What Hurts

Last week I attended my 20 Year High School Reunion.  It was an incredibly emotional event for many reasons.  Most of it was good.  I, myself, am very happy.  I have two beautiful kids, a wonderful husband and a promising career.  I’m at a place in my life where I don’t feel like I have to prove anything to anyone.  I can simply be happy because I am.  It’s a nice feeling.  Having said that, some of it was bittersweet.  Over the last 3 years I have received at least 6 apologies from women who wanted to let me know how sorry they were for having been mean to me in school.  Social media makes everyone a stone’s throw away.  Between that and the face to face at the reunion, I’ve had more than a few heart to hearts.

The interesting thing about being a well-adjusted adult is that if you say that you had a hard time in school, people look at you sideways, especially if you don’t have any glaringly obvious weaknesses that would have set you apart from others.   If you insist that your experience was a little more difficult that most people, you might actually hear “That’s a really hard time for everyone”.  I’ve heard that more than once.

There is the idea that to be bullied, that you must look different.  You must be weak.  You must cower and you must cry a lot.  I did very little of that.  I was bullied the worst in 7^th grade.  There is no way to describe it.  I couldn’t even pinpoint anything specific.  There was no single incident that seemed any worse than any other.  There was just day after day of teasing and laughing.  There were taunts in the hallways, cat calls, flying objects, being tripped, being spit at.  There were whole weeks that I never spoke to anyone else.  There were group projects in which I would simply work by myself because even the teacher had no idea how to get the kids to let me be part of their group.  There was shame that there must have been something horribly wrong with me.  I still sometimes wonder if there was.

8^th grade was different and although it wasn’t  great, I learned to be careful and the teasing was a lot less severe.  Mostly I was ignored.  When people did make fun of me, it was usually done quietly.  And it wasn’t so constant.  I had a few people to talk to. I think I even had people to eat lunch with.  I was very grateful to have a job every day after school because that gave me the feeling of a social life.

High school became more complicated.  I realized that being careful didn’t always result in people leaving you alone.  I got a reputation from a party I didn’t even attend and it became apparent that high school’s version of bullying was going to center around slut shaming.  My reputation was born from a rumor that was so ridiculously unfounded that I sometimes wish I HAD attended the party and done the things I was rumored at having done.  I decided then and there that I was done trying to adjust myself according to other people.  If I wanted to talk, I talked.  If I wanted to be quiet, I was quiet.  If I like something, I wore it.  If I felt something, I said it.  I was friends with whoever I wanted to be friends with and I went wherever I wanted to go.  If people made a huge show at being offended by me, I gave them something truly offensive.  In my own way, I found myself, without anyone elses help.  I’d like to say I stopped caring what other people thought so the bullying stopped, but that didn’t happen.  Rumors soared. Sometimes people would stop me in the bathroom or the hallway just to make sure I was aware of the latest one, and it wasn’t out of kindness.   I was ridiculed, embarrassed, teased and sexually harassed.   I was physically assaulted three times, once resulting in a concussion.  I stayed out of cliques.  I dated almost entirely outside of our school and I kept my social life and my school life as separate as possible.  I did what I had to do, and I got out of there.

In the end it taught me a few things:

1.       Be whoever you are going to be.  No matter who you are, there will always be someone who doesn’t like you.  Make sure that YOU like YOU.

2.       Hang onto the people who make you happy.  And keep your eyes out for real friends.  Not everybody can be your best friend, but just because they aren’t your best friend, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t REAL friends.  Love people where they are at that moment. You can’t expect them to be anyone else either.

3.       Always carry a good book. Some of the best friends you will ever have, you will find in a book.  It’s a huge relief to be able to spend time with people you really enjoy when things get a little ugly.

4.        Keep your ears open.  Sometimes even people who are mean have no idea why they are mean.  Listening can help.  Sometimes there really is a reason, no matter how misplaced the energy is.  Information is power.  If nothing else, it may help you to understand that it has nothing to do with you.

5.       Don’t ever apologize for who you are.  Never be embarrassed by your strength.  Different isn’t weird and different isn’t WRONG.  Different, however, will get you noticed, even if you think you’re being very quiet about it. 

6.       It will get better.  Stay strong and keep your head up.  Enjoy yourself and don’t let anyone take your happiness away from you. 

7.       Once you understand it, being different will be a strength.  Don’t pretend to be something you’re not to make someone else happy. 

8.       Kindness and honesty are the only real ways to combat the ugliness in the world.  Revenge has its own price.  Don’t spend too much time focusing on it.

9.       Everyone has their own story.  It’s easy to forget that all teenagers are children.  They look like adults, they make even talk like adults, but they are still children.  Things affect them deeply.  Ripples can feel like waves.  Be careful how hard you may strike back, even metaphorically.

10.   In the end, they are all your classmates.  Shared history is important.  Some of the people I consider friends today are people who caused me distress when I was in school.  Time is the great equalizer.  Someday you will be much closer in perspective with them than you can ever realize. When it happens, embrace it. Forgiveness is cathartic for everyone, especially the person giving it.

 Something a therapist told me echoes in my head.  “Finding peace of mind will not make other people like you.”  The more self assured I became, the less others liked me.  It didn’t matter if I spoke to them or not, simply being self confident and happy was enough to irritate them.  From there, insecurities and jealousy took over. 

In the end, I’m really not sure who was hurt more by the mistreatment of my middle school and high school days.  I’m sure it wasn’t healthy for me, but I was always able to live with my actions.  Eventually I learned to cope and I did become stronger from it.  Those that apologized to me cannot say the same.  They weren’t the only people who hurt me.  They weren’t even the ones who hurt me the most.  But they went against their own real natures and gave into an emotion that took them to places they otherwise would not have gone.  That doesn’t come without a price and they lived with it for twenty years before they were able to make amends.

I won’t pretend to know everything. But there is something that I do know well.  I understand how to read people.  I can hear it in their voice, in their word selection.  I can gauge sincerity.  I can feel pain.  And something tells me that I was better equipped at 15 to deal with pain than some people are in their late thirties.  And these women felt as much pain in causing me pain as I felt at the time.  It hurts me to know this.  I moved on long ago.  Moving on is the reason I can look back fondly, even when it wasn’t always that awesome.  If you focus on the bad, that is all you will ever see.  We’ve all walked our own path and I’ve been incredibly fortunate in many ways.  I bear no ill will.  It just makes me very much aware of how much it hurts us to hurt other people.  As someone who works with children, I hate the thought of any of them hanging onto something for an entire lifetime.  Life is just too short for that. 

So in closing I ask, please, please, please teach your children to be kind.  Not just because it’s the “right” thing to do but because it will serve them well.  They won’t be perfect.  We can’t expect that of them.  But we can teach them how to act honorably and help them to understand WHY it’s important.  There is so much at stake.  Every action forms a ripple and remember, at that age, those ripples can feel like waves.  Help them stay the course in rough waters.  Help them understand WHY it’s important.