To everyone,
Every now and then, I have these random thoughts. Random faces, that pop into my head. Most of the time, with a couple of minutes of concentration, I can pull the name from the vault in my brain labelled "memories." I call it a vault because that's very close to what it feels like. They're pieces of my memory that sit untouched for so long, just like certain coins in a bank safe. Most of those pieces are locked away; sections of me no one is allowed to touch. They're fairly painful, no matter how "trivial" they may seem to outside sources. As a quick disclaimer, I know what I went through doesn't reach the same severity as others. But I also know that I have a right to build myself from them.
Sometimes the faces attached to these memories are the ones that pop into my head. Again, most of the time I can identify the faces on my own. Other times I am so plagued by the itch of having to know that I don't even get dressed. I just run out to the garage, and scrounge for my yearbooks that are stashed in the memory chest I made in middle school.
Before we get too far into this piece, I want it to be known that I am not perfect either. I have said mean things. I was very annoying and extremely weird growing up. None of that matters and tolerance should be taught before anything else.
In those yearbooks, are the names and faces of my own personal Mean Girls cast. I couldn't even try to segment them from each other, into their own "roles" because nine times out of ten all of them would be part of the ring of torment.
Three days ago, I did exactly what I spoke of just now, and drug my yearbooks upstairs. Oh, how mad my mom would be if she knew. Nowadays, I don't think about high school or middle school most of the time but there are some pieces of my foundation that creak, threaten to snap, and sink me if I let them take too much control. It can make accepting things, myself especially, difficult.
I'm writing this in hopes that it will bring to light how miserable even moderate, seldom bullying can affect someone for the rest of their natural life. I doubt that the girls and boys, now women and men, who poked fun at me would want the same things to happen to their children.
A quick facebook search calms my nerves, though, as only a small percentage of these people now have children. The most pertinent females in my memory are still partying up their twenties, while most of the men are now daddies to the daughters and sons of our next generation. I can only hope that they raise them better than our parents did us.
I have been a resident at three different high schools, and none were different from the last. In my first high school, I sat on a stage to eat lunch with mostly the "artsy upperclassmen" and a few other freshmen. Obviously, it's lunch time and we've all recently been confined inside because winter has arrived and tempers were high with tension so loud my skin was buzzing. Caylen and I were just sitting and chatting, about self-destruction most likely, when an orange exploded all over the both of us.
There had been no confrontation before that, and now we were both covered in citrus. I literally never even knew why and I can only guess that it's because we were different. Emotional. Definitely more mature than the males at that circle table. Even now, recalling the instance, we weren't doing anything but minding our own business. What had we done, to be ridiculed so harshly in front of a room full of our peers?
Nothing. We had done nothing.
Of course, that's just one instance. There are countless things along these lines that I experienced alone, from my fellow "sisters." The people who I no longer personally know, but have had so many run-ins with. Dorian through Britani to Jeremy. From being called "Miss Backne" to a "fucking nasty bulimic" to the infamous rumour that paved the way to me being called "Polly Pocket" until the last time I stepped in that building. Even after I moved, it didn't stop. "You look like a boy." or "Is that supposed to be cute?" in reference to the pink lines on my arms. Even better than those was the, "If you're going to try and kill yourself, at least do it right. It's down the street, not across the road." Until those words, I didn't even realise I was "doing it wrong." The words I'm talking about here are just a handful of the things said to me, the ones that struck the most fragile cords.
In a time of political turmoil, I beg those that are continuing into parenthood, to teach their small creatures how to love everyone. That's what they're made to do, is love. They don't understand the bigger picture and while they will at some point, right now all they're concerned with is you. My boyfriend's daughter is already in preschool and I fear greatly for that bright untainted soul. I fear for her, just as I did myself.
From, the annoying weird kid who moved away.
