Picking Up the Pieces

Bullying isn’t “easy.” It’s not something that should be dismissed. I’m glad to see there are people taking it more seriously. I was “too” everything. Too poor- I was on-and-off homeless between the ages of four and seven. Too tall- I was always tall for my age. Too thin- I was underweight most of my childhood since I got taller faster than i could gain weight. Too smart- I was capable of reading newspapers as a first grader. Too loud in elementary school. Too shy from middle school on when I hit puberty and it became much less able to easily get past the bullying and I grew anxious and realized “maybe if I become invisible and not noticed they’ll leave me alone.” My clothes were “ugly” and “wrong” because I was poor. I was always called ugly. The worst of it was my teeth. My teeth look off-white or maybe very slightly yellowish now but that’s a massive improvement that came only with a lot of so-called “cosmetic” dental work. I have a condition called fluorosis. For those who do not know what fluorosis is, it’s basically the beginnings of fluoride poisoning. Overexposure to fluoride as a small child makes your teeth grow in brown and misshapen. And what do parents and teachers like to tell kids in regards to the teeth? “If you don’t brush your teeth, they’ll turn brown and rotten.” People didn’t like my voice either.

It came in many forms. Mostly verbal and emotional torment. In middle and high school, cyberbullying. Harassing IMs from fake accounts. Nasty anonymous comments on my Livejournal. People never wanted to be at the same table as me or next to me on the bus. People would say “ew” whenever they saw me, a reference to the “bad hygiene” they thought I had because of my fluorosis. They’d steal my belongings and my homework. They’d mock me over my mom not having my car and for not having the same toys other kids had because my mom couldn’t afford them, and later on, over not having name brand clothes. They’d pelt me with balls in gym class. I wasn’t particularly coordinated in elementary and middle school so gym class was a nightmare.

I had a very tiny number of friends. And my bullies did everything they could to sabotage those. They would bully my friends for being kind to me. They would tell my friends they wouldn’t have any friends but me if they kept talking to me and that everyone would hate them too. They’d act friendly to some of my friends but say things like “you have to stop being friends with her or I won’t hang out with you and do X, Y and Z with you.” They would lie and tell my friends I was badmouthing them to try to make them angry at me.

Don’t let my smile fool you, even if I have hit a point post-dental treatment where I no longer fear smiling with my mouth open,the bullying has left me with a LOT of confidence issues. If I were to say I never struggle now as an adult, I’d be lying. Bullying has affected me in ways I still cannot put to words. Other than the very few friends I’ve had since childhood that stuck by me even when everyone else hated me, even though people gave them a hard time for being nice to me- I have an extremely difficult time trusting people. I overanalyze interactions, especially online, and withdraw if I pick up on even the slightest sign that something might be “wrong”. I need a lot more reassurance than people seem willing to give that I’m not being “annoying” or “hard to deal with” since I’ve heard my whole life that I was annoying and not someone people want around, that “too much of you is hazardous to the health,” whatever that even means. Hear that kind of stuff enough, you start to believe it, no matter how much you’re told to love yourself and that you must accept yourself first before others accept you.

On the other hand? I know certain things about how not to treat people. I know that taking part in direct, overt public bashing is a very messed up thing to do to a person. I very rarely do even “friendly insults” to friends, especially online- I know how easily they can affect someone who has dealt with those from bullies that used them to hurt and to make a person feel insignificant and worthless. I know that if I take a long time to reply to someone in messaging that I speak to regularly, they could still use reassurance. You know that you can endure a lot and you become a very mentally tough person in some ways- you have to be as a survivor. You learn to be understanding of a broad range of points of view and to get along with people very different from yourself. You end up with an eclectic range of friends.

In conclusion to what became a long essay- and sadly actually STILL the abridged version as I left a lot of the more graphic stuff out, to all those enduring bullying currently- it will become a thing of the past one day. Even if that day is far off. Even if you have to wait until graduation or even a few months past graduation, it will end, the ordeal. And if you encounter a toxic workplace echoing post bullying as I did once? You have more control in that situation than you did as a student. You gain much more control as an adult to not repeat what you’re suffering now. You’ll get through this, even though it is actual mental torture right now. And there are, or at least will at some future point be, people that care about you. Keep holding on. You matter.