Dear Bully

I moved into the big room—the one that I got fair and square. She moved into the small one. No one came into my room and piled on my bed like they did in hers. I didn’t know what she told them. That I was crazy? Maybe. That I was a slut? Perhaps. All of them lies? Definitely. Night after night, I heard them whispering in one another’s rooms. Laughing at jokes I was not included in, maybe at my expense. I’d come home to big dinners planned without me. Parties thrown without my knowledge. A crayon-colored heart on the wall penned by my old roommate with the six other people who lived in our house. Guess she forgot to include the seventh girl. Me.

They were winning. I stayed in my room. I rarely came out. I listened to the Lemonheads and made new friends. I found excuses to stay away from my house. My breath always sped up when I went home, unsure of what would be missing from my room. What would have accidentally been broken. What conversations would stop the moment I walked inside. One by one, the girls moved out. My old roommate had turned the house against me. I became that girl I had watched so many years ago from the safe heights of the library window of my private school. The one talked about, mocked, teased, bullied. The one I swore I would never be. I stayed in my room. The two girls who stayed behind became my close friends. They didn’t believe the things my old roommate had been saying about me. They gave me a chance. And they realized that the girl she described was not really me. My heart started to mend. Still sore, but healing.

Fifteen years later. My heart really does start to break. My aortic arch and carotid arteries are causing strokes. I’m sliced down the middle so that they can fix the heart—the one that felt like it had been broken so many times really was in need of mending. The scar is huge, red, and angry; one you can see. This is a scar of survival. I have a little girl now. A husband. A home. So much to live for. Now when I feel my heart beating in my chest, it gives me strength. I know that I’m alive and lucky to be here. I think back to those days when I barricaded myself in my college room, fearing the wrath of the mean girls; I think back to high school, junior high, middle school, trying so desperately to fly under the radar so that I wouldn’t be singled out. I wouldn’t be the one made fun of at field hockey practice. I wouldn’t be the one who girls called awful names: slut, loser, bitch, psycho. Thinking back to those days, I feel a different type of pain. One that gnaws beneath the stitches that stretch from my neck to my abdomen, that are deeper than the titanium clips that hold my sternum together. These are pains that no medication can ease. While I appreciate every minute of the beating inside my chest, because I know that I’m alive and I’m here for my family, there is something that still frightens me.

I have a daughter. And I know what girls are capable of. I cannot have my heart broken again—or worse, watch as hers is broken. I fear for my daughter in these days of texting and IM’ing and Facebook and posting pictures and rumors and lies online. She is only eight. But soon she will be the one walking down the halls of the junior high. How will she handle what I could not? Will she fade into the background like I did? Or will she have the strength in her own character to stand up for herself? Only time will tell. Until then, my heart will continue to pump one glorious life-sustaining beat after another. I just hope that if she is the one being taunted, teased, bullied, a girl just like me will emerge from the shadows—one who was too afraid to get involved for fear of having the tides turn on her. That she will stand by my daughter’s side. So that she will never, ever have to go through heartbreak alone.

End of the World

by Jessica Brody

Everybody asks

But no one wonders why.

I laugh as you pretend

To take interest in my life,

Smile when I pass

Then talk behind my back.

You think you’re so creative

With your meager attacks.

Keep searching for the beauty on the inside

But don’t forget to paint the beauty on the outside.

We all know

We all know

What sells to the crowd.

She doesn’t like the way I look.

She doesn’t like what I believe.

Well, that’s a damn shame.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I think the world will have to end another day.

You think that I’m a cheater

So call me what I am.

I know it’s hard to label