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• Music: Firewind -- Between Heaven And Hell

The Big Bully Post.

Okay, theferrett's post yesterday about girls bullying girls has sparked some discussion and debate on the old f-list, as well as in Ferrett's own journal.

This is triggering for me, and it hurts to read some of the things that are getting said. So I am going to tell you the story of how I had the living shit beaten out of me in eighth grade, so that you'll all know where I'm coming from when I start expressing my feelings about forgiveness and bullies. It's long, but it's very important to me.

I was 13, had only been in public school for a year. I had no fashion sense and didn't even fit in with the geeks and nerds. I was a loner, I had literally no friends from that school. My home life was a painful disaster – parents separated and on the verge of a divorce. In short, I had no retreat, no safe haven. My life was a waking nightmare. Like the distilled essence of every Evanescence song ever written – gem-grade teenage angst.

My homeroom class was held in a fetid cell of a room off the school gymnasium. My homeroom teachers were never around despite rules that a teacher or an assistant was to be present in the classroom at all times. In retrospect, they were probably sneaking out to hump like the rancid, skanky hicks they were.

Thus were a dozen thirteen- and fourteen-year-old students left unsupervised for a 30-minute period each day. As you can imagine, hijinks ensued.

If I had been more scientifically inclined, and less creative, I would doubtless have invented an invisibility serum. As it was, I typically sat in the corner and read or drew, and hoped desperately that the other kids wouldn't pick on me too much.

In our class was a boisterous wretch I shall christen "Albert," for lack of a more imaginative epithet. This kid was the sort of human filth who takes great pride in making himself look big by bragging, swaggering, and picking on the weak, in order to make himself look good in comparison. He was about as mean as he was full of shit, which is very.

I was drawing, nearly finished with a beautiful pencil portrait when when our fine young walking stereotype leaned over my shoulder and swiped an eraser clear down the middle of my picture.

I sat, stunned, gaping at the long white streak across my picture. The culprit was blithely walking out the door, about to get away with it. The other kids fell silent.

And into that silence spoke some bullshit-nurtured part of my brain, fed on Sesame Street and Mister Rogers and all the well-intentioned self-esteem messages of the early '80s. There were no grownups around, but I knew what I had to do.

I had to stand up for myself.

Brilliant. Fucking. Idea.

I chased him to the door, determined to at least ask him why he felt the need to destroy my beautiful drawing. I got a handful of shirt when I tried to grab his shoulder, and when he rounded, his shirt tore clear down the back like a bad movie werewolf splitting its skin.

To this day, I don't know whether he was genuinely angry or only seizing on the opportunity to terrorize me.

"Bitch! This is my brother's shirt! I'm going to beat the crap out of you!"

Maybe he expected me to run. I don't know. I didn't. I pointed back to my table and informed him heatedly that he had ruined my drawing.

I don't clearly remember how we ended up in the hall. I just remember that I was not going to back down. Not again. Not after the months of knuckling under, tolerating the sneers and stares, the hushed laughter. Not after months of having that cockamamie bullshit pureé of "Words Can't Hurt You" poured into my ear and forced down my goddamn throat every time I tried to ask for help, to complain about how I was being treated.

Somehow we wound up out in the hall, mutually cornered. Ours was the last room at the end of the hall, near the gym. All the other doors were locked. We circled. I wasn't going to let him go. The other kids gathered around like gang members at a knife-fight. The teachers were nowhere to be seen. Probably screwing and/or toking up. I kept waiting for someone to break us apart. Didn't happen. Nobody was about to intervene.

Albert threw a punch at me, and I stared, incredulous, as it whistled past my glasses. "You'd hit a girl?" I demanded.

And he tried to do it again.

Friends, that was the last straw. Whatever was in me broke, the last fine thread of restraint, and I lost control. The world fell away, and something inhuman and primal came up. I leaped on him, snarling. And when I say snarling, I mean it. The noises I made were not even close to human. I think it unnerved him – I know it unnerved the onlookers.

I clawed at his face, punched him in the gut. He didn't hit me even once – I was too fast, now screaming like a mountain-lion in fury and terror and a terrible, terrible elation.

I have very little memory of the actual fight – I remember the satisfaction of striking him, of feeling his flesh under my nails, and the pleasure of seeing him give ground before me. There was a fierce joy in fighting back at last, in screaming my rage, so long pent-up. I did want to kill him. Yes, I did.

