Previous entries in this series about my experiences in middle school:
1. Autism and Boundaries Pt 1: Losing Friends
2. Autism and Boundaries Pt 2: The Double Standard
4. When School is a Systemic Failure
5. Sober Reflection About Sober Reflection
7. Closure Pt 2: How School Failed All of Us
*As always, names are changed to protect people's privacy.
With a sport I loved and a supportive track coach, and new friends in the final weeks of 9th grade, there was only one thing left to do:
Stand up to my bullies.
Thus ended my previous post. For those who have only started reading my protracted blog series about my experiences in middle school (grades 7-9 in my district), let me fill you in:
I was bullied almost constantly throughout those years in ways that ran the gamut from bitingly personal insults to physical assault. As my mother put it in a recent conversation, all I had to do was show up at school and it was "a critical mass of shit" directed at me. By 9th grade, I had become afraid to go to school, as it was unsafe both emotionally and physically. As I discussed in a post from a few months ago, in my 9th-grade ceramics class, kids relentlessly hurled large balls of clay at me. I repeatedly reported this to the teacher, Miss Mitch, who dismissively told me to "just ignore them." During each class, I did just that-- working with one hand and deflecting balls of clay that I spotted in my peripheral vision with my other. Needless to say, the bullying did not stop. One Friday morning in November 1995, after two months of "ignoring" this abuse, I reached my limit, storming out of the room in tears, as almost the entire class cheered. I went to the principal's office and called my grandmother to pick me up and extricate me from the endless emotional pain and suffering.
When my parents later called the school to complain, Miss Mitch offered a solution: if I wanted, I could work in the classroom across the hall, which was empty during this time slot. I did just that for the remaining seven months of the school year, often while listening to 1960s rock or soundtracks from my favorite movies on a tape player that was in the room. By the time I joined the track team in April 1996, my self-esteem had been completely destroyed. And the "solution," ostensibly to protect me but which only further isolated me and suggested to my classmates that Miss Mitch didn't want me in the room (which I suspect had some element of truth to it anyway), did not help. Kids from the class regularly snuck in to taunt me, steal my supplies, and throw clay at me. Each time, I continued to "just ignore them," which, of course, did not work.
However, one day I made a decision: I was going to stand up to the bullies. That's where running track came in. How was it connected? Let me explain.
After I had been running track for about a month, my mother began to notice that when she picked me up from practice I seemed more alert, confident, and happy. I started to notice it too, and my mood was improving for extended periods of time-- not just after track practice, but also during the school day. What I didn't know was that in the immediate aftermath of track practice, I was experiencing a well-documented phenomenon known as "runner's high," a euphoric feeling believed to be caused by endocannabinoids released in the brain during vigorous exercise. That my mood eventually became elevated for longer periods of time suggests that running was also giving me long-term mental health benefits, also widely documented. To be clear, I'm not trying to imply that my unhappiness and compromised self-esteem that year were the results of a chemical imbalance. However, it seems running provided a chemical boost in my brain that gave me the mental resources to better address the exceptionally stressful situations that I was enduring every day.
I still remember the date that I made the decision to stand up for myself: Friday, May 3, 1996. I'm not sure exactly what in me finally flipped the switch in my head. Maybe it was the wonderful feeling of the newly tightened, firm muscles in my legs and core that made me feel stronger in both body and mind. In any case, that morning, as I was walking through the school hallways, I had an epiphany: the treatment that I had been experiencing was bullying. It was abuse, and it was wrong. Despite what I had been taught to believe, no, I did not bring this treatment on myself, and no, I did not deserve it. I suddenly promised myself that I was going to do something that I had never done before: defend myself, and no longer be a bystander in my own suffering.
My first opportunity to keep that promise came later that morning during ceramics when two large, physically-imposing guys came into the room that I was working in. They were likely closing in on six feet and 180 pounds each, in stark contrast to my 5'1" and 98 pounds. I knew then as I saw them that there was no turning back. Don't get me wrong-- I was nervous, already in the throes of the fight-or-flight response, my heart racing and body shaking. Recalling a time in 8th grade when I broke my hand punching a boy on the bus who was hitting me, I thought, "If I have to fight, I'll fight. If I break both hands defending myself, so be it."
