cornerofmadness

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It all began in seventh grade. My school system had 7-12 in one building so there were six years to form cliques. The bullies hunted in packs and those packs were so frighteningly stereotypical: the in-girl/cheerleader types and the hot jocks ruling the school.

My family didn’t have a ton of money. I didn’t have the funds for the latest clothing fads or to go to the salons to get those fancy 1980’s hair styles. Combine that was a high IQ and glasses, and I was an instant target for the mean girls. By seventh grade I was 5’9”, taller than most of the boys, and seriously underweight, which made me just as much of a target for the ‘cool’ guys. I added fuel to the fire by reading comic books and fantasy, playing Dungeons and Dragons, playing in the marching band and always being the first hand up in class.

Over the next six years, I would start the day with nausea and anxiety, just thinking about what they’d do to me that day. I had to be put on GERD medications and the GI damage has lasted my entire life. Most of the bullying was emotional. They’d make up mocking songs and sayings about my hair and clothes. They’d steal my homework and destroy it. They stole my glasses and played ‘keep away.’ They stole my fan fiction and read it out loud to everyone and mocked it as well. They wrecked my locker, ruined my clothes in gym class, flung food on me in the cafeteria, shoved trashed into my saxophone, hit me and pulled my hair on the bus. They wrote nasty things in my year books and anything that I might need student signatures for, like student council, ended up covered in sexual slurs.

Naturally, I did make some friends, geeky kids like myself, but there really wasn’t safety in numbers. People knew what these kids did and looked the other way or blamed me and my friends for not acting/dressing ‘normal.’ By the time my junior year rolled around, I had seriously considered suicide on more than one occasion rather than face these people. I had a fairly geek coping mechanism to get me out of the worst of my depression. By my senior year, I was already looking ahead to college, to life without these people. I stopped listening to the bullies and I continued being me, even if it meant being a daily target or sitting home alone at the prom.

And that’s part of my motivation in answering this writer’s block, to say it does get better. It gets so much better. College was one of the best times of my entire life. I went to medical school after that, achieved those academic dreams.

Last year my twenty-fifth high school reunion rolled around. I didn’t have any plans on going. Those kids had made my life a living hell and they had left a lasting impression on me. I hear their voices in every self doubt that pops into my mind, every time I look in the mirror and I think I’m not pretty enough or whatever it is I think I need to be at that moment and am not. Their names and personalities were given to every villain or murder victim I wrote as a way of dealing with the residual emotions they left in their wake. I realized I harbored a lot of anger two and a half decades later.

Then I thought they would win if I didn’t go. They would have beaten me one last time. I took another look in that mirror and said I look darn good for 40-something, I’m a success and yes, damn it, I still read comic books and play dungeons and dragons every now and then and I’m not ashamed of it.

I went to my reunion, saw my geeky friends and then something extraordinary happened. The mean girls and boys talked to me like normal human beings. One of the guys talked to me for over an hour telling me I was the smartest person he has ever known and how much he admired my achievements. One of the worst of the mean girls told me she always hoped her daughters will be just like me and I’m standing there thinking to you even remember what you did to me? You want that for your kids or have you realized being cute and popular doesn’t count for that much once high school is over and people expect you to work for a living? Some of them still avoided me and my friends but you know what, I could have cared less. They lost their ability to hurt me long ago.

In the end, I got back in touch with some of my friends because I went. That said, I’m just as happy that none of the bullies wanted to be facebook friends because I’m still not ready for that. I’m happy enough with them not being in my life. Today as I wrote this I was watching Big Bang Theory where they were discussing bullying. Let’s face it Hollywood rarely does something like that well. What the boys of BBT described was too familiar and hurtful for me. I think this is also why I connected so easily with Willow on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I had my Cordelia and the Cordettes. I was left wondering last week after NCIS if Tony and his bullying and making amends was a direct result of the recent teen suicides related to bullying. I wonder if real bullies ever regret their actions. I think some do. I think others will be mean all their lives.

If it’s happening to you now, tell someone. Do something about it. Take it from someone who stood at the edge of the abyss and looked in, it’s not worth dying over. There are other better ways and there are people who will help. This was long and hard to write and in some ways I feel better getting it out in the open. It’s one more step away from the power they once had over me.