What ended it, at last, was the polished tile floor. He threw me off and I stumbled into the wall. He was on me like a bulldog, and my boots slipped on the tile. He shoved me to the ground and held me there while he slammed my head into the angle between corner and wall.

The other students stood around, cheering or not doing anything while we fought. He hurt me badly enough to send me to the hospital for a head x-ray, and they did fucking nothing about it. I remember staring dumbly at the forest of legs and shuffling feet as nobody moved to help me, dimly hearing the click of a teacher's heels as she ran from the next hallway over. Too late, too late.

I'd known I was unpopular, I'd known I was not well-liked, but having it proved to me in such a brutal fashion was really horrifying.

Belatedly, a teacher I didn't even know pulled Albert from me. Bless her, she was no bigger than Albert was. My glasses were bent and scratched, and my head was bruised. He had thready clawmarks, but nothing more. When you evaluate this fight for fairness, keep in mind that I was a 4'11 girl who weighed 160 pounds, tops, and had no fighting experience. He was a tall and heavyset boy who probably had forty or fifty pounds on me, and had fought before.

The wretched little monster never showed the slightest sign of remorse. In one of those scenes all too typical of schools everywhere, we were reunited in the counselor's office after the fight and forced to apologize to one another. I was still rattled, and I felt kind of bad for losing control. I'd scared myself. I apologized, saying basically "I'm sorry that happened." And I was. I still am.

His apology was perfunctory, delivered in a thick mutter while he refused to even look at me. He might as well have slapped me in the face. He didn't care, would never care, wasn't sorry. Was incapable of it.

Monster.

He should have been expelled for what he'd done. It wasn't the first time he'd been in a fight. He was only suspended for a couple of weeks. I stayed home for a couple of days with a concussion.

Yes. A fucking concussion. I had head x-rays and everything, was dizzy and sick and in a lot of pain.

A police officer came to take my report, but did my parents press charges? No. They should have. They really should. And I'm still pissed off that they didn't. Aren't your parents supposed to go to bat for you? So I learned I couldn't trust them, either. I was completely alone in the world.

To make things worse, after the fight a lot of kids harassed me. Apparently the vile little urchin had been popular with the other dung-raking sub-intellectuals, leading them to feel that they all had to let me know their opinion.

Some got belligerent. I simply asked if they wanted more of what I'd given him. I may have lost that fight, but I held him off for a long time, and I daresay he felt it the next day. None of his fellow brats wanted a piece of that action, and they backed off pretty quick when I made it obvious I was not afraid of them. I still got some mouthy remarks, but after a while things were quieter. People messed with me less. They honestly thought I was crazy.

And by then, I was. Something had gotten ticked over in my brain, a switch that hadn't been flipped before was suddenly slammed closed. I was capable of violence. I hadn't known that before. I hadn't known how good it would feel. They never tell you that. Ever. That it feels really fucking good to hurt someone you hate. And maybe in whatever spoon-fed, cotton-padded, safe-word world most people live in, it doesn't, but in my world (the world most humans and all animals live in), it most definitely does.

I, a gentle, shy girl, a pacifist for fuck's sake, went from quiet introversion to sick seclusion. I, who had been told my whole life that violence solves nothing, started carrying knives to school. I had seen that violence was the only solution, because it was only after I'd lost my shit completely that the other kids gave me even a modicum of respect. I became downright mean, like a teased animal.

I read everything I could about ways to kill, ways to torture. I imagined, someday, that I would catch Albert alone. I had the most vivid and distracting fantasies of what I would do to him. Some were incredibly elaborate, but the most satisfying were simple. Beating him in the skull with a leather-wrapped lead pipe half-full of buckshot until his eyeballs shot out like ping-pong balls. That one was popular.

Other girls fantasize about boy bands and movie stars. I fantasized about eviscerating him and hanging lead weights from his innards, then beating him with a baseball bat so he'd run in circles (his right foot was nailed to the floor) until he tripped over his own guts.

My only comfort was that odds were vastly against him ever making anything of himself, and that he probably would live a miserable life.

