I’ve had many a shocking plot twist in my life.

I can’t believe how lucky I am that I got to live with my grandmother in a really nice neighborhood in Chicago after she had an unlucky fall–for six years before she died. I can’t believe I have a graduate degree with the highest possible grade on my master’s thesis after earning an underwhelming, crappy college GPA–and both are English degrees.

I still can’t believe that a crush who knew I liked him–a straight, athletic guy whom I told I felt ugly around because he was beautiful–was the one who said I was beautiful and ended up saving my life after a suicide attempt.

And being a TEDx speaker and published author with about a hundred articles and well over a hundred blogs–and a staff writer at PopMatters, the international web magazine? Damn.

But these stories don’t typically make me cry. This one can.

Now, here’s the thing: if I’ve learned anything about forgiveness, it’s that, to put it nicely, it’s a royal beeyotch-and-a-half.

I was bullied for my autism for the first eighteen years of my life. I dismissed my experience for years because, going to private schools, I was acutely aware that that kind of abuse was much worse in larger settings. So, I internalized a lot of people telling me I was too sensitive, too weird, too much of a problem for everyone else.

But I wasn’t.

In middle school, there was one kid who was meaner than the rest. When I came to that school, he stood out as a bully. I was different, more sensitive and more unusual, and he and everyone else sensed it. I can’t count the number of times he called me different slurs. He and another kid once pulled my pants down in the hallway. Apparently, they did that to lots of other boys, but I was the only one who cried.

By the end of middle school, this teen seemed like he was turning his life around. I remember a teacher commenting in class how his participation grade was “going through the roof.” He even got a special award at the end of the year for improvement during his time in middle school.

Shortly after we started high school together, he left that school. But a few years later, another teacher told me that this young man . . . was in prison.

Talk about a plot twist. Even though the teacher made it sound inevitable, I was shaken. I never found out why he went, but I realized that he had probably been traumatized–and likely raped and further abused while incarcerated.

I felt sympathy, even empathy, for someone who seemed like he would never stop calling me anti-gay slurs a few years before. I had known his home life wasn’t stable, but I realized he was actively in pain and likely treated horribly . . . too.

That doesn’t change the despair I felt as a kid, but a couple years later, I wondered if I could have done something–and remembered that that could have been me sent to prison at a young age. When I was little, I was violent towards others–including jumping on my parents when they were driving–and maybe I would still be if my family had not intervened.

And before I came to the school with that kid, there were two or three years when I was a bully, treating a couple other kids like crap because I wanted to fit in and distance myself from them. I mercilessly teased one kid about his Attention Deficit Disorder–which I have, too, as I know now–and walked away strutting while he was crying, and I teased another kid about his weight, another struggle I have. It can still be hard to forgive myself for that.

But I’ll never forget that feeling in my college dorm room in the fall of 2007 when I was overwhelmed with grief thinking about this bully–and had an urge to write a song. That night, I remember these words pouring out of me when I played five basic chords on my guitar:

“To a Prisoner”

You never beat me up with fists, only with words

And I suppose you had a reason why

I never thought I’d find the day when I’d write something like this song

But for all the times that I wanted to die

At least I had a home to come to

At least I had a family whenever I had tears to cry

And I’m sorry to hear how you ended up, in jail

But if it ever means you think you wanna die

I hope you never give up

And I hope you find some happiness to call your own

And I hope you pick up the pieces of your life

If only it meant you would find a home

Find a home

I remember coming home every day after school, all alone

After soccer, I suppose, you did the same

Far from the cushioned household that I became so proud of

Neither parent could ever accept any blame

I hope you never give up

And I hope you find some happiness to call your own

And I hope you pick up the pieces of your life

If only it meant you would find a home

Find a home

Find a home.

I remember crying at the end of the song when I recorded it on audiocassette. Writing a song for the biggest bully I had in middle school was a plot twist I never saw coming.

Today, I still sing that song at open mics once in a while. It matters to me that I got to that place of empathy, love, and–maybe–humility to write anything like it–because growing up I had trouble expressing empathy. Something must have opened the floodgates because writing that song made me feel something I needed to feel.

But forgiveness is still a royal beeyotch-and-a-half. There’s still pain from my childhood, trauma that doesn’t make sense. But it doesn’t have to. I can accept that I was treated like shit without focusing so much on past pain. This is very much a work in progress, but what that song reminds me is that, as cliche as it sounds, hurt people hurt people–people in pain inflict it on others–and that, at least in theory, everyone deserves empathy. That doesn’t excuse how he hurt me–or how I’ve hurt others–but it does make my pain a little easier to carry.

And in another plot twist, in 2010, a female friend said I was the first man outside of her family whom she ever felt safe telling that she was a survivor of sexual assault–and she soon dedicated a song to me on a mix CD, an India.Arie song called “He Heals Me.” I know that healing is a fiction we tell ourselves, but if that song is true, all I can say is, sometimes hurt people can heal people, too.

As for the bully I wrote that song for, I have no idea if he’s still in prison or even if he’s alive. I can accept that. But I hope that he–and each of us–never gives up.

—

I submitted this for a storytelling show with the theme “Plot Twist.” My story, significantly revised from earlier work, was not accepted, but I am proud of it, so I wanted to share it here.

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