No longer “new girl.”
“Stuck-up Bitch” is what they called me.
They even created a song to go with it—one that made liberal use of my new name, accompanied by lots of hair tossing.
But despite the lyrics professing that I thought I was “sooo bitchin’,” I’m here to say I felt anything but.
I may have lived in the biggest house in the neighborhood, I may have had long hair and nice clothes, but all of that was just a Band-Aid meant to cover the truth.
My life was a mess.
I was the poster child for low self-esteem.
And despite the big house, I soon would be poor.
With parents on the verge of divorce, a mom struggling to deal with the demise of everything she’d known for the past twenty years, and a dad who, on the rare occasions he chose to come home, made it a point to either berate me or ignore me, my entire world was collapsing to the point where my home life and my school life became mirrors of each other. Making it impossible to determine which was more miserable.
The stomachaches were getting so bad I started coming home early, until one day, feeling particularly overwhelmed by it all, I mentioned the bullying, the name that they called me, only to be told to ignore it. If I ignored it they’d soon move on to something else.
But ignoring it didn’t work. If anything it just made them sing louder. So I kept quiet. Didn’t mention it again.
Mostly because I felt ashamed.
When an entire group of kids decides to reject you at first sight, without talking to you or getting to know you, without giving you a chance to prove yourself—it does more than just hurt, it makes you question your entire being, your self-worth.
Those were the days when nobody spoke about bullying. It was something boys did. Primal. Survival of the fittest. Perfectly normal. Kids will be kids. Easily handled with a shrug, a look the other way, a mumbled comment about soon growing out of it and moving on to better things.
And certainly no one acknowledged that girls were capable of it. Capable of crafting a systematic form of social terrorism that consisted of snide looks, passed notes, and whispered insults when adults and teachers were present—progressing when they weren’t to outright lies, rumors, physical aggression, and, in my case, a horrible song I couldn’t escape.
They sang it on the bus. Sang it during recess, and again during lunch. Sang it when they passed by my house after school, and on weekends, too. After a while they even grew bold enough to sing it right out in the open, in front of my teacher, who shrugged, looked the other way, pretended not to hear.
By eighth grade it was over.
After five solid years, it seemed they’d finally grown bored and moved on. But while the taunting may have ended, the effects lingered for much longer than I care to admit. And I always swore that if I ever got published, I’d write a book about a girl who experiences something similar in the hope that my experience might help someone else. That book turned out to be my second novel, Art Geeks and Prom Queens.
And though it seems like this story is over, there’s still one last bit left to tell. About a year ago, completely out of the blue, one of my bullies sent me an email.
She wanted to apologize, to tell me how horrible she felt for the way she’d chosen to treat me back then. Having kids of her own, she could hardly believe what she’d done. It was the sort of thing she’d never tolerate from them. And though she tried, she couldn’t really answer the why. I was new, had long hair, had a big house—at the time, it seemed like enough.
When I read her message, I was shocked by how much I still cared. I’d come a long way since those days, was enjoying a life I’d worked very hard to create. I took my time with it, chose to revisit it over the course of several days. Determined to deal with the swarm of long-buried emotions that came rushing back, emotions I sought to get a handle on before I hit reply.
And in my reply I forgave her.
I forgave her because doing so freed me from the burden of that particular past.
I forgave her because I had no good reason not to.
It takes a whole lot of courage to own up to something like that, and when her former partner in crime also emailed an apology, I forgave her as well.
And after all of that, this is what I want to leave you with:
If you’re being bullied—speak up! You do not have to suffer in silence. Tell an adult, a relative, a friend, someone you can trust to help you deal with it.
If you are the bully—stop it! Just stop it. Right now.
Building yourself up at someone else’s expense is one of the lowliest acts you can ever commit.
There is no excuse.
It is never okay to engage in that way.
And if bullying is something you’ve done in your past, then keep in mind that it’s never too late to apologize—no matter how many decades have passed. I can say from experience that the sentiment goes a very long way.
Choose kindness.
Be well.
Peace. Joy. Love.
Now and Then
by Aprilynne Pike
“Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”
It was a sound I dreaded. Not that I was ever in the fight, but I hated the sight of kids my age beating on each other. I couldn’t imagine ever hitting anyone once, much less over and over the way I saw some fights proceed. I despise violence. Even now I have trouble watching realistic violence in movies. So throughout my younger years, when the age-old chant broke out at school, you could expect me to be the one heading not toward the crowd but for the nearest classroom to tell the teacher. And I don’t feel an ounce of shame over that.
On the other hand, verbal torment has always been a part of my life. I could hardly have avoided it; I was a poster child for nerdiness. I got glasses in kindergarten—big, thick Coke-bottle glasses with those terrible plastic eighties frames—loved to wear my hair in two braids, made friends with teachers more easily than with my peers, and was a moony, easily distracted little thing. I was teased for everything. My homemade clothes, which I loved. The book that was always in my face, which I now consider a wise investment in my future career! In middle school I was teased and shunned for being a lesbian—even though I’m not. And, like most girls, I went through the cycle of being teased both for not having breasts and, later, for having them. (I always had to scratch my head at that.)
