I wouldn’t let you see the way the knife twisted inside me
when you and your friends mooed
as I walked down the hall
because my last name was Cowan
and you thought you were clever.
Or when you told everyone at school that my dad felt me up
because I made the mistake of explaining to you once how he was blind, so he had to “see” with his hands.
Or when you smudged red paint all over my drawings in art
because they were chosen to hang at the front of the room
and you didn’t think I was cool enough
to have my pictures displayed
so you destroyed them
and then you stared me down,
and threatened to hurt me if I told.
You didn’t think you had already hurt me.
And if you did, it wasn’t your fault.
You didn’t know I would take it so hard,
even when you stole my clothes in gym
and stuck them in the toilet
and then gagged out loud whenever you saw me
for weeks afterward
and told everyone I smelled like shit.
You didn’t think that would cause me to run home in tears
and look at myself in the mirror
and cry some more
because I was starting to believe
the names you called me.
I was gross.
I was weird.
I was stupid.
I was ugly.
I didn’t deserve any better.
You’ll never know any of this because
you won’t recognize yourself in a word I’ve said.
You didn’t think you were a bully.
You didn’t think you hurt me.
You didn’t think.
The Secret
by Heather Brewer
I looked over the page again, my eyes flitting from this word to that, trying to fight the tears from coming. Tears made them laugh. Tears gave them those knowing, smug smiles that said that they had me right where they wanted me. So I didn’t give in, didn’t cry. But my heart ached, and all I wanted to do was to shrivel up inside of myself and disappear.
It was my senior year. What’s more, it was the last week of high school. I was so close to being free of the torment, free of the teasing, free of the abuse. But just as I was beginning to enjoy the idea of not seeing my fellow classmates every day, the senior edition school newspaper had come out. It was tradition back then (I’m not sure how it is now) that the graduating class’s student council members get together and “gift” each graduate with something imaginary that would remind all of us of that person’s personality. A girl I knew was in drama club and had spoken at great length about studying law, so they gifted her with a guest shot on a show called L.A. Law. On the surface, the entire concept was only mildly annoying and at some times amusing.
Only when I got to my gift, I wasn’t amused at all. I also wasn’t surprised.
The first time I remember being bullied, I was in kindergarten. This rotten little boy named Greg pulled my hair as I raced down the slide on the playground. Three years later, Greg would put a tack on my chair. It stung a little when the metal pierced my skin, but what stung worse was when everyone laughed and pointed and when they each would take turns on a daily basis trying to trick me once again into sitting on a tack. I’m proud to say they never got me again. Not after almost twenty tries. But what they did do was send me a very clear message: “You are not wanted here. You are not one of us. You are different, and therefore must be punished.”
And I was different. I dressed weird. I read books all the time. I wrote stories about faraway places. And I came from a family with a notorious history in that small town. My family had suffered the ill fate of losing five homes to house fires over a period of seven years. Everyone knew my name. I was the freak with the fires. I didn’t belong. That message was crystal clear.
It was a message that would be repeated throughout my entire grade-school experience, when I would do my best to stay silent in class or on the bus. I’d hide out in the library when I could. But nothing I did prevented the name-calling, the hair pulling, the creative yet horrifying prank of convincing me that a boy liked me. When I finally agreed to go out with him, everyone laughed. The only funny part of that story is that his name was also Greg. Apparently, I’m doomed to be tormented by the Gregs of the world.
When I entered high school, things lightened up for a short period. Maybe it was because my bullies were but small fish in a much bigger pond with much bigger fish. Maybe it was something else. I’ll never know. But that message needed to be driven home by the end of my freshman year, so it came in the form of a scribbled insult on my notebook in US History. Lesbo, it read. Because apparently, a certain popular boy by the name of Jesse (you thought I was going to say Greg, right?) had decided that because I had actually become close friends with a girl, we must be lesbians. I wasn’t at all offended by being called a lesbian, but the notion that I was being deemed a lesbian by a homophobic idiot who couldn’t even spell the word floored me. I told the teacher, who’s now the principal there, and he chuckled, and I was horrified by his acceptance of such blatant hatred. The class laughed. I spoke with the school’s counselor about it and he laughed it off, too, and told me that things like this build character.
He was wrong.
I had thoughts of suicide all through high school.
I imagined removing myself from the pain and from the horrible people around me. It sounded peaceful. It sounded like a plan. After all, no one cared about me. No one would even notice that I was gone, right? But then I realized that, in the end, they would win. And I would be the one helping them win. They’d go to my funeral and say things like “She was such a nice girl” and “I wish we had gotten to know each other better.” They’d shed tears over their fear of their own mortality and swear that they were tears for me. And a month later, no one would remember my name. Suicide was not the answer, and for many, many years, I wouldn’t know what the answer was. I found it, eventually, in surrounding myself with a family and friends who love and appreciate me, in the therapeutic effect of writing, and in the success of my career. I realized that I am so much more than those insecure bullies ever deemed me to be. I’m special, and weird, and wonderful, all rolled into one. And I always have been. I think on some level, they knew that, and it frightened them. Maybe because deep down, they knew that they weren’t.
Granted, not every thought of suicide was because of the Gregs or Jesse or any of the rest of the kids who picked on me. Some of it was because of stuff I was dealing with at home. Mostly, the house fires.
One would think that one’s classmates would feel a smidge of empathy over something so tragic happening to a girl once, let alone five times. But no. Many of the daily comments were about that as well. And when I say daily, I mean daily. My average daily routine was this:
Get on the bus and see who’s in the back—if the usual bullies hitched a ride to school, I could sit back there. Otherwise, it was up by the bus driver, so I could pretend not to hear their taunts.