As a child I never got bullied. I got teased, tormented and ostracized.
Large groups of kids would surround me and pick on me and tell me that they would
kick the crap out of me after school. Once, a girl in my class opened to door
to the change room while I was half naked so that the boys could see me.
Another time this girl who supposedly had a part-time job as a wrestler
followed me to the bus as I went home and smacked me on the head as I got on.
For years some guy used to crank call my house whenever I
got home and say obscene things to me. We thought he must have known me because
when I wasn’t home he wouldn’t call. Then there were rumors about guys from my
school who had been arrested because they had gotten caught stealing or something
like that and the calls stopped. When they came back, so did the calls.
I didn’t go to dances or have anybody to talk to at lunch
except for one or two close friends who were quick to turn their backs on me
when they realized that it was causing damage to their reputations to hang
around with me. Some days it was really hard being alone. Usually I just threw
my head in a book and read, read, read. Not to escape but for something to do.
I joined clubs at school but everybody seemed to belong and
I never really did. I didn’t know what it was like to go to parties or
experience that dreaded peer pressure. I watched a lot of TV and Nancy Reagan
kept telling kids to say no to drugs and there were all kinds of warnings about
condoms and so on. I kept waiting to put those teachings into practice but
there were never any opportunities. It’s not that I was an overly good kid. It’s
just that nobody bothered.
Then I started to feel like there was something wrong with
me. Everybody had boyfriends and went out on dates and the one guy I met at art
camp at 12, going on 13, went to school in Ottawa. Technically he was my
boyfriend but even though we never broke up we never saw each other and I can’t
remember more than two or three letters. We did go out once or twice when he
came back but it was really nothing worth remembering. All I remember the first
time he insisted on kissing me was saying “great, now that we have gotten that
out of the way, can we get on with the rest of the relationship” and him
laughing like I was a silly little girl and saying that no, we were supposed to
keep kissing. He was 16 and back then seemed so much older.
Truth be told, I never felt all that attracted to anybody in
any sort of sexual way until my early 20s but felt like I should have been
because everybody else seemed to be. So I did stuff that I shouldn’t have
because I was trying to be normal and wanted to do more than fit in. I wanted
to be the kind of cool that didn’t care. Inside I called myself a whore and
kept waiting for somebody else to call me that but nobody ever did.
According to everybody else I always got the hottest,
coolest guy in school but I never noticed that. As soon as I would end up in a
relationship I would try to make it THE relationship, knowing that it wasn’t. I
tried to play house because I wanted things to be normal. But I always knew
they weren’t.
Have I ever been in love? Absolutely! I fell in love
completely when I picked up my baby girl and she, still and infant, patted my
back as I hugged her. That was the first time I felt anything close to the sort
of zing that you hear about and read about and see in movies.
But have I ever been bullied? Where I come from you don’t
get bullied. You get persecuted. My people have been hated for years and the
whole world is usually trying to get us. We are fighters and each time the mob
of she-women descended on me in the school halls and outside, I fought back. I
never just took it. One time I looked up and actually saw a teacher full body
on top of one of them holding her off to try and break up the fight.
Sure my knees shook but they shook after. They still shake
after. But during a fight, I fight. I fight with fists and feet and knees and
words. Sometimes I fight thin air because of fear and pure adrenaline and then
I get in trouble. Because now I am fighting nobody or people who don’t deserve
it. I’m still going. Liking the
Engergizer Bunny I’m still going.
Then I crumble. This morning I woke up at 2 a.m. because I
dreamt that my house was on fire. We weren’t in our actual house but it felt like
some sort of home of mine, one that was new to me but mine, almost like the way
you feel when you go stay at your parents place after you have already settled
into a family of your own. My husband was in a room and he had that guilty look
on his face that he has when he comes in after a shmig. He never smokes inside
but I smelled smoke and asked him if he started smoking inside now and we had a
little moment. I pinched his nose and was about to ruffle his hair and kiss him
but looked up and saw smoke coming through the ceiling. We freaked and he ran
to take care of it. I ran to get my stacks of papers and computer.
It’s not that I didn’t care about the kids. I just knew we
had time and that they would be safe but the papers I had to protect: our passports;
our identity; then my taxes and all the business stuff, and then my laptop and
camera. I could smell the smoke. I didn’t think you could smell smoke in a
dream. I woke up and knew it was a dream, only peripherally double checking
there was no actual smoke anywhere.
In the dream I remember starting to feel like I’m choking so
I dropped everything and went looking for the kids. It felt good to drop everything
and not care about anything except for the kids. It always feels good to do
that.
Right away I google the meaning of a house burning down in
your dream and guess what I get: it means that I feel like my external world is
crumbling. How true. For the first time in my life, I had found a home to call
a home. Everything felt right and now it doesn’t. Everything I was doing was for
something and now that something has been taken away and I’m stuck with all the
stuff I was doing and in the mean time there are people out there who think I
care. I don’t care but now I am obligated.
So now I am angry. I need a way out and a way to escape and
it feels like the world is burning down in a way that it never has before and
do you know why? Because of all the things that somebody could say to me to
hurt me there is really only one little phrase that I can’t seem to let go:
nobody likes you. You are unprofessional and nobody wants to deal with you
anymore.
Three people have said this to me lately. Why? I know their
reasons and who (or what) they are. I know that they are doing this to try and
intimidate me and to control me and because they know they can’t. I know. But I
still feel raw. I hate them for making me feel this way and the stress, at my
age, is showing my age. It is coming out in physical manifestations and for
that I hate them more. Because then I get scared. I get scared that I won’t be
there for people who do matter; who do care; WHO DO LIKE ME.
But my, this is a personal letter to be posting in such a
public forum and let me tell you why: because I am not a victim of bullying.
Bullies need victims like fire needs oxygen. I am not a victim. I am your nemesis.
Now, you go worry about me because I will not let my world go down in smoke.
