Bruises Not Scars

The things I’m scared to say.

This isn’t a fictional book. Like everything else that I love writing. It’s not a world I can cherish within the pages carefully crafted spun with simple and quick strokes of cursive led. It’s not really a book, a story, or a narrative at all. It’s a retelling. A retelling of the many things I’m too scared, too afraid, to not-over-yet to even tell my mother. Which isn’t a long feat. since I haven’t like telling her a lot of things. It’s not that I’m not trusting. It’s just that I don’t want to see her smile drop. That’s all.

I’ve tried telling her once before. We fought that night. And she fell asleep on the back porch. I walked out there, poured my heart and soul at to her. Only to find that she was asleep. When she woke up she yelled at me for talking behind her back. I haven’t been able to say a word about it since. And so far? I haven’t felt like telling her.

This isn’t a book about how I was bullied. How I suffered and still suffer everyday, especially when I’m left alone. How memories resurface constantly. It’s not a book at all. So far at least. It might eventually take the form of a book, but not yet. Currently it’s just a page on a screen in the shape of paper. It’s not a book about being bullied. And if we’re going to call this thing a book. Than it’s a book about how I found some troubles in life and how I survived. Smiling.

it’s kind of ironic now that I write this now. I guess it’ll be easy to figure out soon why it’s ironic. There’s two reasons. The first reason is that I hate documentaries and this could be considered a documentary. But in my eyes it’s more of a retelling. A retelling of a losing battle. And in a way I won.

I guess I should say a little about myself since you’re reading this now. I’m sixteen...now at least. It’s somewhere in November right before Thanksgiving. I can’t wait to eat the cranberry sauce. This is a retelling of my seventh grade through tenth grade years. We had an assembly today at school even though I begun writing this yesterday the 25, the assembly was about cyberbullying. I don’t wanna say I’ve never been cyberbullied or done something stupid on the internet happy because no one can see me. The feeling of not being judged on appearance because they can’t see me. But nothing that ever majorly affected anyone. It just brought up some memories today the 26 that I’d rather not recall that I’m going to do now.

The second reason this is ironic is because I used to love to write in junior high, I loved to write, read, and draw. That’s all I ever really needed to be happy in junior high other than some music and food. The reason this is ironic is because I loved to write so the people who talked about me would always whisper about how I was writing about how awful they were and laugh about it. They would turn around and laugh about how they treated me because they must’ve thought it was funny or something it brought them so much joy. At one put someone while I was in my sophomore english class went through my locker, they don’t have locks here you have to buy one or get it approved, but she stole a notebook with a story I was working on and I was very dedicated to that story. She had begun reading it out loud at the top of her lungs in the middle of break. After that my agenda went missing from my locker that day but I never did find out if she took it. But she’s a story for another time. Here I am in my junior year finally writing it out.

It all started within my seventh grade year. At first because of the way they treated me I wasn’t sure what kind of class level I was put into. When we were in junior high everyone said that the letter groups were arranged by how smart you were. I constantly stared at my hands in my lap thinking “judging by these people around me I must be stupid like the rest of them” not all of them. But a majority of them. So I let my grades fall. What was the point? I was in a class where I didn’t have any time to pay attention because I was too busy shooing away pickpockets and making sure they didn’t cut my hair off. I was scared. And yet I didn’t want them to see it. I put as much effort into my work as I could. I know those two statements contradict. But at the same time they don’t.

I would work as hard as I could on the worksheets and notes that were handed out hoping that one day it would be enough, just barely enough that I wouldn’t have to hear their whispers. But when I went home I didn’t want to see a single thing from school. I’d rush through any work that I had to bring home, sometimes “forgetting” the work so I wouldn’t have to think about how my day went. The same thing over and over for three years. It’s not exactly the easiest thing to forget. i didn’t ever let them see how to reacted. Over and over they would call me all sort’s of names that just didn’t fit, spread gossip on false rumors, destroy the fragile relationships I was trying to build with students that didn’t go to my school, and see how much they could cut me down each day. Our assembly today on cyberbullying all’s I can still hear is the words over and over “Just ignore it.” That’s a lie. I did that for three straight years almost four. And it still wasn’t working. It never worked.

Believe me I had talked to several guidance counselors. But as far as I knew nothing was ever done. They stayed the same. I could tell you all about the things they concocted. Using something I used as extra credit as their catalyst for their wild imaginations.