But through all of that, I always had the thought: At least no one’s beating me up. It was my greatest fear.
I remember looking forward to turning eighteen, moving out, and going to college because, of course, bullying stops once you get out of high school.
Everyone take a moment to laugh with me.
Turns out, bullies don’t go away. They just change. Instead of kids who are physically bigger than you wanting your lunch money, you have arrogant jerks who think they’re smarter than you or better than you, who want your job or your life or just to make themselves feel bigger by making you feel small. And you know what? They still don’t like that I’m a nerd. Some things never change.
There aren’t nearly as many physical bullies once you’re an adult—that is true. You don’t often hear about fistfights at the office or stories of everyone gathering in a circle at the grocery store and shoving the person in the middle around, like kids used to do on the playground.
But sometimes I think I’d rather have someone just punch me in the face. Not only would it be over quickly but it would be easy to point my finger and say, “Hey! That person is bullying me!” (And the ability to get the law on my side wouldn’t hurt, either.) Over the years, I’ve had a friend try to undermine my career, a religious leader with a strange need to prove how important he was, even a coworker who went to rather extreme lengths to let the world know how much she hated me.
And you know what’s crazy? If I were to confront any of these people and tell them I didn’t appreciate being bullied, I suspect they would all honestly deny that they were being bullies at all. Despite
their exhibiting all the classic signs and tactics of bullies, I don’t think any of these people are aware of what they’re doing.
Adult bullying can be so subtle. But when it happens, I know my first reaction is to curl into myself and slouch by and escape as soon as possible, just like I did when I was a kid. I don’t. I’ve learned some skills since I was ten. But on the inside, I feel the same—the same bewilderment, the same hurt. Why would someone treat me this way? That part hasn’t changed in twenty years. I don’t know that it ever changes.
I picked up my daughter from school the other day and she reported with wide eyes that one of her friends confided in her that she was afraid to walk home because a bully would be waiting to beat her up. My daughter was understandably very concerned—and fortunately, the incident did not actually end up happening. Still, after telling her that she should let a teacher know if her friend ever told her something like that again (I have no problem being the narc), I started to think about the bullying my daughter will surely face in the upcoming years.
She’s already one of those “smart kids,” having skipped a grade. Strike one. She wears glasses just like I did (though, I admit, hers are much thinner and cuter than mine ever were). Strike two. And guess who makes the skirts she loves to wear to school? My mother; the same woman who made my clothes in any pattern and color I wanted when I was little. Strike three. There will be teasing, there will be torment, and I suspect there will be nights of her crying on my lap the same way I did with my mom.
I hope she gets through it. I see a boldness in her that I never had, and that gives me hope. But you know what I hope most of all? That I can teach her to never stoop to their level. To never become a bully herself—even as an adult. I want her to be aware of when she is hurting other people. Because simply teaching her not to punch her classmates isn’t enough. I want to teach her to care and be tolerant. Because if you don’t learn that as a kid, you have a whole lifetime for that bullying streak to come to the surface.
Because it doesn’t end with high school. But maybe it can end with us.
Strangers on a Street
by Diana Rodriguez Wallach
A couple of years ago, while I was planning my wedding, I came face-to-face with the girl who destroyed my life in sixth grade. She stopped me on the street, sweet as candy, and asked how I was doing. She cooed over my engagement ring, inquired about where I was working, and asked how my parents were doing. Everything was smiles and hugs; she was thrilled to have “run into me.”
I’d like to tell you that I was happy to see her, too, that I was delighted she was doing great at her job, and that I was genuinely sincere when I wished her well with her own wedding plans. I know that was what I was supposed to be feeling. (It was what I said, after all. You know, the “right” thing, the “polite” thing.) But I didn’t mean a word of it. A little piece of me still hopes her hair falls out one day.
You see, this girl wasn’t just a mean girl. She wasn’t a queen bee or a Lindsay Lohan stereotype.
She was my best friend. My first friend in the entire world.
Until she dumped me.
We’d been best friends since second grade, five years (which, in adolescent years, is like five hundred), and I never saw the end coming. There was no big fight, no betrayal, no boy we were competing for, or any academic or athletic rivalries on the line.
One day we were best friends, spending our half day from school roller-skating in my basement (yes, we did that back then). The next day she was calling me on the phone telling me that she didn’t want to be my best friend anymore. The conversation lasted only seconds, and she never gave a reason. (Though, when you’re being dumped, is there ever a rationale that you’ll accept?)
Our friendship simply ended. And if that were the extent of what happened, I probably would have been devastated at the loss of her friendship, but I wouldn’t be writing this essay.
Unfortunately, Amanda’s* decision to cut me from her life ultimately set a chain of events in motion that ended with our “friends,” all beautiful, popular cheerleaders (yes, I was part of that group), launching a full-scale attack.
It lasted a week. Five school days.
