An Ordinary Princess: So, this one time, I was bullied.

I think it’s a good thing for people to share about a time in their life when they were bullied. Back in the 80’s there wasn’t really a word for it, but it happened. Now of course I was teased a lot. Because of my weight. I’ve been called lots of names because of my weight. Horrible names. But to me that’s name calling and not full on bullying. Yes the words sting still to this day, but I can get past the thought of those names. This is the story (not really a story, it did happen) of a time in 7th grade when I was actually bullied. And when I think about it, there is this sickening feeling in my stomach. Even 27ish years later.

I moved around a lot as a child. I attended 6 different Elementary schools, and 2 Middle schools. It was at Arvada Junior High in 1988/89 that this incident took place. I don’t even remember what started it. What I did to make this girl and her cronies mad at me I have no idea. I don’t know why they chose me as their victim. One day a girl started to call me the “B” word as she walked past me in the hallway. I didn’t even know her. Soon after that her friends started to do the same. Lucky for me this happened towards the end of the school year. We had pad locks on our lockers, and on morning when I got to school I started to turn the knob to enter my combination, and I noticed something was on the pad lock. Someone had sprayed something on it that smelled like urine. Awesome. I went to the office to see if I could put my books in there since who knows what else would happen to my locker. The office ladies looked at me like I had lobsters crawling out my ears. I don’t think they believed me. Jerks. (Great. Now I’M name calling! Hehe!) It got to the point where I hated going to school. Junior High sucks enough without this crap to deal with.

The next couple of days were not very fun. Rumor started that I was “Talking S&%t” about this girl (I don’t even want to justify her by writing her name here.). So her friends took every advantage to taunt me and tell me that “What’s her name is going to kick my ass”. Lovely. So the rest of the week I walked around wondering if I was going to get jumped. Unfortunately I had gym class with this girl and her followers, so it was hard to avoid any of them. This one day we had to do aerobics to a Jane Fonda video. That was torture in its own way! I had heard that the ass kicking was going to happen after gym class today. I asked the gym teacher if I could leave class 5 minutes early because of this situation. She said “Yes” but didn’t even offer to stop the situation, or to offer help. So I snuck out 5 minutes before everyone else, and I hid in the girls bathroom in the locker room. It was a one seater, so no one could look under the stall or anything. I hid there for about 15 minutes while the girls were banging on the door, saying terrible things. I remember tracing the tiles on the floor with my eyes just praying that I could magically be home. Imagine being afraid, hiding in a bathroom. There is quiet. And then loud banging on the door. My heart was already pounding, but add in the startling banging and it just sent me into overdrive! Or almost heart failure! Finally the gym teacher came and had the girls clear out. She suggested I go to the principal and talk to him about what was happening. So I skipped my next class and went and talked to the principal. He listened, and told me that She-who-must-not-be-named had to stay at least 50 feet away from me. Yeah. That didn’t help the situation at all. I started to get sick at home because of the anxiety this all caused. I remember one night I was vomiting and my Dad came into my room and just held my forehead as I wretched. I SO did not want to go to school. Please. Just let me stay home! At that point I only had one week of school left until summer. One. Long. Week. I was still being tormented in the halls, and in class. Rumors were still flying, and I was still going to get an ass-kicking at some point. Fast forward to the last day of school. My Mom was going to pick me up in front of the school so I didn’t have to walk home out of fear that the girls would follow me. I walked out front, and who comes right up to me and started yelling in my face. She accused me of the good ole’ “talking s&%t” business. At this point I had had enough. I slammed my books down on the ground and yelled, like, adrenaline yelled back at her “Do you honestly think I would talk s&%t about you when I knew you wanted to kick my ass???!!!” She was stunned, and not sure how to respond back. All she said was “Crap, my bus is leaving!” She grabbed her books, and ran to the bus. Turns out her bark is bigger than her bite. Sucker!!! Thank God for the last day of school.

Summer was awesome, and I moved one more time. In the fall, I started Everett Middle School, and was about to meet Kiirsi, one of my best friends that I’m happily and luckily still friends with today.

I understand that this case of bullying is small compared to some horrific cases. But I’m just here to remind people that it does get better, you can get help (especially these days!), and you will meet people that will help you get through it! Now I’m going to post a picture of me from that year at Arvada Jr. High. I think I marked on the picture, but this is me from the Arvada Jr. High year book in 1989. Yikes. 7th grade is the pits!