There was an extra credit assignment the day it started, even before then I think it had been starting. So when it got to the extra credit assignment day I pulled out one of my favorite books, something that I owned. The subject was fictional, it was interesting to had sprinkles of romance and forbidden love that suited just right for the preteen category. It also had fights, wars, drama, and various other subcategories depending on which one and at which time you were reading it. Now I’m not sure what I would’ve wanted to do if I knew that would’ve been my fate. Not only was I scared of them since all of my friends got placed into the supposed ‘higher’ and ‘smarter’ kid class I didn’t know any of them. Even though it was half way into the year. They had already been avoiding me. I hadn’t done a thing to them except come in and sit down on the first day. I’m not sure why any of that happened. I just remembering thinking about how it would be over soon. Over and over. How I would get a great job, graduate from college, and be a great person who cared for people. I would grow up to be a kind person. That’s what I wanted to do when I grew up. Be a kind person. And they would be living in dumpsters and barely surviving. While I was going to be surrounded by caring people. That’s what I wanted at least. I can’t lie and say I never fantasized about some high school teen drama movie to play out where the let’s say ‘pack leader’ of these bullies would come in one day and say something that really set me off and I would punch him or some miracle would happen that everyone would cheer for me and treat him how they were treating me. I dreamed it would happen over and over. Instead I was continuously treated like trash.

I know I just got sidetracked but now that I think about it and that I’m better with people I have an idea or a wish if I were in this situation now I have two ideas of what I would’ve liked to do. One never have offered to give the extra credit and completely ignored the situation or turned around and simply stated “I don’t see you up here. So why don’t you either A get up here and do a presentation yourself or b. be quiet for a bit.” Oh, now that I think about it I would’ve loved to excute it like I feel like I could now. So finely full of confidence in what I was doing that I could just see the look on his face. But instead I’m stuck only imagining what it would be like. And so I did the presentation and this perpetrator had tons of questions that day. So I fluently explained the basics of the story. Which each time he had a remark about how stupid that was. Even though I was able to conter each strike, shakily since I still wasn’t very happy about public speaking in front of a bunch of people I didn’t know, I was than pulled aside at the end of class and told that I didn’t have enough to earn the extra credit. So not only would I suffer for several years to come. I hadn’t earned anything to quell the suffering.

So the world had persisted on. It’s not till only now that I realized that we weren’t sorted by how intellectual or how unintellectual we each word. Nope. It was our names. There was a certain pattern to each name. And that’s how I wound up with a bunch of people I have many words for.

I guess I’m avoiding what they actually did to me. I’m not exactly comfortable writing this. There are many things they did that persisted over the years. In seventh grade they continually harassed me. They made up stories about how I kept dead bodies of cats within my purse, with various other fantasies they had dreamed up to entertain themselves. There was a point where my cat had recently died or maybe the memory was starting to resurface from sixth grade. Everything was becoming a blur all mixed into one day. One really long day that was hard to live with. And so one day as I was explaining. In some cruel gesture in my mind my science teacher had placed me near that ‘pack leader of bullies’. I did my best to keep to my own business. I didn’t even want to be near him. I wanted him to disappear so badly. He turned to me and he went “So you own any pets?” And I looked up at him feeling the disbelief well up inside of me. He sounded just like a normal person. Not the person that was making sure to attempt to cut me down bit by bit. I glanced at him. He looked like all’s he wanted was to have a normal conversation. And I thought “hey, if I treat him like a normal person maybe everything will be alright. Maybe that’s what he wanted the whole time? I don’t know where he’s coming from.” So I gave him the chance. Stupidly and reluctantly I answered. I turned and decided to treat him like a normal person, you know, one that wasn’t harassing me. So I turned to him and went “yeah four. Two dogs and two cats.” I said simply and he goes “oh...Any of them die recently?” And noticing the shock from my face. Because one had in fact died recently he turned to his “buddy” and started laughing away with them about it, as loud as the possibly could. It was the day I was closest to committing violence. I thought about it, wondering how good it would feel to punch him in the face. Or be able to get up, place my papers on my teachers desk, and walk out with my fullest confidence in who I was everyone watching thinking they couldn’t push me around anymore. That decision was taken away from me as the bell rung to change classes I listened to it feeling my body move on it’s own grabbing the books and struggle not to run out of class.

I spent a lot of time thinking those years about where I would hide if I would ever actually break down in tears. I wouldn’t let them see me. I would get up and leave class. I would hide. But why should I hide? I had never done anything wrong.

In-between the seventh and eighth grade years everything started fusing together. But once eighth grade came around I came back to school with a smile hoping the next year would be better until I walked into my first class. EVERYONE, from the previous class was there with a couple extras. My first thought was “cool, new people. Maybe this year I would actually make some friends that wouldn’t have such fragile relationships.” I had already pushed my friends and family away without realizing it. I didn’t have the will to leave my room at home or to make up after a long fight with my parents. Which is all I could remember anymore. My friends were all in different classes but when we went to lunch we were limited to six at a table. And because I didn’t want to see any of them frown I was the one who would get up and leave. I don’t want to say I was always alone. But pretty close to it. I hadn’t realized it yet but I was pushing them all away so they would never find out. It hurt on my own without having to explain to them what was happening. I’m not sure to this day if they knew, if they knew from gossip, or if they really were oblivious to it. But these new people in my eighth grade class, weren’t, a good thing.

