A bullying victim’s confession

I don't need your tears. I've shed more than a few of my own. I shed them two years ago, when I wrote:

I can’t bear it any longer. The pain, the loneliness. That feeling crawls up on me and chokes me, its fingers pressed around my throat. I hate it… I have nothing. No one at school gives a damn about me. I tell myself to stop feeling sorry for myself, but when that bell for lunch rings, I wonder what I will do. 

I shed them just a few minutes ago while reading this excerpt, the impetus for this piece.

I don't always cry, though. 

I didn't cry when I sat by myself lunch after lunch, invisible but for sneer and scorn. I didn't cry when my friends stabbed me in the back, one by one. I cried later, at night, alone, convinced no one cared about my existence.

But listen, I don't need your tears. I learned to stop crying, to stop pitying myself. I would like to say I have come a long way since my former vulnerability and weakness, but I also have by no means forgotten, for the scars of childhood are only built over, broken bricks melded together.

No, I still remember, but it’s with a changed perspective. I do not write this in a plea for sympathy, nor in a rage of hatred and revenge. I am simply going to retrace my steps from misery to today.

Hopefully, then I’ll understand.

I SAT ALONE ON THE SWINGSET, dragging my skinny legs in the tanbark under the bright, piercing sun. I was in second grade, and I attended a small, private elementary school. Upon hearing the sound of footsteps, I looked up with hopeful glee; perhaps someone had noticed me.

To my surprise and content, three “popular” girls strutted their way over to me, and one offered to push me on the swings. I willingly agreed. Higher and higher I flew, so high that I almost didn’t realize when I had been deliberately pushed off the slippery seat, landing on my bottom in a pile of muddled tanbark.

Voices of mocking derision echoed around me as I drowsily rubbed my eyes open. All I could remember was a dull ache in my back as I struggled to get back on my feet. The vision was blurry because of the tears that slowly streamed down my face, but the pointing and the laughing was undoubtedly clear.

I never really understood what I had done to cause that incident. Maybe I was too eager, or perhaps it was my short bob-cut that offended the others. My mom insisted that I cut my hair that way because it looked “too adorable.” Tell that to the them, I thought.

Once, I remember walking to the girls’ bathroom in second grade, when another girl promptly reminded me, “Shouldn’t you be going to the boys’ bathroom?” After that I resolved to never cut my hair again, and I lived up to that pact all the way until seventh grade. I did not understand until then how powerful words could be. If one comment changed my behavior for five years, perhaps we should choose our words carefully.

The bullying continued throughout elementary school. I remember crying at night, fearing the morning when I would have to go back to that wretched place, and face those wretched people. If it wasn’t apparent enough, one girl declared to my face, “Nobody likes you. I’m sorry, but it’s true.” 

It was then that I realized I needed a change. My bubbly, outgoing personality did not fit well with the socially isolated 30 kids in my grade, or at least that was what I told my parents when I gently requested to switch schools.

I ENTERED REDWOOD MIDDLE SCHOOL with surprising optimism. I was determined to  start clean. But the world of the public school system was so new to me. Sixth grade girls pranced around wearing short skirts and tight shirts, fighting over boys and gossiping about the latest couples.

Desperate to fit in and avoid the judgment I had suffered in elementary school, I exchanged my overworn uniforms for new clothes, all picked out by my mother. Big mistake. The next day, the scrutinizing eyes of the members of the popular crowd scornfully stared at me. I felt like I was auditioning for a play, my every move, every feature examined by those who would decide my social fate. I let their opinions consume me, which was my biggest flaw. 

When changing my appearance was not enough, I decided to make a Facebook account, rather counterintuitive in retrospect. Like any excited first-time Facebook user, I started to post silly statuses, not expecting the comments I would receive.

At the beginning of the holiday break, I posted a status that read

 “I’m going to die of boredness.”

“YAY!” someone commented.

“Well you know what, I’m still alive,” I replied, trying to defend myself.

“NOOOOO.”

It was the first time someone had ever wished I was dead, and the words etched themselves into my brain. Even if I were to remove them, they still remain to this day untouched on the Internet, exactly as they were.

 The next day, the same person posted on my wall “I’m sorry for being mean to you … PS: my dad forced me to do this.” My only response was “lol.” What else could I say?

Other comments followed. “Ugh, I hate you.” “Just go to your Indian school where you belong.” Fed up, I temporarily disabled my Facebook account, my last post being “Actually I’m going to cancel my fb account. After all, everyone hates me on it.”

SEVENTH GRADE passed by uneventfully. I had situated myself into a group of friends, and felt for the most part, accepted, but not for long.

Gradually, throughout the course of eighth grade, I realized that the group seemed to avoid me. Whenever I proposed hanging out, they made up excuses to get out of it, except for when I offered to host a gathering at my house, or when I told funny jokes for them to laugh at. In effect, the friendships were one-sided.

One by one, they started to turn their backs on me. The girl who had been by best friend started to drift away, without me even realizing it. When she neglected to invite me to her birthday party the following year, I knew it was over for good.

One day in the beginning of freshman year, my last close friend suddenly stopped talking to me, leaving me no explanation, not even a quarrel to precede it. I lay in my bed struggling to figure out what was wrong with me, what I had done wrong. Sleep didn’t come easily for weeks. 

Those feelings of confusion eventually morphed into anger and frustration. I felt like a used tissue, thrown away when they were done with me. Any time I tried to approach them and apologize for whatever I had done, they deliberately got up and left.

One that excludes is cowardly, but at the same time, ingenious. All you have to do is turn the other direction and let the victim blame themselves for it. And the best part is, it comes at little moral cost. “I didn’t push her, I didn’t insult her, I just stopped talking to her. No. big. deal.” 

Although friendless, I wore a mask upon my face to hide my loneliness, and produced a fake smile to those who even bothered to talk to me.

I approached a group of people my freshman year during lunch one day and sat a mere two feet away. Not one person noticed me or even said hello. I ate lunch alone, and it wasn’t the first time. I somehow acquired a cloak of invisibility, but unlike Harry Potter, had no control over when to take it off. 

As an extrovert forced to be mute, I became overcome with fear, fear that no one would ever notice me, fear that I would lose my identity. It was these feelings that drove me to write that note in my diary. It came to a point that I feared my own birthday, that no one would remember.

A SELECT FEW INDIVIDUALS made all the difference in my life at the end of freshman year and the beginning of my sophomore year. They reached down into the hole I had dug myself, and pulled me out by looking past superficial barriers of appearance and social status, and appreciating me for who I am. 

Slowly but surely, I began to take off the mask more often, and let people see the real me. In doing so, I rediscovered my identity, my passions, my values and realized that there is more to me than the insults and comments claimed there was.

And soon, I stopped crying all together. 

Yet after all the obstacles I had to face to get to where I am now, I would not take any of it back. If it were not for the disparaging insults, I would have continued to change myself to fit the molds and expectations of others. If it were not for my “friends” who abandoned me, I would never have understood that true friendship stems from a deeper appreciation of each other’s values and ideas.

But most importantly, I learned to stop caring, to stop valuing the opinions of others over my own. 

 To this day, I don’t blame the people who caused me suffering. They are not bad people, they are just part of a bad culture. We are all reckless teenagers who grow up thinking that the socially acceptable way to act is to follow the pack and ostracize those who do not.

Frankly, changing this attitude is a matter of time, but it was well worth the wait. People can either accept me or judge, but either way, no one can hurt me now.