Fragile: Handle With Care
I am doing something different today. I am choosing to expand upon a previous entry (The Pretty Girl), taking it down a different road to explore, not only the feelings of the unpretty me of that piece, but to delve deeper into the psyche of the pre-teen and teen-aged female. I am using a personal experience to better illustrate it.
It would be typical of our society to peg our male offspring as the aggressors and our females as the passive – Dogs and snails and sugar and spice and all that. However, any girl who has survived junior high school unscathed is able to say that she either witnessed aggressive, cruel physical or mental bullying, participated in it, or was a victim of it herself.
When I was growing up, we did not have the benefit (or onslaught – depending on how you see it) of talk show hosts we have now to bring issues such as girl-on-girl bullying right into our living rooms. We did not have this lead-in and so we could not find a ladylike way to bring it to the dinner table for discussion.
I know that while I endured some of the most vicious attacks by girls at my school, I could not have gone home and pulled the word Bully out of a hat to explain it to my parents. And why would I? Doing that would lead to more of the same, I deduced.
All I knew was that when I came back from my hospital ordeal, girls who once were friends and others who didn’t know me from a hole in the wall suddenly felt compelled to beat me down for their own amusement. Now by “beat me down” I mean both physically and emotionally. I understand today that what happened to me was indeed a very serious case of bullying and that, given any additional opportunities, that same group of girls could really have caused me permanent damage at some point or another. What I get now is that being different made me the target.
For a preteen girl, many things seem life altering, overwhelming, insurmountable and just plain unfair. However, the truth is that the changes that took place for me were indeed life altering. The changes became the difference between being a semi-popular girl with friends to being a near pariah with many enemies.
God only knows what was going on inside my body with the high steroid levels I was taking. However, my concern lay elsewhere. It was mainly superficial.
Within days of starting the meds, my appearance began to change drastically and not in a good way. My face swelled up overnight to twice its size and was weirdly round and plump. To the touch, it was spongy. You could poke my cheek and see the skin re-inflate in slow motion. It was not Shirley Temple cute, either. It was just ugly. All of a sudden, I retained water like a camel and started eating like a horse. I grew an actual hump behind my neck, known in medical circles as a prednisone effect. Hair fell from my head in thick clumps and hair grew on my face, arms and legs like a man. Unlike the much primped, manicured, pedicured, waxed and fake-baked girls of today, I had never even heard of waxing; so scratch that idea from your head. Add a case of acne to the mix and you have the perfect recipe to pretty much end any budding adolescent’s social life in a split second. Mine was D.O.A.
Blame it on my complete naïveté, but I really had no concept of how events would play out when I went back to school. In my mind, though the mirrors in my home did not lie, I thought I could just go back and blend in like a regular sixth grader. Blending into the background in relative anonymity was extremely important to me, now that I was losing control of my life.
However, I would never again find the semi-comforting place I had known before becoming ill. Instead, I returned into a hostile and scary environment, which I was grossly ill equipped to deal with. School quickly changed for me. I knew it on that first day back. It ceased to be the place I went to so I could learn. It became a place where, around any given corner in any hallway on any floor, I could be up against a gang of Mean Girls ready to pounce on me.
***SIDE BAR*** If I could explain the extent to which I related to the movie, Mean Girls, I could make you understand how real it all truly is!
The hints of brewing trouble were there, though I tried to ignore them. I held my head up and pretended none of it was bothering me. When the boys would look me right in my face and say: “You look really disgusting. Are you going to die?” I secretly wished I could die right on the spot.
It was the first time we students had to change classrooms between periods, instead of having one teacher all day. Dealing with that alone was drastic for me. Elementary school was a distant memory now.
Someone with too much time on his or her hands made it a point to figure out where I sat during every class to play a dirty joke on me. Therefore, at every single desk each period, when I sat to begin another class an amateur cartoonish face that reflected my sad new appearance stared back at me. I could see them today as clearly as I did on those days when the pools of tears that began to build in my eyes blurred the images.
Purely for amusement, I am a cartoon: Drawn on a desk - a fat, round face with dark dots resembling my acne and missing bits of hair. It is all carefully drawn with bits of hair on my face, chin and neck. I would have to sit at my assigned seat staring at these drawings all day long.
The plain and simple reason for all the aggression and the taunting was that they did not understand, or want to understand, what was happening to me. Try to picture the Incredible Hulk. David Banner, a relatively attractive guy, gets angry and goes into a frightening transformation that makes him look hideous, at best. My transformation while not as quick or fickle as his was, still was enough for the kids in my grade and other grades to look at me and think: ‘What is happening to her?’
What was happening to me was that medicine had taken over my body and was creating an outer shell that was, in the eyes of my grade mates, less than appealing and (Gasp!) very different. What they did not know is that while my outer shell transformed, my inner self remained the same girl, still desperately yearning to fit in and have friends.