I'd be quite happy if I found out he'd been arrested and imprisoned, hopefully wrongfully, and for a good, long time. Thinking of him in misery pleases me deeply, in a way that simply beating the snot out of him probably wouldn't.

I can see now that he was very insecure, and I know that he probably had an atrocious home life. He was a low-income black male whose family, according to the school counselor, just didn't care. Yet if I spit in a handkerchief, I could have drowned my sympathy for him in it. I did not, and do not, care. Was the fact that he came from a family of hateful jerks supposed to make me feel sorry for him? Was I supposed to have sympathy for him just because his own family hated him?

I understand, also, that he was probably not normally so violent (punching is one thing, head-bashing is another). My incredibly violent reaction probably prompted him to beat my head into the floor in a desperate attempt to keep me down. He was probably scared. That doesn't make it okay.

I understand, too, that the kids who stood around, watching, were probably just scared to intervene. Piss on them, the lickspittle little cowards. Knowing bad shit is going down and doing nothing may not make you as guilty as the bastards who are doing it, but it does make your hands fucking dirty, and there's no way you can ever pretend it washes off. It doesn't – and I should know. I've been one of the bystanders, and I still feel fucking terrible about it.

My parents . . . that part I don't understand. I never will. They were supposed to protect me. They didn't.

I don't know what was going through their heads, but I think they thought that bullying and fighting was normal. I don't think they understood how hurt and betrayed I felt about the whole thing.

Is it any wonder I still resent my parents a little for inflicting that on me? Is it any wonder that after two years of daily teasing, I dug my heels in and refused to go back to school? I threatened to kill myself if they made me, and it wasn't an idle threat.

Did I get therapy? Don't make me laugh. Counseling at my school was pretty much limited to "How do you feel?"

"Like shit."

"Great. Get back to class. You're so smart, you should get straight A's."

"Blow me."

"Have some detention."

How did I feel about it? Betrayed. Fucking betrayed. It should never have happened. There should have been teachers in the room. One of the other kids should have spoken up. My parents should have pressed charges. The police should have taken the little shit into custody. Sure, it could be argued that I shouldn't have confronted him, but if I didn't, who was going to? Nobody would have cared about my drawing, beyond saying "That's too bad." I would've been expected to swallow it, like I swallowed everything else that happened to me at school. I couldn't abide it. I had to do something.

In trying not to be a victim of bullying, I just got the crap beat out of me.

Am I supposed to forgive him? What am I supposed to say? "I'm sorry to have been beaten into a concussion, but, hey, I understand?" That dog won't hunt. I can grow up, move on, I can have understanding, but the little girl in pain is still there inside me, and she will never forgive him. Never.

I want to state for the record that I am trying to forgive him, but it's hard. I've been trying for fourteen years, and haven't managed it.

You can spout all the friendly bullshit you want about forgiveness being a gift you give yourself, relieving you of the burden of it, and it may be true, but the simple truth is that I just don't feel it yet. To me, it is good and right that he be hated for what he did. I can't be sure anyone else hates him, so . . . if you want something done right, do it yourself.

People talk about forgiveness like it's easy – a free-love hug-fest where everyone lays down their burdens of anger and grief and capers through the dew under the moonlight. It isn't like that. I can lay down my anger at those who have wronged me – and Albert was only the first of many – for an hour, a day, a week at a time. But when I chance to think on what they did again, I become angry again.

I can't forgive as long as I'm still angry.

I learned from it, at least. I learned how to hate, how not to trust. How friends, school, teachers, parents, the system itself, all can fail you, and all at once. In retrospect, I don't think I've trusted authority figures with anything serious ever since then.

Bitter lessons.

It could have been far more unpleasant. I feel stupid, sometimes, for not being able to forgive the little fuckstain. After all, there are Auschwitz survivors who have forgiven those who tormented them. Who am I to hold a grudge? Answer: I am human. Only that. And more human, I think, than he ever was.

My rambling point, in all this?

I want you to know it still hurts, even fourteen years later.

I want you to know that I am a person shaped by anger as much as by love, by hate as much as by friendship, and by betrayal as much as by solace.

I want you to know what happened to me, so that just maybe you will understand a little better how people can be permanently scarred by things that other people consider trivial. And so that you can see how a routine bullying (if there can or should ever be said to be such a thing) can be made horrific by circumstance – the abandonment of peers and parents. You never, ever know how bad it was for an individual, until you know the whole story. And even what I've laid out here does not begin to scratch the surface of the daily hell my existence was at that point.