The boys started with the usual bullshit, calling me names, stealing my tools, and throwing clay. That day, I was also listening to the soundtrack from the 1982 film Annie, which of course they could not resist harassing me about.
"What the fuck are you listening to?" one of the boys taunted aggressively as he towered over me.
Normally, I would have said, "Nothing!" to try to deflect attention away from something I knew they'd use as a weapon to embarrass me. But this time I wasn't going to roll over and play dead. Instead, I looked him square in the eye and said, "The soundtrack from Annie. You got a problem with that?"
Of course the boys laughed at my choice of music, a soundtrack from a movie that they probably deemed for kindergartners. And they weren't done yet.
"You fucking circus freak," one of them said. "We know why you're in here. It's because the teacher doesn't want you in the class."
It was a low blow, and I knew it. I winced at the emotional slight, but despite my racing heart and trembling body, I maintained eye contact and said, "Okay, so what? Why is that any of your business?"
After a few more rounds of insults and name-calling, I said, "Okay, guys. I've had enough fun for today. Why don't you leave?"
"Nah, we don't want to," said one guy.
My eyes still locked on theirs, I retorted loudly and firmly, "I am supposed to be in here, and you're not. And I am asking you to get out of here-- now!"
The boys left-- but not before grabbing my tools and turning volume on the tape player up all the way. I recall thinking, "Great. Now all the nearby classrooms are going to hear the music, and soon the entire 9th grade will know what I was listening to, and I'll never hear the end of it." But then, remembering my promise to myself, my mind followed up with, "So what?"
I ran to the ceramics room, retrieved my tools, returned to the empty classroom, and quickly returned to the volume on the tape player back to normal. The boys did not return for the rest of class. I have little doubt that they thought that they scored yet another victory against me, but to focus on that negates an important detail: I had at last mustered the strength to defend my dignity. I demonstrated that I was not going to put up with this kind of treatment any longer, and for that I felt that I had scored a victory. For once, I had won!
I think these boys came back to harass me maybe once or twice after that day. But before, it had been almost daily. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe Miss MItch suddenly gained control over her class, but I highly doubt it. I think the most likely explanation is that I did exactly what the bullies were not used to seeing me do: I stood up for myself and made it clear that I was not going to bow in submission and accept my role as the perpetual target. In fact, in the final six weeks of school, very few people bothered me. Maybe just the fact that I was carrying myself more confidently, my head held high, made a difference.
On that fateful day in 1996, I learned something very important: the best weapon you can give a bullied child is self-esteem. I realize that standing up for oneself is hard, and it only works if self-esteem is conveyed in the response, but it is the only thing that ever worked for me. And doesn't that make the most sense out of all the advice adults implored me to take? I've already demonstrated in several posts in this series that ignoring bullies is ineffective, counterproductive, and only makes them try that much harder to get a rise out of the target. Also, pressuring kids to "learn to fit in" doesn't work either. My well-meaning but tragically-misguided parents in what I've come to think of as The Ignorant Nineties seemed inordinately convinced that if I stopped dressing like a tomboy and donned the feminine clothes that there were desperate to see me in but that I was profoundly uncomfortable wearing, the bullying would stop. But as my classmate-turned-friend-in-adulthood, Annette, once said, "It wouldn't have made a difference. You were pegged." Besides, that approach really smacks of victim blaming, even though that wasn't my parents' intention.
As you've seen in this post and its predecessor, I found community on the track team, joy in running, and a newfound sense of self-esteem that led to 9th grade ending on a positive note. So why, then, did I feel the need to revisit the social trauma from earlier that year and 8th grade in multiple blog posts? Why did I need closure after events from between twenty-nine and thirty-one years ago, and why did I feel the need to contact Ivy and Torey-- two of the former friends who turned on me-- to do so?
I'll address that elephant in the room in the next and final post in this series about my middle school years.
