Dear Bully

Bruises on the soul hurt even more than bruises on the leg and take longer to heal. Maybe the trick is to try to avoid smashing into stuff so much. And then to be kind to ourselves as we slowly heal.

Hiding Me

by R. A. Nelson

Bullying comes in all sorts of shapes and forms. It can be as overt as a punch in the face or as subtle as a whispering campaign. With me, it began with reading.

I used to read books everywhere. On campouts and car trips. On vacations at the beach. I read in trees and can still remember the way the leaves made green and yellow opaque splotches on the pages. I loved the way books felt in my hands. Loved to stick my nose in the middle of the pages and inhale their dusty scent.

I took books with me wherever I went. I took extra books to school so I could read during the breaks. Science fiction. Horror. Stories like Green Mansions that were really love stories disguised as adventure novels. (I’ve always been a hopeless romantic.) I would practically run to my next class so I could plop down in my seat and get in a few pages before the bell rang. Some of my favorite books were read this way, in five- or ten-minute gulps. It was brutal having to close a book by Jules Verne or Ray Bradbury or W. H. Hudson and open my school textbook (well, unless it was in English class).

So where did the bullying come in? I was not the stereotypical guy you would think would be picked on. I was a tall, strong kid. I was a good athlete and played on the basketball team. Went cliff diving in the Tennessee River. Maybe what I experienced wasn’t even bullying in the classic sense. It was mostly so quiet, in the background, that I often wasn’t even aware it was happening until later. A few times it was right in my face. I had books knocked out of my hands in crowded hallways where I had to get down on my hands and knees to pick everything up while the guy who did it ran away. I was challenged to fights. Sometimes I fought, sometimes I didn’t. Guys started rumors about me and said stuff behind my back, all hinting that reading was somehow less than “manly.” I never could understand what made these guys so angry about my passion for reading. But in their eyes, reading for fun was simply something a guy did . . . not . . . do.

Thinking back on it, I’m pretty sure they had no idea they were doing anything that seemed like bullying. In their minds they were just guys being guys. They were raised to love cars, hunting, drinking. No doubt they had trouble understanding a guy like me. And I felt the effects. What their behavior told me was this: “You have no right to be interested in things like poetry on Mars or a mysterious girl in the jungle who sounds just like a bird. Either you will think our way or we will make you wish you had.”

Other than refusing to stop reading, I did my best to try to fit in. I learned to hide much of my true personality. But I realize now, many years later, that the harassment took its toll. I retreated further into my own little world. I stopped being myself, became guarded about how much of the true me I would let slip out, because I didn’t see that self as a person who would ever be accepted by my peers.

This feeling lingered a long time. Even years after I stopped worrying about what someone would think of me as a reader, I still didn’t want anyone to know what I was reading. Whenever I temporarily had to put a book aside, I always turned the cover facedown. Why? Because if someone saw what kind of book I was reading, they might figure out what I was really like on the inside. How strange. How different.

I have come a long way since then, but I don’t know if I will ever be able to completely shake this feeling. It has echoes to this day. When I published my first book, I kept it a secret that I was a writer. I was certain that if my coworkers at my day job knew that I loved to read and write, the “inner me,” the real me, would be completely exposed, and they wouldn’t like what they saw. And it all goes back to those days when I was a secret reader.

I have run into a few of those “bullies” from my childhood since then in stores and restaurants. They are invariably nice and remember us as great friends. And I realize now that I often took things people said or did too seriously. But that’s exactly what some people do. So being accepting and tolerant is more important than almost anyone knows. You can alter the course of someone’s life—for better or worse.

Midsummer’s Nightmare

by Holly Cupala

I’ve been a dreamer all of my life.

Monkeys at my window. Shadows waiting to capture my hands and feet as I slept. Frantic chases, nuclear blasts, streaks across the sky.

I’ve wondered about dream interpretation—if my dreams will tell the future, or if they somehow interpret my past. Sometimes they are gibberish. Other times, they have taken on a prophetic urgency I can’t help but think disguises some deep and mysterious truth.