However, my truth was evident. I was different and different is as bad a crime as anything in junior high school. I mean let’s face it, it is a crime at any level in school, but there is something about that time between little girl and potentially pregnant adolescent that makes kids – girls in particular - equally vulnerable and capable of immense cruelty.
While the drawings were hard to swallow, the whispers and jokes at my expense were almost enough to make me want to commit suicide. I contemplated that often times between the ages of 11 and 18. Yet, not even all of that was enough. I was threatened with physical harm in person and in bathroom wall scribblings. I most vividly remember the one that said: “We’re kicking Fat Face’s ass today at 3 by the mini school.” The “we” in that statement did not identify herself, but I had a pretty good idea who I was dealing with. I also feared that anyone who read that would show up to hoot, holler, and add fuel to that already festering fire.
I wanted to vomit.
At 3 p.m. exactly, I ran to a bathroom on the second floor of the main building. I found an empty stall. I went in, closed the door, hung my book bag on the hook, crossed my legs over the toilet seat (so my feet would not dangle and be seen) and I prayed. I must have fallen asleep because next thing I knew I felt cold and wet. I woke up to realize the heel of my sneaker had slipped a little into the toilet bowl and gotten wet. I was cramped trying to get out of that position and noticed that the light coming through the bathroom window had diminished. It is safe now, I thought. I can go home in cover of darkness. The school was almost empty when I snuck out a side door. I saw a janitor mopping the hall in front of the auditorium and nothing else. I ran home, hard as it was for me to do then, I just ran.
They did not get me that day, but they were determined. About a week later, when I thought things were simmering down, they chased me after school across 37th avenue and jumped me in front of a building of this nice girl named Sunni Conklin. One of them stole the watch my Dad had purchased from Bulova – his job at the time. Sunni ultimately saved me. She came out with a large German Shepard and shooed them away. I guess I should have let her help me, but turmoil of humiliation, rage and depression prevented me from accepting any help. I sat in the bushes in front of her building scraped up and crying, as she and her dog went back inside.
Now not only had I been beaten up and left there, but my watch was gone, the contents of my book bag were strewn all through 37th avenue and I was late to pick up my brother from his school. I guess I was very late because he wandered upwards toward where he assumed I would be. I will be surprised if he can remember this, as he recalls nothing, this boy, but he found me. I had scraped, bloodied knees, my lip was bleeding, my clothes were dirty and I was crying. When I saw him coming I stood up quickly and tried to straighten myself out. I guess part of me was protective and did not want to scare him. I could tell from his look that he was rendered speechless. I hastily grabbed whatever books and papers – my loose-leaf notebook was in shreds all over, so I lost all my notes – and I grabbed his hand and walked home. All the way, I threatened him: “Don’t say anything to Mami or Papi, or I will kill you.” I guess kids do learn what they live because here I was a victim of bullying, turning right around and doing some bullying of my own.
Well, there was not much that you could hide from my mother. This incident was no different. Even as she was turning the key to the apartment door, it is as if she could smell a problem. She interrogated me until I came clean. I showed her my scraped knees and my lip that I had carefully covered in her foundation and some lipstick. I gasped, gulped, and wept through snots as I explained it all. I had an immense amount of shame.
When my Dad came home, all the rest of what was going on spilled out. I had it all in me – the taunts, the threats, the terror, and the anger. They showed up at my school the next day, with my cousin Jackie as a translator, to demand action be taken. If you can believe this, when my parents said that the attackers should be suspended, Mr. Yudell, our Assistant Principal, actually said it would be easier and more logical to take me out (remove me) from the situation than it would be for him to suspended all of those “young ladies.” I remember recoiling when he said young ladies. It was as if he slapped me across the face. The young ladies who almost killed me? They should be allowed to stay and go on about their lives and I should be punished and pulled out of there? Ok, sure, that’s makes a shitload of sense.
Feeling defeated, my parents opted for another route to dealing with the issue at hand. A school secretary, hearing the entire goings on, suggested that they inquire about having me home schooled by the state. She said it would be simple for me because of my medical condition. We applied and – big shocker – I was an acceptable candidate.
That is how I ended up home schooled thrice weekly with a wacky teacher who was more entertainment than instructional. I did this for the rest of the sixth grade and part of the seventh. I was so depressed and angry all the time, but looking back now I know for sure that in making this decision, my parents saved me from what I think was down the road for me. These girls were no joke and had I been left in that environment, it would have reached a point of no return.
While I understand that my situation is an extreme of bullying among girls, I think it is still a good illustration of the extent and level to which these ‘young ladies’ can take the teasing. I cannot fathom being a young teen today and going through this on the scale to which it has escalated – via Internet IMs and emails.