In short, talk all you want about overcoming it, and moving on. Talk about adversity making you a better person – I'm stronger, but not really better than I was. But don't act like that makes it okay that these things happen. Don't for one minute believe that it's all okay, or that forgiveness comes quickly, or that it's even possible in every case. Don't act like it's the victim's fault that they're hurt and angry, and all they should do is "let go." Yes, they would probably feel much better if they did, but they are entitled to feel any goddamn way they please about it, and telling them otherwise only makes the anger harder and more bitter.

If you were bullied, you ought to know that you own your feelings, no matter how destructive, dangerous, or frowned-upon they are. And you are entitled to them. There is a grave dignity in your anger, and not weakness, as some would have you believe. Yes, your ultimate vengeance is in survival; those who bullied you are probably too far away for your rage to ever reach them. But it's all right to be angry, still, if you need to be, if you aren't ready to forgive. All that anger may very well do you more harm than good, but you know that already, and so I will never tell you that you should let it go. It's okay if your anger is precious to you. I can respect that. Mine is precious to me, too. And, all things considered, I don't think it hurts me.

If you were bullied and have forgiven, or even just moved on, don't forget that many of us haven't, or can't. No matter how small the hurt seems to you now, to us, ours are not. In time, I hope we will move on, each of us. Some of us even wish we could do it right now, but we aren't sure how. The path is unique for each of us. If we ask for advice, give it to us. If we don't, then be a friend, but don't push us along; it won't help and you'll lose us as friends. You should know, too, that I admire you. Some things I have been able to forgive, and I agree, it is a strong, powerful feeling to abandon the fury and let simple strength take its place.

If you were one who simply stood by, your crime is small, but no less a crime. By not stepping up, you became one of Them. The faceless masses who don't care, and for whom we who suffered hold eternal loathing. We don't know each and every one of you, even though sometimes we stood among you, looking on as others were tormented even as we were tortured in turn. I can't forgive you any more than I can forgive myself for not acting when I could have. I don't hate you for it, but it still hurts a lot.

If you were never bullied, don't tell us how we ought to feel about what was done to us. Nobody should ever tell someone who was hurt how they should feel, but those who have never been hurt have even less room to stand than most. You can be our friends, and we'll love you, but don't judge how we feel, no matter how crazy, hurtful, or illogical it seems.

And, last, if you were a bully, you ought to know that what you did, no matter how inconsequential you thought it was, did matter, it did hurt like blazes, and it is remembered. We may forgive, but we don't ever forget. Ever. We will remember your staring faces, your laughter, your cruel hands, when we cannot even clearly remember our own wedding vows. I speak from icy experience.

We will remember your names and speak them with yellow, snake-toothed venom when the names of our teachers and friends are fading flavors on an old woman's tongue. Some of those you tormented may find their way to forgiveness, but most don't. It may be their own stubborn fault they can't lay down their piss-off long enough to find their way out of the forest, even after so many years, but never, ever forget that you are the one who sent them in there to begin with. I hope your conscience weighs heavy as molten lead, and burns you in the night like Heracles' cloak, soaked in Nessus' poison blood. And I would like to bitterly thank you all. We have to learn to hate, just as we have to learn to love.

Pretentious of me to say all this? Maybe. But I have to say these words for myself, if no-one else. Because, as I learned long ago, nobody else is going to speak for me.

Now you know. Did I live? Yes. Am I stronger? Yes. A better person? Not unless it makes you "better" to have learned cruelty and felt betrayal. Is it okay? No. It probably never will be. Learning to fear and hate other human beings is not something that becomes okay.

DISCLAIMER: This is a very, very hard topic to write about. Anyone who posts a comment to the effect of "you should forgive him" or "you should let go of your anger" will be flamed, frozen, and then banned, absolutely zero exceptions, and absolutely zero warnings. I know I need to find a way to let go. I'd love to be able to do it, and I'm working on it. I know you probably only want to help. You don't know me well enough to do it.

Also: If you're looking for a place to recount in detail your own stories of bullying or violence done to you, please ask yourself how relevant it is. I do care, but I don't want to read anything else triggering right now. No detail please, thanks.

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