That might not seem like a long time, but when you’re being chased from class to class by a mob of powerful girls screaming “Bitch! Skank! Loser!” loud enough for your four hundred classmates to hear, you can feel like you’re in a time-lapse horror movie.
And the worst part was I suffered in silence, utter isolation. I didn’t tell my parents. I didn’t tell my sister. I obviously didn’t have any friends to talk to about the situation. I didn’t even write it in my diary. It was as if the situation was too embarrassing, too painful, even to admit to myself in writing, so instead a four-month gap exists in my journal from that year.
Somehow I even managed to be publicly stoned every forty-one minutes, between every class period, without a single teacher noticing.
Well, wait, that isn’t entirely true.
Around day five, after successfully ignoring these girls, never sputtering a word in defense or shedding a tear in their presence, I finally broke. I couldn’t breathe, my chest was cracking from the pressure of their insults, and I entered my math class in sobs.
My teacher pulled me into the hall, demanding to know the problem, and while I didn’t want to rat (is there anything worse a twelve-year-old can do?), I needed to talk. So I confessed what I was going through, tears streaking my cheeks, nose running, until the teacher cut me off, a finger pointed in my face. “Diana, pull yourself together!” she snapped, then marched me back into her classroom.
Eventually, I found new friends, a new lunch table to sit at, and new bonds that have lasted to this day. Three of the bridesmaids at my wedding were friends I’ve had since middle or high school.
But the scars of that week have remained, and I don’t say this lightly.
As an adult, I can tell you that my relationships with women have been affected by that sixth-grade experience. As recently as a couple of years ago, I realized that I still get nervous when a friend doesn’t call me back (maybe she’s mad at me?) or when we heatedly disagree on social/political/family issues (what if we stop being friends over this?). It took me a while to identify where these extreme worries were coming from, why that sick pit in my stomach always jumped to the worst conclusion to even the most minor negative occurrence between me and a female friend.
And it is because when I was twelve years old, that was exactly what happened.
I lost my best friend over nothing. I didn’t do anything to her, and there was nothing I could have done to prevent it—other than being an entirely different person, because it wasn’t an action of mine she was rejecting, it was me. She moved on to a “cooler” best friend. We never spoke again.
Somehow, until the day we graduated, we managed to be on the same sports teams, walk through the same halls, go to the same dances, and attend some of the same classes, and never share a word, never let our eyes meet. We were strangers; those five years of our lives never happened, like deleted memories. I was easily forgettable.
And then I saw her on the street. I was actually writing a book about bullying at the time (a book I’m still working on), and the memories of that ordeal were so fresh it was as if I had drawn her to me with my writing. I saw her twice more after that in the span of six months. She bought a house seven blocks from mine. Her husband joined my gym.
And I’d like to say that the universe brought her to me to learn some big lesson, but if that’s true, I’m not sure I absorbed it. Each time I saw her, I didn’t want to speak to her, I didn’t miraculously forget everything that happened, and I wasn’t happy to reminisce about the good ol’ days. But still I smiled, I nodded, I acted interested. That could not have been the lesson: to be inauthentic? But I also doubt the lesson was that I should have confronted her on the street with something that happened twenty years ago, either.
Maybe the lesson was to confront the fact tha
t there is a name for what I went through at that time, a name I never used until now. I was bullied. And I survived it.
You might hate it when adults tell you this, but with two decades separating me from this experience, I can honestly say that the best revenge really is living well. I’m thrilled to go to class reunions now, because I know I’m not the same mousy person I was back then. I’m proud of who I turned out to be, because of and in spite of everything that happened to me growing up. Plus, I wrote a book about the ordeal, so maybe authors really do need to suffer for their art, maybe that’s why I so vividly remember what it was like to be a teenager, and maybe that’s why I write for young adults now.
So, to the teens who are reading this and are currently being bullied, I say: you will get through it, you will not forget it, it is a big deal, but hey, maybe one day you can turn it into a great novel. That’ll show ’em.
* Names have been changed. Obviously. But I’m sure if “Amanda” were ever to read this, she’d know this essay is about her . . .
Objects in Mirror Are More Complex Than They Appear
by Lauren Oliver
I have a confession to make: I was not bullied in high school. I was not harassed, insulted, humiliated, or ostracized.
At various times, I was, however, the victim of rumors: there was the time when I was a sophomore and I hooked up with a popular junior in front of forty or so of my classmates on a dare; afterward, people shot me dirty looks for weeks, and whispers, snake hisses, followed me down the halls.
Then there was the time as a senior that photos of an (ahem) intimate nature made it into the hands of some sophomore boys and managed to circulate throughout almost the entire class before I was able to retrieve them.
But these were blips, minor traumas—not the seismic, permanent, and isolating ruptures so many teens experience during their high school years. For the most part, things were easy for me. I went to parties. I threw parties. I had friends, had boyfriends (many of them older), and if anything, was probably feared more than fearful: I wasn’t always very nice, I am ashamed to say.
Dear Bully Page 13