Do not be deceived by their soft exterior! Girls, like boys, can become excessively evil, given a chance to. In our YouTube age, where anything is fodder for entertainment, you can find ‘young ladies’ of any age proudly displaying their rage and abuse on a classmate, and filming it all, for good measure.
It would be typical of our society to peg our male offspring as the aggressors and our females as the passive – Dogs and snails and sugar and spice and all that. However, any girl who has survived junior high school unscathed is able to say that she either witnessed aggressive, cruel physical or mental bullying, participated in it, or was a victim of it herself.
When I was growing up, we did not have the benefit (or onslaught – depending on how you see it) of talk show hosts we have now to bring issues such as girl-on-girl bullying right into our living rooms. We did not have this lead-in and so we could not find a ladylike way to bring it to the dinner table for discussion.
I know that while I endured some of the most vicious attacks by girls at my school, I could not have gone home and pulled the word Bully out of a hat to explain it to my parents. And why would I? Doing that would lead to more of the same, I deduced.
All I knew was that when I came back from my hospital ordeal, girls who once were friends and others who didn’t know me from a hole in the wall suddenly felt compelled to beat me down for their own amusement. Now by “beat me down” I mean both physically and emotionally. I understand today that what happened to me was indeed a very serious case of bullying and that, given any additional opportunities, that same group of girls could really have caused me permanent damage at some point or another. What I get now is that being different made me the target.
For a preteen girl, many things seem life altering, overwhelming, insurmountable and just plain unfair. However, the truth is that the changes that took place for me were indeed life altering. The changes became the difference between being a semi-popular girl with friends to being a near pariah with many enemies.
God only knows what was going on inside my body with the high steroid levels I was taking. However, my concern lay elsewhere. It was mainly superficial.
Within days of starting the meds, my appearance began to change drastically and not in a good way. My face swelled up overnight to twice its size and was weirdly round and plump. To the touch, it was spongy. You could poke my cheek and see the skin re-inflate in slow motion. It was not Shirley Temple cute, either. It was just ugly. All of a sudden, I retained water like a camel and started eating like a horse. I grew an actual hump behind my neck, known in medical circles as a prednisone effect. Hair fell from my head in thick clumps and hair grew on my face, arms and legs like a man. Unlike the much primped, manicured, pedicured, waxed and fake-baked girls of today, I had never even heard of waxing; so scratch that idea from your head. Add a case of acne to the mix and you have the perfect recipe to pretty much end any budding adolescent’s social life in a split second. Mine was D.O.A.
Blame it on my complete naïveté, but I really had no concept of how events would play out when I went back to school. In my mind, though the mirrors in my home did not lie, I thought I could just go back and blend in like a regular sixth grader. Blending into the background in relative anonymity was extremely important to me, now that I was losing control of my life.
However, I would never again find the semi-comforting place I had known before becoming ill. Instead, I returned into a hostile and scary environment, which I was grossly ill equipped to deal with. School quickly changed for me. I knew it on that first day back. It ceased to be the place I went to so I could learn. It became a place where, around any given corner in any hallway on any floor, I could be up against a gang of Mean Girls ready to pounce on me.
***SIDE BAR*** If I could explain the extent to which I related to the movie, Mean Girls, I could make you understand how real it all truly is!
The hints of brewing trouble were there, though I tried to ignore them. I held my head up and pretended none of it was bothering me. When the boys would look me right in my face and say: “You look really disgusting. Are you going to die?” I secretly wished I could die right on the spot.
It was the first time we students had to change classrooms between periods, instead of having one teacher all day. Dealing with that alone was drastic for me. Elementary school was a distant memory now.
Someone with too much time on his or her hands made it a point to figure out where I sat during every class to play a dirty joke on me. Therefore, at every single desk each period, when I sat to begin another class an amateur cartoonish face that reflected my sad new appearance stared back at me. I could see them today as clearly as I did on those days when the pools of tears that began to build in my eyes blurred the images.
Purely for amusement, I am a cartoon: Drawn on a desk - a fat, round face with dark dots resembling my acne and missing bits of hair. It is all carefully drawn with bits of hair on my face, chin and neck. I would have to sit at my assigned seat staring at these drawings all day long.
The plain and simple reason for all the aggression and the taunting was that they did not understand, or want to understand, what was happening to me. Try to picture the Incredible Hulk. David Banner, a relatively attractive guy, gets angry and goes into a frightening transformation that makes him look hideous, at best. My transformation while not as quick or fickle as his was, still was enough for the kids in my grade and other grades to look at me and think: ‘What is happening to her?’
What was happening to me was that medicine had taken over my body and was creating an outer shell that was, in the eyes of my grade mates, less than appealing and (Gasp!) very different. What they did not know is that while my outer shell transformed, my inner self remained the same girl, still desperately yearning to fit in and have friends.
