It's Personal

     There has been a lot of press on the subject of bullying lately and for the longest time I thought how horrible it was that kids are bullied to the point of hopelessness and suicide. My heart breaks a little with every such report.  In my mind, being a kid and feeling hopeless should never meet.  Don't get me wrong, I remember a scant few instances of teen suicide back in the late 70's when I was young, but we didn't talk about it.  Not really.
     Mistakenly I had a very narrow view of what bullying is and my view always had the victim being physically battered or having his or her physical well-being threatened. My views changed when I started reading the stories of relentless ridicule especially to gay teens who were committing suicide; at least their stories were getting the press.  Again, my heart breaks a little with each one. It both saddens me that these kids feel there is no other way to escape but death; At the same time it angers me that other kids are so mean. If that is not enough it simultaneously infuriates me that there are no adults in these kids' lives putting a stop to it.
    I started reading blog posts about the subject and the stories themselves, though compelling, sometimes paled in comparison to the individuals who were moved to reply with their own experiences.  The people replying, some of them barely out of their teens, still trying to make a life for themselves as adults were relaying stories of insidious bullying that had nothing to do with being battered with fists and everything to do with being battered with words. Sometimes those words came quietly.  These young adults talked about how those words affected them and how they continue to be affected by them years later.  They talk of how despite their best mental fortitude they slowly began to change from their authentic selves into twisted versions based on relentless bombardment of name-calling and the cruel descriptive images. Some victims changed from outgoing to reserved and some... some changed into the forms of what they were continually, relentlessly, though falsely, told they were.
     It was reading about this verbal bullying that caused me to stop dead in my tracks and look behind me, look decades behind me and review with new eyes what I experienced, how I chose to cope with it and how 40+ years later it was all still in my head and affecting who I am. The words of others repeated over and over again for nine years of my youth set up an ugly image inside me of what I am and how others must perceive me. Those messages were internalized and over time became beliefs.  The mind creates what it believes: What we deeply believe ourselves to be is exactly what our brain causes us to become.
     In third grade it started with a crush. I had my first little crush on the boy who sat in front of me. Even back then I would say what I felt and though I don't remember how I communicated my adoration, the message got through. The recipient however recoiled from the message and fought back by giving me my first nickname: Turkey.  At first I was notably upset by this name and I remember telling my mother about it.  She said what parents did back in the 60's. So I heard all the cliches, "Oh, don't believe what he says. He's just being a boy."  "It's only words. Pay no attention."  "Just ignore him and he'll stop." They were platitudes. I remember taking it a lot more seriously than my mother did, but I got my marching orders so it was never mentioned again. The name caught on with boys and girls alike and I was known as Turkey until the end of grammar school. That was three years.
     Although the name hurt me, and thinking of it now 45 years later I can still feel the twinge that hearing it caused, it taught me some coping skills back then. I turned it into something funny, which gave my classmates and perhaps myself the illusion that I was above it and in control of the situation. There was no way I would let them think they had power over me.  In fact, it turned into a daily recess game of "If I could catch him, I could kiss him," which pitted the boys against the girls in a very serious game of hiding, spying and revealing, all while running. There was lots and lots of running... and running was not my strong suit. In fact, my running fueled the fire when it came to calling me Turkey.  So did holidays where turkey was served. The jabbing and the jokes reached a fevered pitch then.  It was personal.  I was being compared to a farm animal, a fatted up one that gets consumed and the carcass thrown away. Even a child understands that metaphor and it was very, very personal. But I laughed first and loudest. No one was going to get the best of me... at least not to their knowledge.
     By the time I was in 5th grade, the boy on whom I had this crush was not the least bit interesting to me and by the end of that school year I had a new crush. This time I kept it to myself. I kept it to myself over a couple of years as my secret feelings grew.  I kept silent until 8th grade, the second year of Junior High School. It was then that I let the cat out of the bag. After a year and a half of sitting as close to him as possible on the bus and interacting in silly girly ways, I finally said something.  Of course I did not tell him directly. No, I shared my feelings with a friend who would do some reconnaissance to determine if he liked me back. He did not. Surprise! Surprise!
     Well, in 8th grade secrets are not kept very long and the news got back to the object of my affection and he immediately turned it into a joke. He turned ME into a joke. How could he possibly like me, he stated. He could he ever like me! I was fat! That was personal. Looking back at pictures I can see that it was not  at all true.  Back then however, it felt very true. After all, it confirmed all of the years of being Turkey.  But this time the sting was stronger... more visceral... more poisonous. Again, I laughed first and loudest. I accepted his daily jabs with a "Bring it on" attitude. I pretended that the attention he gave me meant the opposite of the message it brought. I appeared impervious to his taunts and teases which were often accompanied by just as cruel insults delivered by his ever present best friend.  Still, I sat as close to him as I could. Still, I maintained my adoration.  I was good at hiding my hurt feelings. I got so good at it, I hid them even from me... and I laughed.
     By 9th grade my laughter egged him on and he started putting real effort into his ridicule. He started to take popular songs and rewrite the lyrics so that they were musical insults about me. Sometimes he did just the chorus, sometimes a verse too and sometimes he would rewrite entire songs. He would sing them to me in the back of the bus. He would write new ones regularly and refine ones he had already done to make them more and more hurtful. It was personal... and I laughed. Sometimes he would call me and sing them to me over the phone. Once he changed the the lyrics to Tom Jones' Pussycat, Pussycat and he left the lines "Pussycat, Pussycat I love you, yes I do" intact and that was all I heard. The scathing attacks on my physical appearance and character melted away and held on to that one line in the innocent adolescent hope that it was the truth.
     One day, he sat on the bus with a new creation of which he was very proud. This one I remember: It was personal. He took the entirety of Paul and Linda McCartney's song Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey, all 4 minutes and 49 seconds worth and he changed every single word into the penultimate work of tawdry insult. He debuted his masterpiece in the back of the bus one morning.  Now mind you when he sang these things it was not in a hushed tone just for me. Oh no. He was more than happy to share his efforts with whomever wished to hear, and laugh. I can still see his face and hear him sing, "You're so ugly, Lori [My last name]. You're so ugly that I think I'm gonna shit. You're so ugly, Lori [My last name] and I think it's because you don't have any tits..."  That was personal! ... and I laughed.
     One would think that after being the object of such debasement any leftover feelings of attraction would wane and disappear, but adolescence is a time of great personal irony. Several months later upon graduating from  Junior High School after 9th grade, I had a graduation party.  It was there that this boy gave me my first grown-up kiss. My diary states that it lasted about 3 minutes and 45 seconds, the timing of which was derived from the length of the song during which it occurred. Now , as an adult, I know he did not deserve the honor of my first kiss. Sadly and perhaps even sickly I continued to pine over this ASS for at least another year, until our high school paths diverged.  But I never forgot. I remembered his insults and I remembered those songs... I remembered that song. I am sorry that I remember that much, and thankful that I remember no more. In fact, typing it out just now produced a palpable and all too familiar wave of hurt and self-loathing. It was personal... It IS personal... and it contributed to shaping me.

... continues

In the continuation, I will discuss how these experiences were factors in shaping my adult life, how I moved on in spite of them and how recent introspection revealed how in one very basic aspect they still haunt me. Perhaps as I shed these thoughts and share their insight, I can once and for all rid myself of the effects of my experiences and their ever present physical representation. Perhaps indeed.

Note: I understand that the paltry ridicule which I experienced does not compare to the hell others have endured. These things felt big to me at the time and I am only now seeing and acknowledging how they may have affected me. This writing is a catharsis and hopefully proves to be at least therapeutic and if I am lucky, healing.