Being bullied can harden people.
Close them off, toughen them up-all the words that you would associate with a ‘resting
bitch face’. I have one. I was bullied. I wasn’t blameless. But there you go, I
let it happen to me. And while I let it happen to me, I must have participated
in it too-I can’t say.
There is a strange feeling of
power that comes with bullying someone while you’re being bullied too. When the
bullies, just for a moment, allow you to enter their sacred circle, allow you
to laugh with them, they treat you as an equal-what is, after all better than a
community for someone who only knows loneliness? Maybe that’s why bullies bully
too. I am not defending the act of bullying. I am only talking about what it
was like for me.
A little pause for context, before
I push ahead. I thought I’d write this after having finished Cat’s Eye,
by Margaret Atwood. Much like her writing in Blind Assassin, the writing in Cat’s Eye is dark, abrupt, and, at times, chilling. Two strong themes that
reeled me in, right from the beginning, were: the older brother angle, and the
being bullied angle.
When she talks about how alone
she was, how easily frightened she was by her friends and by the sheer thought
of calling them out on their behaviour-I am rudely yanked back to a past that I
am encouraged, repeatedly, to forget. A past I haven’t quite been able to move
past entirely-I still worry about what people will think of me, I still worry
about what will happen if suddenly, all the adults decided to give me a new nickname.
A lot of this might seem like a
sob-story. I must have been taking little, fun pranks of adolescence far too
seriously. All this happened over a decade ago, while I was class monitor,
writing down names on the board and being the best ally to the teachers that I
could be-because I saw them as my only friends. Telling on my classmates could
have given me that name-sure. Changing allegiances could have given me that
name-sure. Trying to hit a class mate friend because I misunderstood our dynamic
could have given me that name-sure. Maybe there were other things too-other
things that I was doing wrong.
I have not been a good friend all
the time, I understand this. I am not a person who was entirely wronged, I can
find a way to see that too. Perhaps there were some who thought I deserved a nickname for things that I had done. I remember awful things that I have done,
for which I am still regretful, for which I have sought forgiveness. But I
cannot speak to all of those other terrible things. Perhaps that’s selfish-to
only remember the wrongs that were inflicted on me, but none of the harm that I
unleashed upon others. I wish there were a reflection of me that I could see, to
borrow Atwood’s idea from Cat’s Eye. I wish there were a reflection of me that
could somehow make me think that I deserved the thoughts that little Elaine,
from Cat’s Eye had too.
I began to be afraid of the book,
as I read the bullying bits. I thought I would find a dark place in my mind and
burrow my way into it, into silence. But that hasn’t happened. I used to be
uncomfortable when my friends agreed that I was bullied in school. And I even
resisted help from a friend who saw evidence of my thoughts. The
book has changed me. I will admit freely now. I was bullied. And after all this
time of living sloppily in denial, I will find a way to move past it. I will
find a way to stop being scared. I was bullied. But I will move past it.