However, my truth was evident. I was different and different is as bad a crime as anything in junior high school. I mean let’s face it, it is a crime at any level in school, but there is something about that time between little girl and potentially pregnant adolescent that makes kids – girls in particular - equally vulnerable and capable of immense cruelty.
While the drawings were hard to swallow, the whispers and jokes at my expense were almost enough to make me want to commit suicide. I contemplated that often times between the ages of 11 and 18. Yet, not even all of that was enough. I was threatened with physical harm in person and in bathroom wall scribblings. I most vividly remember the one that said: “We’re kicking Fat Face’s ass today at 3 by the mini school.” The “we” in that statement did not identify herself, but I had a pretty good idea who I was dealing with. I also feared that anyone who read that would show up to hoot, holler, and add fuel to that already festering fire.
I wanted to vomit.
At 3 p.m. exactly, I ran to a bathroom on the second floor of the main building. I found an empty stall. I went in, closed the door, hung my book bag on the hook, crossed my legs over the toilet seat (so my feet would not dangle and be seen) and I prayed. I must have fallen asleep because next thing I knew I felt cold and wet. I woke up to realize the heel of my sneaker had slipped a little into the toilet bowl and gotten wet. I was cramped trying to get out of that position and noticed that the light coming through the bathroom window had diminished. It is safe now, I thought. I can go home in cover of darkness. The school was almost empty when I snuck out a side door. I saw a janitor mopping the hall in front of the auditorium and nothing else. I ran home, hard as it was for me to do then, I just ran.
They did not get me that day, but they were determined. About a week later, when I thought things were simmering down, they chased me after school across 37th avenue and jumped me in front of a building of this nice girl named Sunni Conklin. One of them stole the watch my Dad had purchased from Bulova – his job at the time. Sunni ultimately saved me. She came out with a large German Shepard and shooed them away. I guess I should have let her help me, but turmoil of humiliation, rage and depression prevented me from accepting any help. I sat in the bushes in front of her building scraped up and crying, as she and her dog went back inside.
Now not only had I been beaten up and left there, but my watch was gone, the contents of my book bag were strewn all through 37th avenue and I was late to pick up my brother from his school. I guess I was very late because he wandered upwards toward where he assumed I would be. I will be surprised if he can remember this, as he recalls nothing, this boy, but he found me. I had scraped, bloodied knees, my lip was bleeding, my clothes were dirty and I was crying. When I saw him coming I stood up quickly and tried to straighten myself out. I guess part of me was protective and did not want to scare him. I could tell from his look that he was rendered speechless. I hastily grabbed whatever books and papers – my loose-leaf notebook was in shreds all over, so I lost all my notes – and I grabbed his hand and walked home. All the way, I threatened him: “Don’t say anything to Mami or Papi, or I will kill you.” I guess kids do learn what they live because here I was a victim of bullying, turning right around and doing some bullying of my own.
Well, there was not much that you could hide from my mother. This incident was no different. Even as she was turning the key to the apartment door, it is as if she could smell a problem. She interrogated me until I came clean. I showed her my scraped knees and my lip that I had carefully covered in her foundation and some lipstick. I gasped, gulped, and wept through snots as I explained it all. I had an immense amount of shame.
When my Dad came home, all the rest of what was going on spilled out. I had it all in me – the taunts, the threats, the terror, and the anger. They showed up at my school the next day, with my cousin Jackie as a translator, to demand action be taken. If you can believe this, when my parents said that the attackers should be suspended, Mr. Yudell, our Assistant Principal, actually said it would be easier and more logical to take me out (remove me) from the situation than it would be for him to suspended all of those “young ladies.” I remember recoiling when he said young ladies. It was as if he slapped me across the face. The young ladies who almost killed me? They should be allowed to stay and go on about their lives and I should be punished and pulled out of there? Ok, sure, that’s makes a shitload of sense.
Feeling defeated, my parents opted for another route to dealing with the issue at hand. A school secretary, hearing the entire goings on, suggested that they inquire about having me home schooled by the state. She said it would be simple for me because of my medical condition. We applied and – big shocker – I was an acceptable candidate.
That is how I ended up home schooled thrice weekly with a wacky teacher who was more entertainment than instructional. I did this for the rest of the sixth grade and part of the seventh. I was so depressed and angry all the time, but looking back now I know for sure that in making this decision, my parents saved me from what I think was down the road for me. These girls were no joke and had I been left in that environment, it would have reached a point of no return.
While I understand that my situation is an extreme of bullying among girls, I think it is still a good illustration of the extent and level to which these ‘young ladies’ can take the teasing. I cannot fathom being a young teen today and going through this on the scale to which it has escalated – via Internet IMs and emails.
Do not be deceived by their soft exterior! Girls, like boys, can become excessively evil, given a chance to. In our YouTube age, where anything is fodder for entertainment, you can find ‘young ladies’ of any age proudly displaying their rage and abuse on a classmate, and filming it all, for good measure.
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