Dear Bully

Seventh grade was the year I stopped caring what other people thought. I would have friends who liked me and wanted me as I was, or I wouldn’t have any friends at all. I sat alone, and it turned out sitting alone was better than pretending. People still teased me—I had a lot of cafeteria milk squirted in my face that year, and no one invited me to escape into the kitchen afterward—but by then squirted milk seemed pretty minor, too.

And after that—slowly, quietly—things did begin to get better. In eighth and ninth grades I made my first real friends, no pretending required.

But I have one more vivid bullying memory, from right before tenth grade, the year high school began in my town. That summer, a group of girls ganged up on me at the town pool, and as I kicked and pulled hair and dug in my fingernails and mostly just tried to get away, one of them said, “You think you’re escaping. You think you’re going to go to high school and that things will get better, but we own this town.”

They were wrong. I did get away and things did keep getting better. High school wasn’t perfect—people still whispered taunts in the halls—but compared to all the years before, it was pretty good. I had a circle of friends by then, and the teasing became background noise to my life instead of the thing that defined it.

Then in college, one day as I walked through the halls, I realized the whispers had gone away entirely, and that no one thought of me as that kid anymore.

I realized I’d made it through.

Yet this isn’t over. Because no one deserves to be that kid. It isn’t right, and it has to stop.

If you’ve ever shouted or whispered or posted a taunt online because everyone else was; if you’ve ever debated whether you dare talk to someone it isn’t safe to be seen talking to; if you’ve ever wanted to tell your friends to back off but decided you’d better stay quiet—after all, your life is hard enough already—I want to say: you have a role to play in stopping it.

But if you are that kid, reading this now, what I want to say is this: It will get better. I promise you. I can’t promise when. But I promise that it will.

This Is Me

by Erin Dionne

This was me in seventh grade:

The tallest person in my class. Short hair, glasses, braces. Flute player in band. Newspaper reporter. Great student. Reader. Someone’s best friend. Part of a group of girls who were smart and funny and into things like dance and science and horses and Star Wars. Sleepover attendee/thrower. Crushing on a boy. Swallowing hurt and shame and rage as the girls I’d been friends with in elementary school suddenly and mysteriously decided that my new friends weren’t cool, my clothes weren’t cool—I wasn’t cool. Gritting my teeth as they snickered and whispered when I passed. Dodging venomous comments thrown my way in the hall. Player/pawn in their mental games of Cold Shoulder, Catty Comment, Arched Eyebrow, and Flounce Away. Stressed out. Ulcers burning my stomach lining. Puking my guts up every morning before school. Puking after most meals. Swigging Mylanta out of the bottle. Scraping its minty-chalky outline off my lips. Missing weeks of classes to heal my burned and ulcerated stomach. Living on boiled chicken and mashed potatoes. Begging my mom not to get involved. Escaping into movies like Pump Up the Volume, Heathers

, and Revenge of the Nerds. Confiding to my diary that I’d rather be anywhere, move anyplace, than have to deal.

In the middle of eighth grade: Dad’s transfer to California.

Escape.

Relief.

This was me in college:

Average height, medium hair, contacts, great smile. Piccolo player in band. Writer. Great Student. Reader. Someone’s girlfriend. Part of a group of people who are smart and funny and into things like dance and science and Star Wars. Dorm liver. Party attendee/thrower. Confident and funny. Walking into someone’s apartment during a party. Spotting one of my junior high tormentors. Shaking. Trying to breathe. Stomach knotting. Hands clenching. Leaving because I couldn’t deal with what came rushing up from the past. Spending the next year on edge at every school event. Keeping one eye out. Rehearsing what to say. Convincing myself not to be snarky. Fearing and wishing I’d see her. Astonished and embarrassed by the power of nine-year-old words. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Running into her outside a classroom. Taking a deep breath. Listening. Mystified as she behaved like we were old friends. Struggling with the knowledge that I didn’t matter to her while her behavior mattered so much to me. Coping with the fury that brought out. Understanding the yoke I’d lived under for so long. Casting it off.

This is me now: