Posts Tagged ‘bullying’
Our tears are the same
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011
The assignment this week for RemembeRED, the memoir prompt at Write on Edge, asked us to explore our worst memory.
I thought about it. I have had some painful things happen in my past. We all have. But sometimes I feel like my memories are trivial in comparison to those who have had real tragedy and heartbreak.
My life, while far from charmed, has not – fortunately – had horrific life-changing trauma.
How can I write about mine, when I think about my friends:
They have lost parents, siblings, spouses, children to cancer, or have battled it themselves.
They have been horribly abused by those who were supposed to love and protect them.
They have been raped.
They have had miscarriage after miscarriage after miscarriage. Stillbirth. Babies who breathed for only a short while. Debilitating post-partum depression.
They have gone through an unwanted divorce.
Unimaginable things.
What can I possibly share?
But the truth is, though our experiences are not exactly the same, we all have sadness. We all have hurt, have moments in our lives that are tough to revisit. My history is no less valid because it didn’t contain a great tragedy. Heartache is universal. Our tears are the same.
I have written here, here and here about the death of my father.
It is the worst thing that has happened to me, followed by my son’s first peanut reaction which put him in the hospital.
But those aren’t the only things.
Here is one.
The summer after third grade, my mother signed us up for an arts-and-crafts program at our elementary school. I think about it now that I am a mother, about how she saw the camp in a brochure and thought it’d be fun for my brother and me. And it got us out of her hair for a couple hours.
I was happy to go, until I saw the boy who lived the big red house across the street from the school. He was a bit of a bully and it didn’t take long for him to start in on me. I just wanted to sit in the warm sun at the picnic tables and weave loom potholders and friendship bracelets. Instead, my stomach twisted.
I was afraid. But ready.
“Hey, Frozenbooger,” he said. Because when you have a last name like mine, it’s easy to be picked on.
I didn’t back down.
“Queeroquack!” I shouted, my best effort to distort Kerouac.
“Frozenbooger!”
“Queeroquack!”
And so it went. I’d like to say a counselor stepped in. But that didn’t happen.
At some point, whether I was asked or if it was on an information sheet, it came out that my middle name was Felice. I’d always liked that name. Kids usually guessed my middle name was Anne, but Felice was different and special and I loved it. Until the counselor decided to call me, “Fleas” while the other kids laughed.
I was 8. Not too young to figure out I had to put those walls up around me as quickly as possible. Because words, they hurt. They really, really hurt.
This memory, and many others I have like it, is why I am so sensitive to bullying of my own kids. I wrote about bullying here and here. And it also inspired me to write my most meaningful piece of fiction, What was Broken.
Tags: bullying, Remembe(red), summer camp, write on edge
Posted in Remembe(red), Write on Edge | 66 Comments »
What was broken
Friday, February 4th, 2011
I held his small warm hand, squeezing it, trying somehow to take my strength and give it to him by virtue of the connection of muscles and bones and skin.
“You’re going to be okay, buddy,” I said.
His gray eyes shifted to me. A single tear started its path down his cheek before disappearing below his neck brace. The siren from the ambulance was muted, which surprised me, seeing as how we were riding in it. I thought it’d be loud enough to drown out the silent scream in my ears. But it’s when you’re outside, or in your car, it’s supposed to alarm you, to tell you to get out of the way, emergency! Inside? It’s quiet, almost serene.
Except for my heart which beat in my chest like it was afraid to slow down, to be normal. There would be no normal. (more…)
Tags: bullying, it's a hard mean world, Nadin Khoury, red writing hood
Posted in Red Writing Hood | 62 Comments »
Of Spiderman, a bully, and lessons learned
Wednesday, January 5th, 2011
It was the shirt that did it to me, made me that kind of angry only a mother can know.
Light-blue, the shirt, with Spiderman on the front.
And in the upper right corner, where your heart would be if a body was made in mirror-image, three rips.
This is what happens to soft cotton when a child is shoved off a swing and onto concrete at the school playground.
I know this because this is what happened to my son. (more…)
Tags: bullying, do not fuck with my kid, principals aren't just for bad stuff, spiderman, zero tolerance
Posted in Parenting | 76 Comments »
Bullyhood
Sunday, October 3rd, 2010
If you have never been bullied, then you cannot get it.
You can empathize. You can imagine.
But you can’t get it. (more…)
Tags: bullying, Ellen DeGeneres, It Gets Better
Posted in Just me | 51 Comments »