There was a girl, I remember it was rumoured she was the daughter of one of the cafeteria workers I found out who it was but I was never sure and still aren’t sure if that was her mother. But I remember her because she had the darkest red hair that I had ever seen at the time. But there’s one thing I remember specifically about her, other than she also participated within their hobbies of making me feel like they had their metaphorical hands wrapped around my neck slowly choking me. The specific day I remember is sitting in language arts class and she would repeatedly reach over and grab my purse being one of the one’s to repeatedly make sure I heard the rumors they spread. And that the rest of the class did, just like the rest of them loud and clear. Senselessly day after day. They would constantly insist that they wanted to see what was in my purse and demanded that I dumped it for them. I never did. But still they’d demand that everyday. Insisting that I kept dead cat carcasuses in my purse and did various stuff to them. This class wasn’t a place I wanted to be at all. She would reach over day after day and tug on my purse, my hair, my clothes. Sometimes she threatened to take scissors to my hair. I cut my hair before she could. The truth was, I was planning on donating it. But it never got to the point where it was long enough that I could donate it because of how she was always touching, pulling, and in my space. So I never got to donate my hair, but she still insisted on pulling and touching me. I’m not sure why. My purse was dirty, my jacket which was a gift from my mother which they also insisted on pulling on with their dirty grimy hands, and my hair. One day I had enough and I turned around and slapped her right acrossed the face. I’m not exactly a hero in this story and although I knew it was wrong. I wish even now. That I had relitated more against them. She pulled back, turned in her desk, and went to work on her own work. She didn’t mess with me as clearly as I can remember since then. I wish I didn’t let them treat me like such a victim. A doll. A doll that they all took their aggravations out on. There was once a dance. And I remember the police came in during that dance. The rumor the next day was that this pack leader got arrested due to trying to stupidly sneak drugs into a dance. I remember feeling a light smile come on to my face thinking he deserved it.

This isn’t easy to write. During the assembly earlier today I got dizzy just thinking about these memories. I still feel sick.

The only time I got a break from these people was during my specials. And it wasn’t even safe there. There was one day. One day. That I was there. Everything was fine. For a second. But then the teacher went to the office within the gym room. Everyone was standing around gossiping about how ‘hard’ gym class was even though all’s you had to do was try to do it. So I simply turned to them hoping to give advice “Why are you complaining? You don’t even really have to try. It’s easy. All’s you have to not do is just stand there.” so they all went over to this one girl and gossiped in the corner just standing there for the entire class when they were done they all turned around at the same time as if only one of them thought for all of them so all of their actions were in the same movement. You know how big a gym is right? Large gym? Junior high gym. There decent sized square rooms. They were standing on the exact opposite corner of the gym while we were supposed to be doing gym loops. It was almost over, the class that is. The class was almost over when they all turned towards me it wasn’t something you just not notice. When they did that I looked their way when three of them started screaming at the top of their lungs and storming towards me waving their arms and threatening me, screaming about how I shouldn’t call other people fat. I never used the word fat, or anything of the situation. I simply stated that they wouldn’t get yelled at if they actually tried to participate. I remember shaking because I knew this was the type of situation that was eventually coming. My mind instantly flashed into what the other class treated me like. The one I would have to go to right after leaving my specials (gym, art, health, other various topics that weren’t math, english, and language). And one of these three girls were a close “friend” the leader of the pack of those other people.
I had even asked the teacher to get changed early so I could leave early because being a writer, well at least I thought I wanted to be one, I had already come up with several scenes in my head of possibilities of what could happen once they thought they wouldn’t have to suffer. And how was I supposed to fix a situation that I didn’t cause? A situation that was being fueled by the one who harassed me’s close “friend”’s twisted lies. I remember coming out of the locker room changed and staring at them sitting on the ground as the teacher insisted to know what happened since I told her that I didn’t know. I didn’t. I knew I hadn’t said anything wrong. I hadn’t called her that word. I simply stated that if she actually participated instead of literally just standing there in the middle of the gym maybe she wouldn’t get yelled at.

I had one friend in the other class. The class that I had to stay with for most the day. Seven out of nine periods. Sometimes study hall and lunch. Everything’s kind of beginning to blur together. I was actually one of the people who had come down with the H1N1 that year. To me, that first day of being sick I was treated so poorly at school. It wasn’t any different from every other day. The only difference was everything was so slow in my mind. The next day I remember saying I didn’t feel well to my mom. I wasn’t sure why I said that. My mom checked my temperature and said I was perfectly fine I should go to school. I shook my head. I didn’t want to go to school nor did I have the motivation to go to school if I really did feel well. I didn’t want to see them again. So I was sent back to bed. When I woke up again there was this continuous shaking that I couldn’t stop.

