I can still picture it like it was yesterday.
I was in 10th grade, walking down the hallway towards that room in the west wing of the high school. It was the walk that I dreaded each and every day because I knew they would most likely be there.
I don’t talk about them very often and certainly try my best after all these years not to think about them, but every once in a while, those memories come flooding back and cast a shadow of darkness over me.
I was 15 years old. The room was my 4th-period study hall and they were my tormentors. My own personal high school bullies.
I can still see their faces, hear their voices, remember all the insults and the threats.
I remember the feeling of wishing I could be anywhere but in that room on that day.
I remember thinking that even death would be better than this. That’s right, this is the only time in my life that I can ever recall having even the slightest thought of suicide.
I can remember faking illness so that I could seek refuge in the nurse’s office.
I can remember begging for a pass to the library so that I wouldn’t have to walk through that study hall door.
Unfortunately, most days I was not so lucky. I did my best to sit as far away from them as I could, but voices carry, and a couple of rows of desks couldn’t shield me from their hurtful comments.
You see, in high school, I was the perfect target for bullies.
I was smart, quiet, short, looked very young for my age and had bright rosy cheeks most days that would make Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer envious.
They may as well just have been bullseyes because that was often the first thing they would focus on.
“What’s wrong with your face?”
“Why are you all red?”
“You look deformed…ugly”.
Often, I would just lie there with my head on my desk pretending not to listen, but they persisted and eventually I would get up the nerve to tell them to leave me alone.
“Don’t tell me what to do!!” she would shout (yes, my main tormentor was a 16-year-old girl named Kathy).
“You better watch out; I’m going to get my boyfriend to kick your ass after school, you little prick!!”
This was my daily life, my daily routine for almost the entirety of my sophomore year.
Kathy’s boyfriend was a badass druggy that was rumored to walk around school (the days he wasn’t suspended, anyways) with a knife and always a bad attitude so those threats were pretty scary to a naive 15-year-old kid.
I can remember making sure I always walked home with my sisters or some neighborhood friends for a little added comfort. On the days that I couldn’t, I’d often remain after school until I felt the “coast was clear”.
I remember all the nights sitting in my upstairs bedroom asking God why he made me so ugly, so small, so weak.
I remember all those mornings waking up with tears in my young eyes because I didn’t want to face another day of that torture, another day of insults, of feeling worthless.
I remember making an appointment with the dermatologist and practically begging him to find some magic formula that will drain the red from my cheeks and make me “normal” like everyone else.
I remember sneaking into my older sister’s room and borrowing some of her makeup to try and cover up my “deformity”.
I remember and I look back at that 15-year-old boy and I say thank god that all happened in 1985 and not 2020.
In today’s society, there is still no lack of bullies, but they have so many more tools at their disposal. Text Messaging, Email, Social Media. I can only imagine what that 15-year-old version of me would have been subjected to and I wonder if he would have survived.
I wonder if those fleeting thoughts of suicide would have become stronger, more than just mere thoughts.
I wonder and I weep, not for me, but for all the kids today that are faced with similar situations, that feel trapped with no way out. Kids that fear walking out their front door, logging onto the computer or looking down at their smartphone.
I wish I could just reach out and hug them and tell them it’s going to be OK; you’re going to get through this. Things get better. Life goes on.
But I also wonder what my life would have been like if those experiences had never happened if I was just a “normal” kid.
Would I have gotten better grades, had the confidence to try out for the school hockey team or maybe even gotten a date with that pretty girl in English class that I had the huge crush on?
I wonder how much of my adult life has been affected by my past. If all those times I was afraid to take a risk or walk away from a bad situation was all somehow related to these experiences.
I wonder….
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Previously Published on Medium
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