt me still. I hope that I can one day let them go and forget.
Wow, that was powerful. There is nothing like being bullied, I can’t relate to your high school bullying experience, but I know what it’s like to be singled out, unfortunately in my case it was some adults in my life. Every time I stepped out of my safe family circle, there was some aunt, cousin, or family friend ready to point out what was wrong with me, what I needed to change. And I must admit I was complicit as a believed them and internalized everything, and now its slowly opening up. The sad part is that when I had the opportunity to stop such bullying later, i didn’t, I even perpetuated it and Lord knows I’m sorry for it. But I’m glad you have the self-love and bravery that you do to come through and share your experience.
Nicole, Self-awareness is stopping that cycle and that sad thing is that it’s not a given, we’ve got to work really hard toward it and this is a task most people do not undertake.
Ejiro, The family is where bullying starts. I am sure it is where we learn to either be passive or to bully. I am afraid, that “bullying” or abuse is far too common in families. I still consider members of my family the scariest bullies to this day. *Hugs* and I commend you for coming forward about and pushing me to be all the more honest.
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