I managed to walk down the stairs as my brother was leaving and my mom was on the phone with my grandmother talking about taking her the doctor’s later since she couldn’t drive for some reason. I walked to my mom barely speaking the only thing I remember was crying and whispering “it won’t stop. I can’t control it.” The next thing I knew. Literally I blinked and the next thing I knew I was sitting in the back of the van driving with my mom and grandmother to my grandmother’s doctors. I can’t remember if we dropped her off first or stopped at kmart. But by my mom’s recollection we never stopped at kmart. But in my mind I’m pretty sure we stopped at kmart. I remember looking at my favorite type of toy in the toy aisle and then kept walking to a further end of the store able to walk around by myself. But the thing I remember the most is stopping in what I believed to be an electronic aisle and everything was moving upwards. It was like being on a downwards speeding elevator I knew nothing was moving and yet at the same time I kept trying to watch the shelves move upwards and the floor moved downwards. I called my mom explaining it. The next thing I remember was being at home in my bed. Repeatedly they woke me up telling me that I would have to eat something. I wasn’t sure why. I had barely closed my eyes. It felt like having to eat another meal every couple minutes. I never wanted any of it. There was pink medicine though at first it was awful, but then near the end all’s I wanted to do was finish it off. Not because it was bad but because it started tasting good. I haven’t had the medicine since that day. When I think back I remember that first day, how I didn’t eat, and waking up the ‘next’ day to go to school.

When I arrived in the school various people all gave me strange looks as I glanced around everyone had known somehow what I had come down with. I don’t know how since I didn’t tell anyone. Nor did I have the strength to open my eyes after that first day. I still don’t know how. There was a lot of questions I didn’t know how to answer myself. I don’t remember having a ton of work which was weird when I finally discovered what was different. It wasn’t the next day. What had happened in my mind was I fell asleep, ate dinner, and woke up to go to school again. What had really happened is I was practically not consis for two whole weeks. Most of those weeks I can’t remember a thing. It feels like a big giant gap that I can’t remember anything out of there no matter how hard I tried. I still don’t remember those weeks, just the enormous amount of pain I was in. But the point is I feel like I could’ve taken twice as much as that if would make all those memories just go away.

My ninth grade year sort of blurs with the other two years. Ninth and tenth grade years another close friend of this leader of the bullies decided they were going to take action. She was blonde, long hair, I don’t see her as a very likable person. I think the only reason people were around her is because they respected and feared her elder brother. My ninth grade year I walked into my last class the fourth block class, happy, hopeful, thinking finally this would be the year where I wouldn’t have to suffer. When I looked into the class it was a mixed class. It looked hopeful. Except every single one of the students that wasn’t a freshman was drawn to the far back right corner near the window leaving three rows of desks in between the freshman in the first row and every single other person extremely clustered tight into the back row.

This girl proceeded to make my life a living hell. As the same of the rest of the years. She was in all of my classes. She came up with various rumors in my ninth grade year. She came up with rumors such as who I was dating, gossip that wasn’t true. I had one of the elder students come up to me awkwardly at one point and ask me if I really was pregnant and I turned around and the first thing I said was “Don’t believe everything *insert that girl’s name here* says. I think she’s a little, well not okay.” The junior and or senior glanced towards that girl and nodded going ‘oh’. I’m a junior now and I still haven’t dated anyone. These rumors were immediately cleared up and set straight by this junior and or senior. I never got to see her again or thank her for whatever she did. Although the rumors are just rumors, I’m still relatively uncomfortable around the guy she spread the rumors that I was with still.
The next year which was tenth grade she stole my notebooks and every other thing she could find out of my locker proceeding to read them out loud in class. It was awkward and uncomfortable. She eventually also stole the agenda which is the only way to get out of class if you would like to use the restroom. And if you don’t have it most of the time you’re told too bad. So she had made my life awful for quite a while.
Now I’m in eleventh grade. I feel lonely often. I hate walking the hallways alone. And I feel like if I’m alone someone will come up behind me and attack me on the inside. But on the outside I’ve finally managed to display a happy exterior, my relationships may be fixing themselves, I’ve managed to join a sport and some clubs which I was too afraid to do before. I even have a crush on a guy I like who goes to a different school, sadly. But I’m hoping he doesn’t have a girlfriend and I could ask around it to see if he does, give him my number, and actually eventually ask him out one day.

But this is about time I close what I have written here. Hopefully this here will help me find some sort of closure on those years and never think of them again. They left me bruises not scars. Eventually these memories will fade away and I’ll be happy.